Master Keaton

1998–99. TV series. (39 X 30 min.) Drama/mystery. dir Masayuki Kojima. scr Shinzo Fujita, Hideo Takayashiki, Tomoko Konparu, Tatsuhiko Urahata, others. -bc

Each episode of Master Keaton is a self-contained story focusing on the work of an insurance investigator-cum-archaeologist who endeavors to solve diverse cases in different countries with brains, not brawn. It’s a smart, sophisticated series with clever writing and a global view that, rare for anime, sends its half-Japanese hero out into the larger world to engage intimately with a host of other cultures.

Taichi Keaton-Hiraga, the Master Keaton of the title, is a “jack of all trades and master of them all,” as announced in the series trailer. By day, he’s an investigator for Lloyd’s of London, which sends him on cases all over Europe, but he’s also an amateur archaeologist and part-time history professor with a keen interest in other cultures and civilizations, some vanished, some not so distant.

Some stories are basic thrillers. An IRA bomb-maker enlists Keaton to help him beat the clock to locate and defuse bombs set to go off in a sprawling London shopping mall; a Japanese businessman is kidnapped in London and Keaton is called in to negotiate; members of the Polish mafia take a small hotel hostage on a remote British isle; Keaton has to escort a prisoner alone through backwoods bog country populated by the prisoner’s well-armed friends. There are even a few murder mysteries among the twenty-six episodes.

Most of the stories, however, involve family and history and digging through the past to understand the present. A businessman in Germany seeks to locate the daughter he’d lost when he fled from East to West Germany eighteen years earlier. In Soho’s Chinatown, a young Englishman learns the art of Chinese cuisine from the lost recipes of Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-Sen. A celebrated English composer suffers writer’s block when his hated father falls on hard times and only a particular melody can set things right for both of them. When an ancient mound called the Tomb of Guinevere is threatened by developers, Keaton intervenes on behalf of an archaeologist colleague. Keaton’s far-reaching expertise continually comes in handy as he applies his archaeological skills to the cases he’s assigned, peeling away layers of people’s lives and uncovering their pasts to get at the truth.

The overall look and design are straightforward and realistic-looking, as befits a TV drama. The far-flung settings provide opportunity for the background artists to re-create, in admirable detail, a wide range of picturesque settings from England to Japan to different nations of Europe and back to England (where a large number of the stories are set). The character design, in general, is a little simpler than it ought to be. Keaton’s face, in particular, seems a tad unformed in light of all the knowledge and experience he has, although perhaps the animators’ intent was to create something of a blank slate to more easily absorb the stories he uncovers.

The rich music score by Kuniaki Haishima weaves a tapestry of European ethnic music styles and features a jaunty opening theme with a distinctly Celtic flavor.

Series director Masayuki Kojima was animation supervisor on Sakura Wars and series director for Azuki-chan and Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi. Chief writers on the series include Shinzo Fujita (Monster Rancher), Hideo Takayashiki (Maris the Chojo, One Pound Gospel, Urusei Yatsura: Always My Darling), Tomoko Konparu (Glass Mask, Cyborg 009: Cyborg Soldier, Urusei Yatsura TV and movies), and Tatsuhiko Urahata (Mermaid’s Scar, Rail of the Star, and Spirit Warrior).

Master Keaton offers serious storytelling, mature characters, and events and settings based firmly in the real world. It may not be the most exciting and action-packed of anime series, but its best episodes are unpredictable and offer a steady, ever-shifting parade of colorful, evocative backdrops and courageous and resilient human beings. Some of the stories are less interesting than others, with the Agatha Christie–like murder mysteries and straight crime pieces tending to lapse into formula. The best are those that involve Keaton’s knowledge of history and research, and his ability to reach across decades and centuries to find the understanding of something lost.

Through it all it becomes clear that Keaton’s real job is one of restoring and reuniting, whether by bringing families together, saving innocent lives, recovering lost knowledge, or protecting ancient sites. History and memory are the themes of this show, and keys to people’s behavior are found in smells, tastes, and sounds that conjure up the past. A piece of chocolate triggers the IRA bomb-maker’s change of heart. A melody from a music box brings two long-separated half-sisters together. A sampling of a special dish of fried pork assures the future of an aspiring chef. The aroma of a mint plant helps Keaton understand his English mother’s return to England from Japan (and breakup with his Japanese father) when he was five. Keaton’s father and high school-age daughter make regular appearances.

“Chateau Lajonchee 1944” (episode 22) tells of a vineyard in France that managed, in the middle of World War II, to create the perfect wine, and prepares, five decades later, to adapt to market conditions and create a more commercial, mass-marketable wine. One remaining bottle of the 1944 vintage holds the key to the vineyard’s fate. As we hear the story of how the perfect wine was created, we can almost smell the grapes and taste the wine ourselves, so powerful are the images and mood created. There is a delightful twist ending in “The Thistle Emblem” (episode 21), in which Keaton goes to Edinburgh to research a coat-of-arms insignia found in Japan and learns the story of a 17th-century Scotsman who started a distillery, but was run out of the country by the English and then disappeared.

Master Keaton was originally a manga published from 1988–94. It was drawn by Naoki Urasawa (Yawara!) and written by the pseudonymous Hokusei Katsushika, a play on the name Hokusai Katsushika, the famous 19th-century painter and creator of woodblock prints.

The character of Keaton had a pretty elaborate background, many details of which were not necessarily evident in the anime. He studied archaeology at Oxford University and met his wife while a student there. After graduating, he served in the Special Air Service (SAS) regiment of the British Army, saw combat in the Falklands War, and was part of an operation to take back the Iranian Embassy in London after terrorists took it over in a famous 1980 incident.

advisory Occasional action involves gunshots and hitting with fists, but nothing that would stretch a PG rating. No profanity.