Patient File - Polychromatic

[pinokosthewife]

[nick / name]: Bird
[personal LJ/DW name]: inkedfeathers
[other characters currently played]: Nobori :: Pocket Monsters: Best Wishes! :: brothertragedy
[e-mail]: foldingpaper[at]windowslive.com
[AIM / messenger]: no AIM/foldingpaper[at]windowslive.com for MSN/WML and wishingstarof7nights[at]yahoo.com for Y!M

[series]: Black Jack
[character]: Pinoko
[character history / background]: While she doesn't appear in every chapter, she is the most oft-recurring character, appearing the alongside the titular main character. After all, she is his surrogate daughter/self-proclaimed wife/assistant nurse/home maker.

Pinoko has quite the unusual history.

Pinoko was originally a very strange fetu-in-fetu (that is to say, she was initially to be half a set of twins, until she was absorbed by her would-be sister in the womb). She continued to grow, but in a very stifled manner, within her sister's belly as a tumour, until the girl reached eighteen years of age.

Embarrassed by her state, her sister (who apparently came from a very rich family as she was able to afford Black Jack's insanely high fees— possibly a famous family as well, as she never revealed her face) visits many doctors, but all quickly go insane in the operating room, blaming the tumour's "curse."

Even after hearing the story, scoffing at the legends, Black Jack decides to operate on her.

But, when he approaches to make the first incision, he finds himself incapable of moving his hand, as a telepathic voice (that of a grown woman, although lacking the lisp Pinoko eventually ends up with) tells him not to cut her.
However shocked by the improbability of this, he speaks with and tries to reason with the voice. Eventually, she stops controlling him and causing him harm. He promises her that he will not hurt her.
Choosing to trust him (because unlike all the doctors before him, he spoke to her and made an effort to understand her), she allowed him to cut her free from her sister. All she was was a mess of under-developed organs of incomplete systems and a few complete systems: nervous and possibly circulatory as well, if memory serves.

She does not speak telepathically or manipulate things telekinetically again.

He decides to keep her alive in an incubator, but Pinoko's sister had wanted her to be thrown away. Black Jack did not do as he was told.
But what is truly miraculous is that, despite being under-developed in regards to her actual age, she has a few complete systems and all her necessary organs were functioning. Normally, a fetu-in-fetu is generally little more than hair, an eye, maybe some teeth... she is a miraculous anomaly; all she truly lacks is a proper body.
Her underdeveloped circulatory and nervous systems would not withstand the strain of supporting a body so much larger than the tumour they were confined to growing in, but there is a chance that they will survive in a small, child-like body he fashions to resemble a girl he once saw on the cover one of his medical journals named Romi.

The first thing the reborn Pinoko sees when she first opens her eyes is Black Jack.

It was very unusual for the solitary surgeon Black Jack, who often paints himself as quite the villain to clients, to take in this abandoned life, but he felt an odd sort of kinship towards her that he never quite felt for anybody else. It was the strong will to live that he saw in her eyes, shortly after she awoke, that convinced him to do it.

Black Jack names her Pinoko after Pinocchio, due to her doll-like body and unusual origins.

Pinoko goes through a very difficult time learning to walk and move, much like the rehabilitation process the doctor himself went through after the explosion that lead to his mother's death and his permanent disfigurement; this shared suffering strengthened their bond. She goes through excruciating pain, as he had, but he never helps her get up when she falls, because he wants her to learn independence. And so she does, learning to stand on her own two feet and walk to him. He later tells a patient of his who has lost the will to live, while recounting Pinoko's story, that "people and flowers are both beautiful because they're trying to live."

In learning to speak, Pinoko develops an odd, childish lisp that Black Jack only reprimands her for at first (telling her she will never be taken seriously as an adult with such a childish way of speaking), until he realizes it's a permanent speech impediment.

Her light lisp also leads to her rendering "Sensei" (a title for those knowledgeable in any subject, including medicine) as "Chenchei." In the English translations, this is often changed to "Doc" instead of "Doctor" to retain the cutesy child-like charm the original had.

She also has a tendency to confuse similar sounding words (a funny example is when she kept complaining about the hotel staff being "on streak," with everyone correcting her by telling her they're "on strike") and mispronouncing longer words.

A peculiar habit of Pinoko's is that she has a tendancy to cry "acchonburike!" (sometimes adapted in translations as "ohmigewdness!") whenever she's surprised or as an all-purpose phrase. It's a nonsense phrase which she claims to have coined herself.

In the anime, Pinoko shows an odd bit of vanity even before she starts walking, when Black Jack first allows her to see herself in the mirror, she looks very upset. After he brushes her hair for her, she looks pleased with her reflection. She has worn her hair in the same way Black Jack originally styled it for her ever since.

