InsaneJournal

When last we left Tenma, he was about to perform a difficult brain surgery on a little boy who had been shot in the head. The good news: the surgery is a complete success and it looks like the little boy will live. The bad news: the mayor, who was being operated on at the same time, dies. And everyone is blaming Tenma. Tenma is now waiting for the axe to fall.

The director is having a party for the hospital staff, and that's where everything happens.





Tenma leaves the party and runs into Eva. He tries to explain everything to her, but she's less than pleased with him also.



And so, with everyone else turned against him, there's only one person left that he can confide in...




I love the hypocrisy here. "All lives are inherently equal...AND EVERYONE WHO BELIEVES OTHERWISE SHOULD DIE!"

Anyway, Tenma thanks the boy. He's had an epiphany, and he's now going to devote his life to saving as many lives as possible, without any regard for personal advancement. On the way out, we get a (rather obvious) twist.



So, someone heard him say that the director deserves to die. I'm sure that won't come up later. Also, isn't it just amazing the way children bounce back from injuries?

Anyway, Tenma throws himself into his work. At this point, the director and his cronies begin discussing what they're going to do with the kids...over the comatose body of the boy! With their parents dead, the hospital is losing money on treating the kids. The director, though, is always eager to turn lemons into evil lemonade.




To paraphrase The Simpsons, this is the point where the director goes from ordinary, everyday villainy to cartoonish supervillainy. Hell, give him a nuclear power plant and he could be Mr. Burns. And, from what we've seen before, it's entirely possible that the kid heard every word.

Anyway, they attempt to reunite the kids. Unfortunately, the girl screams and faints when they try, which brings Tenma running. Tenma hadn't been made aware that they'd been taken from him, up until he sees the director's cronies with a camera and they inform him. When he tells them that they're not ready yet, the other doctors point to the boy:



Apparently, he had started to reach out for her as soon as she entered, and had cried at her reaction to him.

They then push Tenma out of the room (almost hard enough to knock him down) and tell him to go back to his other duties. Tenma is not pleased for having his patients snatched from him like that.



While this is going on, a nurse checks up on the two doctors from before...



And Tenma's ex-fiance goes to say goodnight to her father, the director...



Three killings like that send the hospital into chaos. Tenma while attempting to get past the police to go to work on patients, realizes that he has probably the person with the most reason to see all three men dead. Despite this, he attempts to get on with his work as a surgeon. There's one final twist, though: the twins have vanished from the hospital, with no clue as to who took them or why.

A bit of time passes. Tenma meets Inspector Runge of the BKA (German equivalent to the FBI, stands for Bundeskriminalamt) at the funeral for the director. Runge informs Tenma about what caused the deaths of the three doctors: poisoned candies. My Burns analogy from before suddenly grows more apt. We're also introduced to Runge's odd tic: his left hand never stops twitching. This is him typing out information for the "computer" in his head, which he can then access with an appropriate gesture. Which, as far mnemonic devices go, ranks somewhere up there with Hannibal Lecter's memory palace in terms of coolness.

You'll notice I don't bother with scans of this: that's because Runge hasn't quite reached his final character design and looks sort of...odd, to me. He's still recognizable as such, but it's still rather weird. If you want to see the good Inspector in action, there's a previous post from Perfect Moment Week. If I ever do a Runge megapost (maybe if there's a Javert week), I may include the part I just described for comparison purposes.

So, now that I've complained a bit about character design, back to the story. After everything that has happened thus far, Tenma is thinking of leaving Eisler Memorial and going back to Japan to work as a surgeon. However, the nurses and the other patients all want him to stay. Finally, in the aftermath of everything that happened, Tenma is brought before the hospital board:




We cut that scene with Tenma collapsing into hysterics. Finally, Tenma is approached by his ex, Eva, who wants to patch things up now that her father is dead and she has nobody. Tenma just walks away from her.

And that brings us to an end of the events of 1986. Tune in tomorrow, when we jump ahead nine years to deal with the far reaching consequences of the events in Eisler Memorial.

All scans taken from Spectrum Nexus, and not the official Viz translation.