Doctor (Black Cat)

"I've finally found an interesting subject. I can't let this opportunity slip under my nose. My desire to know... is throbbing!"

- Doctor

Doctor is a major antagonist from the manga Black Cat and its anime adaptation. He is a member of the terrorist organization the Apostles of the Star, led by Creed Diskenth the series' main antagonist. He appears at first as a rather polite and friendly man with healing powers, while he is in fact one of the most dangerous, the most villainous and the most deranged of all the Apostles. He is always seen next to Creed, and can be considered as the closest thing to a friend to the demented swordsman. Doctor is an extremely talented scientist in charge of Creed's most secret projects, which involves using nanomachines to make Creed immortal and to create an army of super-soliers.

While Shiki is the second-in-command of the Apostles of the Star, it soon appears that Doctor is actually Creed's right-hand-man and closest confidant. Doctor's real name, mentioned only in the anime adaptation is Kazuo Kanzaki.

Personality
Doctor is calm, collected and polite, he speaks very formally and courteously, and he is frank even when he tells his enemies what's awaiting them. However, like many villains with these characteristic, this is only the visible part of the iceberg.

In fact, Doctor shares many traits with other mad scientists; namely conducting experiments without the slightest regard for moral and human life, (being able to dissect a child without second thoughts) the near complete devotion to science and the the desire to know and to understand how everything works. In Doctor's case, this desire to know is driven by sheer psychosis. He only regards human beings as guinea-pigs and really does enjoy to make people "evolve." He shares Creed's desire to create superhumans and to reach immortality, and even if he doesn't seems interested by immortality for himself, he wants to achieve it as a scientific breakthrough. He may also be power-hungry, given that he follows Creed's desire for a global revolution and is the only one among Apostles who knows Creed's real goal without being disturbed by it.

Doctor is a higly intelligent, knowledgeable and calculating man, who remains in the shadows and observes the situation before making his move. Doctor also appears to be greedy and cowardly, as he asks for lots of money for his services (outside of his Apostle's duty) and he never fights by himself. Furthermore, Doctor is a remorseless sadist who likes to manipulate people and to play foul mind games, such as forcing people to fight their comrades or their loved ones. He considers feelings and emotions as a useless hindrance for a full understanding of the human psyche. When asked why he does such horrible things, he casually answers "Because it's fun." All this makes him arguably the most malevolent of all the Apostles of the Star, including Creed himself.

Powers and Abilities
An extremely talented scientist in his own right, Doctor specializes in genetics and technology, and especially nanomachines, which leads him to undertake personally every experiment that the Apostles of the Star start on the subject. He has a wide knowledge of the living body and genetic history of every specy, which comes in handy in both his scientifical works and his powers of Tao.

Doctor's power of Tao appears at first to enable him to heal wounds, but it is later revealed to be an extra ability, which is likely due to his knowledge of medecine coupled with manipulation of the ki. He apparently knows how to send his ki into someone else's body and use it to manipulate the cells' activity. Judging by his own words, he heals wounds by reactivating and manipulating dead cells, but to do so he needs the wound to be clean and the cells to be undamaged. This doesn't stop to healing, as he able to fully paralyze at least two people at the same time, without regard for their fighting skills. This part of Doctor's abilities are never fully explained and its true extend remains unknown. Yet he may not be able to paralyze anyone at will, given that he never uses it when fighting Train and Eve. One might think that he needs either to gather a great deal of ki or to set a trap. Given that he is able to control his ki to such extends, Doctor is very likely trained enough to be able to use it to locate people and to use his ki to increase his physical prowesses, though he is never seen using it.

Doctor isn't a fighter but he is still one of the most powerful and dangerous Apostles of the Star. His power of Tao is called "Warp World," he is able to create another dimension in which he controls absolutely everything and where everything he imagines comes into existence. He can bend the laws of physic, make pictures talk, dolls move like living beings, make things appear out of nowhere and even increase the size of a room. Furthermore, he has an unexplained access to people's memories and he can give "life" to things in their mind, or to their memories. Doctor can bring anything into the Warp World but he cannot transform or manipulate things or people from the real universe. Outside the Warp World, Doctor is a regular human who can only rely on his manipulation of the ki to fight, which he apparently cannot use in a real battle, perhaps because of the complex process it likely implies. Yet, when inside the Warp World he becomes virtually invincible, no matter how powerful his foe may be.

When he must face an enemy, Doctor enters the Warp World and awaits his foe inside. Doctor can make the entry to the Warp World (which looks like a door to an operation room) appear wherevere he wants to and he makes it appear near his enemies, so that they would enter without knowing it and get trapped. Inside the Warp World, Doctor can separate people and send them into different places, as he can separate the Warp World itself into totally different spaces. He usually remains in a safe space and watches his enemies struggle against something they cannot defeat (usually created fighters impervious to any harm, which he can transform to distract his foes) in a space from which they cannot escape.