In the manga, this vanity is shown also in other instances: such as when Pinoko, even while horribly drunk after suffering the shock of her life, cannot run away from Black Jack's home until she stops to brush her hair and check her appearance in the mirror.

After Pinoko is fully capable to walk and talk, during her sister's final check-up, Black Jack tells the woman he has someone she would like her to meet... her sister of eighteen years, Pinoko.

Her sister reacts harshly, screaming at Black Jack "why are you keeping that thing alive?!", reminding him that Pinoko was meant to be thrown away.

Pinoko is crushed and horrified. Tearing up, she runs over and started pummeling and kicking her older sister with useless attacks until Black Jack takes her away.

Ever since then, Pinoko has been by Black Jack's side, living with him in his desolate and simple little home on an island off the coast of Japan. Despite all of Black Jack's highly expensive fees for operations when his patients are rich and arrogant, he soon loses practically all of his money buying lands to protect the natural wildlife and habitats from being destroyed by other humans or by giving the money away to those in need.

Shortly after she's left in Black Jack's care, Pinoko meets a male ship doctor named Kisaragi Kei (unbeknownst to her, he was originally Kisaragi Megumi, a female medical student, before Black Jack had to operate on her due to ovarian cancer and she decided to live as a man after it rendered her infertile) who tells her the story of Black Jack's lost love from medical school, while keeping his own identity secret. Pinoko was very curious and snuck away from Black Jack to speak with Doctor Kei and was surprised to hear that the Doctor once had a sweetie! Pinoko claimed to be the doctor's wife then and introduced herself to Dr. Kisaragi as such, and had cooked for Black Jack in the morning before they set out.

Pinoko's earliest attempts at being more domestic included: waking the doctor up (with a baseball bat to the head), burning the food to inedible charcoal ("Bread! Pinoko baked it for shiksh hours!"), sweeping during mealtime, and latching onto the doctor to smother him with non-consensual kisses, and professing her love and desire to marry him, to his shock and bewilderment.

After he yells at her, she cries, saying it was because she was never taught how to perform these duties, so he tells her that he will teach her, but refuses to teach her now because she is only a baby! She reacts huffily, "what a rude thing to shay! Pinoko is eighteen years old! A virgin maiden!"

He coldly tells her he is incapable of love, so she asks why he saved her, but he claims he gave her a human body only to frighten the patient (her sister) into giving him more money. She cries that it can't possibly be true!
Becoming increasingly annoyed, he coldly informs her that if she doesn't stop her antics, he will take her apart and put her back into the culture. What he said in a fit of anger, Pinoko takes to heart, as later, when a young boy is injured and Black Jack finds he cannot save him without an immediate kidney transplant, Pinoko steps in and offers her own out of devotion.

To his shock, she quietly and resolutely tells him that he may use her body, with his previous statement about taking her apart as justification. Saying she doesn't mind, Pinoko makes her offer again, strips down and lies on the operating table. Overcome by the prospect of saving the boy's life, he agrees that that would be all it would take to save him, so he turns on her to operate. Wthout a trace of fear, Pinoko tells him to go ahead and take her apart. Black Jack only stares for a long moment, before he turns away, starting to laugh at his own foolishness, before asking the boy's parents for a donor instead, unable to bear the idea of taking Pinoko apart. Unfortunately, due to the father's greed, the boy dies on the operating table before anything could be done. Pinoko cannot believe it, crying that the doctor could never fail. The greedy man yells at Black Jack, blaming him for his son's death and ironically accusing him of greed, leaving Pinoko utterly confused as to why Black Jack did not do as she asked of him, but is yelled at to get dressed and go back inside.

She sits crying on her bed for a while, before sneaking away to take a peek through the doorway to find the doctor slumped over his desk in anger and grief. She watches him for a long moment, seeing the real, human Black Jack that few others will ever know; it confirms her belief that he's kinder than he lets on. Quietly returning to her room, she whispers with a smile, "you know what, Doc? Pinoko loves you."

Her devotion is also shown in a later incident when, as Black Jack sets out, he asks her to prepare tea for him. While he is away, a typhoon strikes and Pinoko huddles in a corner of their decrepit house protecting something in her arms as if her life depended on it. When he returns, it's revealed that this precious thing that she wanted to protect at all costs were simply what she needed to make tea for him, to fulfill her promise and wifely duties.

Since that time, she has gotten much better at housework and grown a lot more capable in general, regularly helping him in his operations and following him on his trips whenever she can, although he usually does manage to slip away without her on his more dangerous ones.

