The late Osamu Tezuka’s manga series Black Jack is celebrating its 50th anniversary, and his studio Tezuka Productions decided there’d be no better way to celebrate than to create a new manga launching in Akita Shonen’s Weekly Shonen Champion Magazine, using AI technology.
The new manga is being created with the same technology used to create the manga project “PAIDON” back in 2020, so this already isn’t the team’s first try with AI. The AI being used is based on ChatCPT-4, and the project uses tech from the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) in Japan. If this is made using the same process that made PAIDON, this means the manga’s story will be generated by AI, with the art and panels being drawn by human animators.
The project is being titled TEZUKA2023 and will be released later this year in Japanese.
▍About Black Jack
Black Jack is a manga series created by Osamu Tezuka in 1973 until its original run ended in 1983, with 25 manga volumes. The series is one of the creator’s most influential and popular manga series, next to its other works like Astro Boy, Princess Knight, New Treasure Island, and many more.
The story follows Kurō Hazama or Black Jack, a man with a massive scar on his face as the result of n explosion killing his mother at a young age, and surviving due to surgery performed by Dr. Honma. His hair becomes white due to the stress and shock, and the part of his face that was damaged gets repaired by a skin graft from his best friend Takashi. As a result of the half of his face that got damaged is slowly becoming darker, and out of respect for his friend he lives with the change despite how it looks.
The story follows Kuro’s attempts to aid those in the world through his exceptional skill as a surgeon. Despite his skill he chooses to operate in the dark, free from societal norms and restrictions, but also away from the prying eyes of institutions and corruption. Each chapter follows a person with a traumatic situation, and Kuro helps those in need, often without a reward, while also teaching valuable lessons about life and the fragility of humans.
