Ray: The Animation

ashleycapes

May 21

From creator Akihito Yoshitomi comes something of a Black Jack spin-off, with another supremely talented surgeon – Ray, whose x-ray eyes help her save the day wherever possible.

Ray: The Animation (2006)

Combined with the cases she solves and illnesses she cures on an episode-to-episode basis, there is a larger story of the past pushing through in this anime, which definitely worked as a nice hook for me.

Since Ray: The Animation is near future science-fiction as much as it is a medical drama or mystery, there's a lot of solves via technology that may never exist, but I usually found most of it interesting, even if Ray's eyes were often used in a similar way.

Ray herself is a somewhat cold (but not heartless) character, in a clear contrast with the nurses at her hopsital, who are quite cheerful and one of which is quite happy to regularly rib Ray – especially when it comes to the romantic subplot that rises and falls in importance across the 13 episodes.

I really liked the way the various elements were interwoven here, how the foreshadowing starts nice and early for certain reveals.

And in regard to the main villain, it was a fun surprise to see what his true motivations actually were... and the lengths he went to in order to reach his goal are typically impressive and troubling, as per most great villains.

Visually, it was also nice to see some pastel/watercolour-looking backgrounds and settings, along with the occasional 'postcard memory' too.

Now, if you're not in the mood to deal with a certain amount of non-graphic but obvious cruelty toward children, then maybe save Ray for another time.

The first episode has a few surprises up its sleeve, that's for sure – and I have to spoil just one, since it really threw me in a good way, which was the ease with which the nurses switched from the healing to martial arts.

Black Jack himself cameos a couple of times in the anime, but it's very much the story of Ray's search for truth about the dark organisation that kept her captive as a child, interwoven with the medical drama.

I enjoyed the characters as much as the scenarios, and some of the cases were pretty compelling – but another warning, a few of the medical procedures are shown in enough detail that some folks might not enjoy it, and a few cases probabaly verge on body-horror, so be warned if that's not your thing either.

4 Stars

Due to copyright, Black Jack was only alluded to as BJ and never seen fully in the original manga, but because the anime was produced by Osamu Tezuka's own studio, he appears fully in the anime (though still somewhat obscured) and is referred to by his original name.

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