She can now cook very well and has even proven herself to be a gifted doctor in her own right, according to Black Jack.

She has dealt with gangsters who have held her hostage and wanted to kill the doctor; in one incident, she used her childlike appearance to her advantage, innocuously asking if they would let her "go potty," as to allow her to sneak away and call the police. When Black Jack himself is threatened, she shows no concern for her own safety, and quite angrily asks Black Jack (while held firmly in the grasp of one of the gunmen!), if she can "bite this bashtard."

She was also shot that day, fortunately surviving.

An earlier incident where she was kidnapped by men who lured her out by impersonating Black Jack (she was staying in a hotel room on a very high floor, so from the window, she couldn't recognize the man as a fake), she showed a great deal of courage. Even though she cried and called the men "cockroaches" for daring to kill a girl, she also managed to start a fire while her arms were bound with rope by kicking at a table to bring down a lamp!

Pinoko's not entirely above falling for, or at least, lightly flirting with other men, however. At one point, a young prince seeking to train under Dr. Black Jack came to visit and Pinoko tries to convince Black Jack that she could see potential in him. Black Jack realizes she had developed a bit of a crush on the man, which Pinoko cannot deny, but she assures Black Jack she only likes him "shecond best." But when Black Jack denies her request to take him on as an apprentice, she throws a fit, crying that he was handsome, so he HAD to make a good Doctor.

So Pinoko takes him on as her own assistant and even has him help her prepare dinner... in a very strict manner, barking orders at him. When the prince later compliments Pinoko's cooking, she informs him that "flattery will get you nowhere."

Still, when he leaves to return to his home country, she tells him he could return and be her assistant again anytime.

[character abilities]: She's a very good nurse already and quite clever! When Black Jack had difficulty operating on a five year old boy with mirrored anatomy, she brought Black Jack a mirror to look at while he operated, because it reversed the image of his organs, conveying them as normal.

She also knows how to take advantage of her appearance and can engage in a bit of manipulation: she can pretend to be a child and play on people's sympathy if it'll help her get what she wants or needs. She will also play on other's sympathy to produce a reaction she wants, only to reveal at the end that she only said what she did because she knew that it was exactly what she had to do to get what she wanted!

She's a little picky about who she works with, though, and is unlikely to work with anyone besides Black Jack unless it's absolutely necessary. Also, she prefers to work with handsome men, because there is never an inappropriate time for flirting.

Pinoko is also very good cook, at this point!

Do telepathic and telekinetic powers in that tumour count? They were born out of necessity and she seems to have lost those abilities entirely after being given a body. Really, Osamu Tezuka's Black Jack is a medical drama that is, for the most part, realistic (Black Jack's otherworldly level of skill aside), so there is nothing too outlandish here and it's all extremely medically accurate due to the mangaka having had medical training.

Except, of course, when good drama calls for something off-the-wall like a transplanted eye that remembers the rapist and murderer of the woman from whom the eye was taken and oddities such as telepathic teratoma Pinoko.

[character personality]: Pinoko behaves as her vision of the ideal 1950's wife, with two major setbacks:

The first is that she is trapped in a child's body and the object of her affections does not even seem to return her feelings, but never bothers to reject her, most likely because he does not want to hurt her feelings. Really, she was rejected by her own blood sister, how is he supposed to reject her now?

The second is that she is the most easily jealous "wife" in existence. She cannot handle the idea of the Doctor being around any pretty female, even other doctors, and can be quite quick to jump to conclusions, although every once in a while, she can be right. She is very astute when it comes to matters of the heart and recognizes that a young medical school student was in love with Black Jack from the look in her eyes ("Pinoko can shee it in her eyes, that deep-in-love gaze."), which was why Pinoko decided not to leave Black Jack's side during his stay in the hospital.

She can cook the loveliest of lavish meals, do all the washing and cleaning (although she makes mistakes here and there; she's only human... not to mention she's so tiny and occasionally clumsy and forgetful— one does not dance to UFO while doing the dishes, unless one wants said dishes to crash to the floor while trying to imitate Pink Lady dance moves), and is loving and affectionate towards Black Jack, whom she often surprises people by claiming she is his "wife," usually in a double-whammy with "Pinoko is 18 years old!"

She is also quite proficient as a nurse, however unlicensed (much like Black Jack himself) and not officially trained; only under Black Jack's guidance can she do her best, because she relies on his abilities... at least, initially; when she's twenty, Black Jack claims she's a gifted doctor in her own right, so this may no longer be applicable. Previously when she was forced to rely on her own skills, she was uncertain and prone to making mistakes, such as when she had to take the college entrance exam when she was close to turning nineteen... although she was mentally eighteen years old, her neurological system was not allowed to develop properly and so, it could not handle the stress of long-term studying the way other normal eighteen year old minds can.