Role in the Manga
"It's often said: A person can't always do what they want to do. But with a little manipulation of the brain's secretion function, you can do just that." - Doctor (about people he brainwashed)

Doctor is one of the very first Apostles of the Star. He comes from the Jipang archpelago. (The Black Cat counterpart of Japan.)

Doctor first appears right after the battle between Creed and his former partner Train Heartnet, the legendary gunfighter known worldwide as the Black Cat. Train willingly let Creed sever his right hand to locate Creed's invisible blade, hit Creed in the stomach with an exploding bullet and fell from the Lunafort Tower into a lake, but he is continuously losing his blood because of his wound. Upon Creed's orders, Doctor brings Train his hand and reattaches it to Train's arm with his healing powers, telling him that if it wasn't for Creed's request, Train would have had to pay an enormous amount of money. Later, Doctor fails to heal Creed with his powers alone because of severity of the wounds, so he puts him into an artificial coma after injecting him healing nanomachines.

Doctor is next seen discussing with Creed on Clarken Island, as Creed is now fully healed and waiting for all the Apostles to gather before attacking the World Conference. Doctor himself doesn't participate in the slaughter but he follows Creed to the meeting room and witnesses the murder of the country leaders. Doctor later calls back all the Apostles. When Creed kills Durham and Sharden voices his objections, Doctor says that he finds the punishment appropriate, given that Durham acted on his own without permission and failed to recognize his limits.

Later, Creed asks Doctor to go and fetch the thief for hire Rinslet Walker, who was inverstigating on the Apostles of the Star on Chronos' behalf. Doctor arrives on time to save Rinslet from Kyoko, who mistook her for a bounty-hunter. He brings her to Creed's castle, while warning her that she will be the Apostles' prisoner and might never exit the castle alive. Doctor then proceeds to inject various nanomachines in one of the bounty-hunters that the Apostles captured, including super-healing nanomachines and "Lucifer" nanomachines, in order to transform him into a immortal, brainwashed werewolf. Creed later uses Rinslet as an hostage to force the Chrono Number V, Naizer Blackheimer who invaded the castle alongside Number VII and Number XI, to fight the werewolf one-on-one. Meanwhile Doctor explains the "Lucifer's" effect to Rinslet (who realizes that Doctor is as mad as Creed) and watches the fight with special glasses to observe the evolution of the nanomachines. After Naizer defeats the werewolf and Train arrives to rescue Rinslet, Doctor activates the self destruction mechanism to blow up the castle and orders every Apostle to leave.

After the explosion of the castle, Doctor is seen is the Apostles' airplane, confident that Creed, who remained inside has survived. He then launches the second plan as instructed. Doctor and Shiki visit Dr Tearyu Lunatic, the world's greatest nanotechnologist and ask for her cooperation to create a nanomachine able to make Creed immortal. Doctor gives Tearyu a sample of "Lucifer" nanomachines, hoping to perk her interest, and tells her that the Apostle will come back to know her final answer within a few days. Which they do, when the tao-wielding monkey Eathes uses his power of Tao to copy Tearyu and steal all her knowledge about nanomachines. Knowledge that Doctor would then use by working alongside Eathes to create the "God Bless" nanomachines that would make Creed immortal.

During the second part of the final battle on Clarken Island, Creed orders Doctor, Echidna and Eathes to fight Train Heartnet and his fellow bounty-hunters without holding back. Doctor and Echidna are seen in the monitoring room of the manor, where they watch Train and Eve fighting two bounty-hunters that Doctor captured by paralizing them, before injecting them with "Berserker" nanomachines that he created. Doctor's revels in this gruesome scene and taunts the bounty-hunters during the whole fight. When Eve manages to destroy the "Berserker" thanks to her own nanomachines, Doctor resolves to capture and to dissecate her, as he wants to understand how her body functions. Doctor later drags Train and Eve into the Warp World and sends them into different spaces.

Doctor traps Train into an endless, misty, desterted town, where he has to fight immortals doppelgangers of his late friend Saya Minatsuki and of Kyoko, so that he would die by the hand of people he cares for. Meanwhile, he lures Eve into a house where he meets her in person. Eve recognizes his voice and angrily attacks him, in order to teach him the pain that he inflicts on others. However, it appears that the man whom Eve knocked out was a doppelganger, while Doctor remained out of reach.

Doctor then reaches into Eve's memory and creates a Doppelganger of Eve herself, back when she lived under the weapon dealer Torneo Rudman's "care." As the real Eve is gaining the upper-hand, Doctor transforms the Eve-doppelganger to ressemble Sven, (Train's partner and Eve's caretaker) taking advantage of her hesitation to strike her father figure to knock her out. Doctor then brings Eve into his operation room and ties her to an operation table that shocks her whenever she uses her nanomachines power. Doctor first analyzes Eve's blood before proceeding to dissecate her. Only a miracle can save both Eve and Train and a miracle does happen.

