Master Keaton
(Pioneer Entertainment Region One)
(2003)
review by Big McLargehuge

Pretty much any anime with character design by Kitaro Kosaka (Castle in the Sky, Princess Mononoke), animation by Mad House (Perfect Blue, Metropolis, Tokyo Babylon and a whole boat load of other premier titles), and direction by Masayuki Kojima (Sakura Wars as animation supervisor) is guaranteed to be worth a view.

Master Keaton follows the adventures of Taichi Keaton, part time college archeology instructor, part time insurance investigator, former SAS (that’s British Special Forces for you no in the know) agent, and all around interesting guy as he investigates cases for Lloyds of London in locations across the globe.

Keaton is a breath of fresh Anime air, confident but humble, informed but guarded, and extremely polite, he possesses none of the overemphasized traits so common in this media. Master Keaton isn’t a martial arts show, there aren’t robots; giant or otherwise, and although the subject matter is mature it contains no profanity, no nudity, and no blood. In fact Master Keaton is perhaps the least violent anime I’ve ever seen.

The stories on Excavation 1 follow Keaton to a village in Greece, Hamburg, Florence, Marseilles, the Russian wilderness, and Paris. All of the episodes are fantastic, but one in particular stands out as superb.

“Man in a Maze” introduces Keaton as he solves the mystery of a Greek diver’s suspicious death, “Little Giant” follows Keaton to Hamburg to investigate a former terrorist and the mercenaries out to capture her, “Strange Tale of Lasagna” takes Keaton to Florence to protect the daughter of a dead noble, “Immortal Man” follows Keaton to the outskirts of a Russian city, but by far the best episode on this DVD is the “Paris Under the Roof”.

Let me explain why I love this episode so much. Rather than putting Keaton into a situation where he interacts with people somehow tied to a mysterious death, “Paris Under the Roof” focuses solely on Taichi Keaton’s life and his regrets over the divorce from his wife, the growing age of his daughter, his dislike of the work for Lloyds, and his perceived failure as an archeologist. All of this pathos is framed around the last lectures as a paris academy about to be torn down. This is such a quiet and wonderful episode I nearly woke Mrs. McLargehuge up to watch it. The script contains such pathos, such humanity, such real-life that had to pinch my upper arm to find out if I’d fallen asleep.

Keaton really is an enigma to the Anime community. All of the stories are adult oriented, that is they deal with complex insurance arrangements (two minor characters actually discuss what Lloyds of London is in detail), complex historical theories, and realistic human relationships. We get loss, regret, melancholy, humor, loneliness, and all of the happy themed emotions too.

it’s interesting to note that Master Keaton begins like so many other anime titles but within one and a half episodes we’ve moved into straight drama. There is no reason this even had to be animated, and that statement alone makes Master Keaton a must see.

I cannot wait for Excavation 2 (due in August) to experience more of the beautiful and complex stories in the Master Keaton universe.

Mad House shows again why they are one of the most respected animation studios working in Japan today. Master Keaton looks beautiful, and with such subdued story lines, it lets the Mad House folks concentrate on the architecture and color ofd the backgrounds. And they are sumptuous. When the few action elements appear (in the earlier episodes) the animation is fluid and beautiful. However, the animation and character design never distract the viewer from the story and without the usual anime mechanics, there isn’t anything to stretch your disbelief suspension. Kitaroh Kosaka’s characters are as human as human can be, distinctive without being caricatures, and interesting without being cartoonish. In the hands of Mad House they live and breath.

The English cast is superb and provides the best voice over I’ve ever heard in an anime. Normally it’s near blasphemy for my to suggest forgoing the Japanese Language track, but on Master Keaton the accents and mannerisms of the virtually all non-Japanese characters comes through perfectly. In fact, it’s even better in English than in the original Japanese.

This is a first rate anime.

Pioneer offers this five-episode DVD with both English and Japanese language tracks, English subtitles with an option for signs only (which was extremely nice) so that whenever the characters read we can read too and not just see a bunch of indecipherable Kanji characters, and some trailers for other Pioneer DVDs. There’s a link to the Master Keaton site www.masterkeatondvd.com, but it doesn’t offer that much information that isn’t on the box.

So if you’re looking for an anime with a compassionate main character that’s easy to identify with, no supernatural stuff, no cyberspace, no mecha, no hentai, but a hell of a lot of charm and whole lot of class, pick up Master Keaton.

Quite simply. It rocks.