The stress takes its toll on her nervous system and in turn creates a biliary dyskinesia with no cause aside from being a psychosomatic disease.

So she decides to go to kindergarten instead... but that ends badly when she throws violent tantrums and is thus kicked out of school once again. Black Jack is later shown to be bribing the school to keep Pinoko enrolled.

However, years later, when Black Jack is in danger and must take to travelling far away, leaving Pinoko behind because his trip is too long and too dangerous for her to accompany him, she takes matters into her own hands and tracks him down, going on a long and dangerous journey all by herself... She handles everything, from the long train ride to the journey on foot through the snow, and from all the prodding questions to the creepy come-ons with grace (okay, so the suspicious creep leering at her got her hot food thrown in his face, but that's excusable!). Her only mistake was failing to notice that she was being pursued the entire time. But she gets to where Black Jack is, just when she was on the verge of giving up, and never succumbs to illness despite the obviously stressful situations she had been through.

She does still throw occasional fits when she's angry and she does get angry quite frequently. She's a very temperamental person, but she never sulks for very long. She's too easily distracted by everything the world has to offer!

Nearly every amusing trait of hers is made a little less so when tied to her origin story, such as her ridiculous bouts of jealousy and near fanatical love of Doctor Black Jack are likely having been born out of an intense fear of abandonment due to rejection by her family.
However, it is not only out of need for a family, as overtime, she has truly grown to love Black Jack. Black Jack attempting to give her up to adoption (when he is attacked in the Black Jack 21 anime, as well as when he is sick and possibly dying in the manga) is met with depression and loneliness, as she has become very attached to him, and cannot stand being treated by her adoptive family as a child. She wants to be recognized as an adult, she wants to do her own housework rather than depend on maids, she wants to operate, and most of all, she wants to be with Black Jack.

When finally reunited with Black Jack, she professes, while crying, that she won't go back to living with her adoptive family, even if he begs her. He was the one who gave her life and now she only wants to use this life to help him.

Although she does have a very childlike lisp and loves sweets, she is bored to death by most children's games, like riding a seesaw and is equally disinterested in children's programming. She would much rather watch a suspense/mystery drama ("Skeleton Archipelago" is her favourite!) and complains to Black Jack about always getting stuck playing with five year olds because of her size.

Her favourite food to eat is chocolate parfaits; her favourite to cook is curry rice!

In addition, Pinoko likes to read women's fashion magazines in her free time. Pinoko also loves watching romances and sometimes chides the doctor for not being romantic enough, although he treats her more like a daughter most of the time.

She also has knowledge of things most children aren't privy to, identifying herself as a "virgin," warning Black Jack not to meet up with "shome floozy," and worrying about him having an affair, to name a few examples.

Pinoko also does curse in the manga. Very rarely, however, as she's usually very polite, even when throwing a tantrum. It's something she usually only does if Black Jack is hurt by someone, in the same way that Black Jack is ordinarily non-violent unless a patient's life is at risk or Pinoko is so much as threatened with violence.

She often wishes she could have a "nice body" like other women. For this reason, she later acquires a tall image-distorting mirror so that she can gaze at an elongated reflection of herself and perhaps get a glimpse of what she might have looked like if it weren't for her unusual origins.

Black Jack does not try to make her behave like a child, but instead tries to let her live her life as normally as possible and insists that everyone treat her like an adult, although he himself initially treated her as a child (and even thought of her as his "daughter," until he realized her romantic feeling for him were serious).

Due to only having been alive in her own body for about year or so, Pinoko's still rather optimistic and naively trusting, always trying to see the bright side of things and searching for the good in people. In this way, she makes a very good foil for the cynically jaded, world-weary Black Jack.

She's very out-spoken and does not hesitate to argue with people, even Black Jack at times, if she thinks that something is wrong.

Pinoko can also be very manipulative, such as when she tried to convince Black Jack that she couldn't see where he was cutting, "if only you had Pinoko a little bit taller..." and when she threw a tantrum in the streets to force Black Jack into rescuing an injured, thieving stray dog. She screamed "MURDERER!!" and kicked and flailed until people crowded around to stare at Black Jack, who miserably picked up the dog, calling Pinoko a drama queen.

Still, despite her childish behaviour, she shows her odd moments of an innocent sort of wisdom, such as when she's introduced to the concept of first-magnitude (the closest stars to Earth which appear largest, actually small) and sixth-magnitude stars (the farthest from Earth which appear smallest, actually quite large). When Black Jack identifies some constellations for her, she finds one lonely, very bright first-magnitude star that he cannot name.