In a world where memories can be turned into "reality" Train's strong memories of Saya allow her to manifest in the Warp World as a ghost, and she saves Train from Doctor's trap. Saya brings Train into the room of operation, in which no one can normally enter without Doctor's consent. Train kicks the mad scientist in the face and sets Eve free, but Doctor retaliates by creating countless huge scalpels from every wall, which he prepares to hurl at the duo. Fortunately, even in his Warp World the demented scientist is no match for Eve in a direct confrontation and she beats him up, in order to teach him what is a real fight and what is true pain. Immediately after, Train finishes him off with a punch on the face that breaks his glasses. With Doctor knocked out, the Warp World vanishes and Train and Eve reunite with Sven. However, atfer Doctor's defeat, Echidna has no other choice than to release the first results of his experiments to create superhuman soldiers, the Phantom Star Brigade.

When the trio reaches the third floor of the mansion and find Doctor lying unconscious, Eve sticks her tongue at him, still resenting his actions. After Creed's defeat, Doctor is seen living in the streets as a beggar, alone and helpless, with Leon and Eathes walking next to him without paying him any attention. (They might not have seen him though, as was is sitting in an adjacent street.)

Role in the Anime
In the anime, Doctor appears even more malevolent and ambitious than his manga counterpart. Yet, his sadism and his psychotic thirst for knowledge and experiments are replaced by more classical villainous traits such as being overconfident, taunting his enemies and mocking their efforts, and a desire to control everything. Given that the creation of the nanomachines of immortality and the Phantom Star Brigade aren't mentioned, Doctor's role among the Apostles is less significant. He also appears to be less close to Creed than his manga counterpart, which is explained by his involvement in the "Eden" Project. Srangely enough, Doctor doesn't display any particular power of Tao and the Warp World doesn't exist.

Doctor first appears during the Apostles' attack on the World Conference, in which he doesn't seem to take part in the slaughter, and watches the confrontation between Creed and Train Heartnet from the sidelines, as with every other Apostle. Doctor takes part in the showdown in the old castle and he later intends to get rid of Kyoko Kirisaki, by shooting her with a bullet filled with nanomachines that would turn her into a monster. However, Train takes the hit and turns back into a child. Contrary to the manga, the child metamorphosis has no incidence over the plot whatsoever, and Train turns back to normal a while later after taking a shower. During the battle of Clarken Island, Doctor releases many nanomachines-powered monsters and forces the sweepers to fight against.

After Creed's defeat, Doctor is revealed to be also part of the Zero Numbers, a villainous group created by Mason Ordrosso, the renegade Chrono Number XII, which worked more or less alongside the Apostles of the Star. Doctor is Mason's right-hand-man and the supervisor of the "Eden" Project. It appears that several years before the start of the series, Doctor (or to call him by his name, Kazuo Kanzaki) was one of the scientists who worked under Dr Tearyu Lunatic. Their goal was to create "Eden," a gigantic, sentient, nanomachine-powered aircraft; which was supposed to combine Tao and nanomachines to unify the consciousness of every human being in the world into itself. Apparently the project was abandoned when Torneo Rudman (who in the anime was a terrorist after the project) attacked the laboratory. In fact, Torneo was manipulated by Mason, who wanted to erase all evidence, while Doctor secretly kept working on the project. Finally, it is revealed that Eve's real purpose was to serve as a consciousness for "Eden" since the very beginning.

Doctor approaches Eve, who fled after having a fight with Sven, before kidnapping and brainwashing her. (In the anime, Eve never met him beforehand.) He then binds her into "Eden's" core and the Zero Numbers enact their twisted project. Doctor remains all the time in "Eden's" control room, monitoring its very action as wall as Eve's integration into "Eden." Oddly enough, he activates all the functions by playing pool on a control board. When all the protagonist start their action against the Zero Numbers, Doctor first unleashes countless monsters born from Tao and nanomachines. He later unleashes ghost-like monsters created from the consciousness of the people that "Eden" has absorbed.

When the protagonists reach the control room and confront the deranged scientist, he prepares to face them alongside the other Zero Numbers, despite them being clearly outnumbered, as they are all linked to "Eden" and will resurrect whenever they are killed. Doctor then transforms into a huge, demonic version of his human self and jumps into the battle. However, the Zero Numbers cannot prevent Train and Sven to go ahead. The duo confronts Mason but Creed and Echidna appear to fight him. Enabling Train to reach "Eden's" core and to destroy it. With "Eden" destroyed, Eve is set free and all the Zero Numbers are destroyed along with it.