Master Keaton 8/10

Old-school animation + mature storylines = I likey.

Master Keaton is a bit of a strange duck. I understand that there are manga written for an older audience and we see few of those translated into anime and fewer still brought over to North America. The only show I can really put in this category is The Legend of Black Heaven and it was still a somewhat different show than this one.

On the technical side Master Keaton has a real old school look which is surprising for a show dated late 1998. It looks great as I'm a huge fan of old school but it's got one or two CG shots I picked out in the series that kinda stood out like sore thumbs. These can, of course, be forgiven. The music was great with a real European feel to some of it, this works great since the majority of episodes are situated in Europe. The VAs were great and overall I have only one real complaint which is the latter episodes have a simple white credits scrolling over a black background. Spend some money boys. By the way, this show was 39 episodes long.

Story-wise I again have few complaints. Master Keaton is a near middle-aged, divorced father of one who works as an insurance investigator for Lloyd's of London. He is really an unemployed archaeologist and also a retired member of the British Special Forces (SAS). Each episode is stand alone and usually Keaton is investigating something, typically in England, for Lloyd's. The investigations range from a mysterious death, inspection of a to-be insured item to an historical site examination. Some of the episodes also deal with Keaton's personal life, focusing on his relationship with his daughter, father or some adventure he gets into just travelling. His daughter even gets her own episode.

I really liked Keaton's character, he's intelligent and very keen on archaeology and this contrasts with his formidable fighting and survival skills. He always wears his blue suit and never gets frazzled. He's kind of like a cross between Indiana Jones, MacGyver, Columbo and James Bond. He's frankly, pretty cool.

I must note that ALOT of research went into this show. The locations, items and historical references are all correct as far as I can tell. It's funny but I thought the IRA didn't bomb to kill civilians but looked it up and sure enough in 1983 they bombed Harrod's and killed 5 people and wounded 80.

This was a great show. There's no real ending which is disappointing but other than that it was great. Highly recommended