Mirai Ozora, a 17-year-old airhead who loves to tease her geeky techno-nerd older brother Hiroshi, discovers while snooping through his room that he is Captain Tokyo! His discovery of molecular rearrangement controlled by brain waves (there is a "scientific explanation" full of amusing technobabble) is so simple to control that Mirai reprograms it to offer a second setting for herself as Moldiver, a superheroine in a stylish frilly skirt to catch the eye of hunky dreamboat Kaoru Misaki, Hiroshi's best friend. Much comedy results as the siblings squabble over which of them will get to use the Mol-unit. Each accidentally becomes the other's hero. The "fighting for justice" evolves into a series of catfights between Mirai and one or more of the robotic movie star lookalikes. Plus, Mirai and/or Hiroshi constantly end up embarrassingly nude when the Mol-unit's timer unexpectedly shuts off.

Much of the humor is actually infantile. Hiroshi, an idealistic researcher who wants to improve mankind through technological advance, cannot think of anything better to do with his discovery than model himself after comic-book heroes. Dr. Machingal is revealed at the outset to be Prof. Amagi, in his second childhood, smarting at hints that it is past time to retire, and out to prove with his Superdolls and spectacular thefts that he can still out-think anyone else. Then Hiroshi's and Mirai's little brother Nozomu finds the Mol-unit and wants to turn himself into a super-character stronger than anybody else -- and he doesn't care how many fatalities he leaves among innocent bystanders while showing off. Most of the characters, determined to prove how smart or adult they are, end up looking like omnipotent four-year-olds throwing temper tantrums.

Pioneer's 1994 six individual videos are still available, $19.98 each dubbed or $24.98 subtitled; although since the new DVD release offers all six both dubbed and subtitled, plus DVD bonuses, for the price of a single dubbed video episode, they will probably disappear in a blowout sale soon.

Black Jack. © Tezuka Production Co. Ltd./Shochiku Co.,Ltd 1996.

Black Jack.
Theatrical feature, 1996. Director: Osamu Dezaki. 90 minutes. Price & format: video $19.95 dubbed, $24.95 subtitled; DVD $29.95 bilingual. Distributor: Manga Entertainment.

Osamu Tezuka (1928-1989) is best-known in America for his juvenile animation Astro Boy and Kimba the White Lion. Tezuka had completed his medical studies and gotten his surgeon's license before deciding upon a cartoonist's career in the early 1950s. From 1973 to 1978 he used his medical expertise to create the adult cartoon melodrama Black Jack, about a mysterious "outlaw surgeon," the equivalent of a Western's drifting cowboy hero, who uses his scalpel to achieve moral justice beyond the medical profession's regulations. Tezuka's comic-book series was popular enough to spin off four Black Jack live-action theatrical features and nine OAVs from 1977 to 1995 before this animated theatrical feature's release in November 1996.

This biological suspense drama in the vein of Outbreak is a new story, carefully crafted to be faithful to Tezuka's plots and produced by his Tezuka Productions. Osamu Dezaki, the veteran theatrical anime director who also supervised the Black Jack OAVs, storyboarded this feature and co-wrote the screenplay as well as directed it. Dezaki's characteristic soft-pastel "beautiful" look -- upper-class people, elegant clothing, rich homes and offices, lush landscapes, neon-lit urban nightscapes -- makes the horrific ravages of the "Moira syndrome" especially graphic. The realistic operating-room close-ups (there is a medical supervisor credit) are not for the squeamish.

Set in the then-future, an international sensation is caused at the 2000 Olympics when numerous new records are set by teen athletes from around the world. During the next couple of years so many young geniuses appear in sports, art and literature that many believe a new advance in human evolution is beginning; "Super-Humans for the 21st Century!" But suddenly they begin dying, their internal organs rotting inside their bodies. A top medical research center in New York controlled by beautiful but proud Dr. Jo Carol Brane starts a crash project to cure the mystery disease before it becomes an epidemic. When they are stymied, she uses unethical pressure to force the reclusive Black Jack to join their team. Being a genius, it does not take long for him to discover a human origin behind both the disease and the super-human talents. Black Jack must battle corporate greed and professional arrogance as well as the new virus to forestall a deadly plague.

Black Jack has the disadvantage for Americans of assuming that the audience will be familiar with the background of Tezuka's series. There is no explanation of why Black Jack is so hideously scarred, why he and the medical profession are at odds, or why he lives as a recluse except for a hyperactive young child as his housekeeper and medical assistant. If American viewers will not mind leaving these questions unanswered, the movie otherwise is a winning showpiece of both Tezuka's adult storytelling style and Dezaki's directorial style.