Later, they have a conversation where Pinoko claims that that star they saw the other day, shining so brightly, but so lonely... was the solitary Doctor Black Jack. And that the little star right next to it was Pinoko. Because a sixth-magnitude star "looks small, but it's really big, right?"

Another example was when a depressed, paralyzed actress is brought to Black Jack for treatment and remains motionless even after the successful operation. Pinoko suggests licking her to heal her, because that was what she saw a mother cat do to its injured and bleeding kitten (which Black Jack grimly predicted would die very soon), but Black Jack yells at her that they aren't cats.

The woman turns out to no longer be physically incapable of moving, but crippled by her lack of a desire to live. When she later commits suicide, Pinoko reveals that the kitten had lived and that its mother saved it by licking it! The physical treatment might not have meant much, but the emotional and mental aspects of it were enough to will it to heal. Black Jack was forced to remember that while he as a surgeon could treat the bodies of people, he could not heal their hearts or minds.

Although Pinoko often fantasizes about living a normal life and wants sorely to do all of the things every other twenty year old does, she never lets this depress her for very long. She loves her life, no matter how difficult it might be, and is grateful to be with her beloved Black Jack.

She is the only long-term companionship he has in his lonely little home, ostracized from the rest of society and detested by the medical field.

She is everything that Black Jack loves about humanity (and he hates so much of it), so she often acts as his conscience and keeps him from losing his own humanity.

In a way, they both need and complete one another.

[point in timeline you're picking your character from]: Vol. 11/post-"The SL Called Life"

[journal post]: [A tiny brunette peers curiously at the screen, her short hair framing her cheek as just one brown eye fills up most of the screen.]

What is this thing? A cam-corder?

[She moves it away from her face, revealing the rest of her face and all the ribbons she's wearing-- four red ribbons all around her head, ribbons on her overall-skirt, and she's wearing so much pink and red too!]
Neat! [She's smiling, very interested in the device, turning it this way and that, making the recording blur.] Why does it have sho many buttons, though? With numbers on? Hey, is it a calcuwator? Or maybe it's like a phone without a dial! ... it's so acchonburike!

Pinoko wonders how it got here, though...? Pinoko didn't shteal it, you know! [She raises her head with a dignified air.] Pinoko's not a petty cwook; she's a lady!

[After a moment, receiving no response from anyone, she looked around warily.]

Doc? ... Dr. Black Jack! ... Doc, where've you gone?! Leaving your wife to fend for hershelf... you dummy! [She sounds angry, shouting at the City around her, but the look on her face betrays only fear. She's even shivering a bit, ]

[third person / log sample]: Tick-tock, tick-tock, squeak-squeak, squeak-squeak, tick-tock, tick-tock, squeak-squeak, squeak—

"KNOCK IT OFF, WILLYA?!" Pinoko shouted loudly at the clock tower.

Red-faced, balling up her fists at her side, and pouting something fierce, Pinoko began to march over to the clock tower in her squeaking shoes, deciding she's had enough of the noise.

It was very faint, because Pinoko was too much of a chatterbox to stay quiet. Her problem had always been that she spoke too much rather than too little, but hearing just this much of the ticking, which would've been perfectly bearable for someone adult-sized, was practically unbearable for the diminutive nurse.

"I'm going to give that tower a pieche of my mind," she ranted to no one in particular, rolling up her sleeves. "Pinoko's gonna give it what-for!"

But as she marched through the center of the City, she spotted something new (well, new to her): a fountain!

"Oooh, what a pretty thing!" forgetting her little mission entirely, she ran over to it wide-eyed and marvelled at the tall, gushing streaks of water. "It lightsh up!"

She clasped her hands together against one cheek. "It's sho romantic... it's a shame the Doctor isn't here with Pinoko! He's got to shee thish."

Stepping closer, she leaned over to peer into the water, seeing something different from her reflection.

"Doc? What're you doing under the water?" she blinked, surprised by the image reflected in the rippling water. "Hold on a shec, Pinoko'll get you out!"

She reached out to him. "One, two—"

But, she didn't feel anything out! She tried to reach deeper, before taking in a deep breath and sticking her head under the water. Opening her eyes, she blinked, staring at the blurry light-up underwater world under the surface, but didn't find her beloved Doctor anywhere.

"Jussha iwoojun?" she said disappointedly before pulling her head out, to sit dejectedly at the water's edge, hair slicked-down and plastered to her wet face, with all four of her hair ribbons sagging with the weight of water. "Fooey!"