Biwamaru (sometimes Biwa Maru) is a blind, itinerant acupuncture doctor, who wanders around Japan curing all sorts of ailments with miraculous speed. He is extremely disheveled in appearance, dressed in rags and walking with a twisted stick as a cane, and a rough bundle on his back. Biwamaru is effective, like Black Jack, an unlicensed doctor, since his practices are considered to be quackery by the medical establishment, while Biwamaru considers it barbaric to cut open a patient to cure them. This, as with Dr. Kiriko, Biwamaru is another nemesis who is too similar to Black Jack for the two to forgive their differences. Biwamaru also features in Tezuka’s best-known samurai manga, Dororo.

~!When Biwamaru came to Black Jack's town in issue #126 'The Blind Doctor of Acupuncture,' (6/7/1976) it was hatred at first sight, as each dismissed the other as a quack, though neither was able to deny the effectiveness of the other’s treatments. To make matters worse, Biwamaru charges nothing for his services, in contrast with Black Jack's outrageous fees, leading to criticism of Black Jack by the local community. Their interaction here effectively degenerated into each attempting repeatedly to prove that the other was a quack, and generally failing, though teaching each other bitter lessons about the limitations of their methods.

The two met again not long afterwards in issue #141, 'Death of Hyojisai' (The Master Forger, Two People at the Thermal Bath) when they met at a hot spring and discovered that both of them, out of dedication to their work, made regular pilgrimages to see the same world-famous master forger, who made scalpels for the one and needles for the other. On discovering that the forger was sick, the two compete to cure him, while the forger, Hyojisai, uses his own illness to teach the two that, skilled as they are, both are powerless in the face of fate. It is a bitter experience for both of them. The trailer for the upcoming Two Dark Doctors movie indicates that the film will include scenes from this issue.!~

Notably, Biwamaru also appeared in Dororo as a blind musician and masters-swordsman. The crippled samurai Hyakkumaru, widely acknowledged as a prototype of Black Jack, encountered Biwamaru here and became his student in swordfighting, an interesting reversal of his role in Black Jack.

(Source: tezukainenglish.com) 

Dororo, a young orphan thief, meets Hyakkimaru, a powerful ronin. Hyakkimaru's father, a greedy feudal lord, had made a pact with 12 demons, offering his yet-unborn son's body parts in exchange for great power. Thus, Hyakkimaru - who was born without arms, legs, eyes, ears, a nose or a mouth - was abandoned in a river as a baby. Rescued and raised by Dr. Honma, who equips him with artificial limbs and teaches him sword-fighting techniques, Hyakkimaru discovers that each time he slays a demon, a piece of his body is restored. Now, he roams the war-torn countryside in search of demons.

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Among adult readers in Japan Black Jack is Osamu Tezuka’s most popular achievement, and perhaps the most close to the creator’s heart, as Tezuka considered entering the medical field—majoring in medicine in college—before devoting his life to comics. Black Jack is a genius surgeon who never acquired his license due to his clashes with the medical establishment. He is hired out by anyone willing to pay his exorbitant rates and is perceived as a heartless rogue because of his enigmatic nature and antisocial manner. But as readers will soon discover, that is not the whole story.
 
(Source: Kodansha USA)
 Note: Won the 1st Kodansha Manga Award in the Shounen category in 1977.

A samurai lord has bartered away his newborn son's organs to forty-eight demons in exchange for dominance on the battlefield. Yet, the abandoned infant survives thanks to a medicine man who equips him with primitive prosthetics - lethal ones with which the wronged son will use to hunt down the multitude of demons to reclaim his body one piece at a time, before confronting his father. On his journeys the young hero encounters an orphan who claims to be the greatest thief in Japan.
 
Like an unforgettable road movie, Dororo reaches deeper than its swashbuckling surface and offers a thoughtful allegory of becoming what one is, for nobody is born whole
 
(Source: Kodansha USA)

Black Jack is an "unregistered" doctor with a clouded, mysterious past. He works with his little assistant Pinoko (who has a massive crush on the doctor), dealing with medical cases not very well known, which can be strange, dangerous, or not known at all. But he is a genius, and can save almost any of his patients' life (as long as they have the money for it, that is), and is known to many around the world, especially to those of medicine and science. He's a man of science himself, and does not believe much until he has seen it, yet it is many times he is surprised by love and nature often overpowering the science he bases his life in. 
(Source: Anime News Network)

A Japanese actor, voice actor, narrator, and theatre director from Tokyo. He was affiliated with Office PAC at the time of his death. His real name was Yasutomo Nozawa. Nozawa was best known for dubbing over Alain Delon, Al Pacino, Giuliano Gemma, David McCallum, Dustin Hoffman, Robert Redford, Christopher Walken, Bruce Willis, C-3PO (Star Wars Trilogy), and Nash Bridges (Nash Bridges). He was also known as his roles in Cobra (as Cobra), Dororo (as Hyakkimaru), Gokuu no Daibouken (as Sanzo), and the Sakura Wars series (as Oni-Ou).

On October 30, 2010, at 3:36 P.M., Nozawa died at a Tokyo hospital of lung cancer. He was 72 years old at the time of his death. A year after his death, he was honored with a Special Merit Award in the 5th Seiyuu Awards. 

(Source: Wikipedia)

Based on the brilliant maverick doctor created by manga pioneer Osamu Tezuka. This prequel follows Black Jack when he was still a medical student in the 1960s.
 
(Source: Anime News Network)