Sep 18, 2017
This series is all about the characters.
It is episodic; and every episode has its own main characters aside from Master Keaton which are really well written and developed and so emotionally relatable in one way or another. This series accomplishes something that most of today's long running anime/tv series can't even accomplish, in only 20 minutes of screen-time i.e. making you care for the characters.
I didn't care much about the plot in Master Keaton. I was too busy feeling for the characters. Most of the stories in the episodes were based on some historical events, myths or some classical like poisoning in Shakespeare's Hamlet.The
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episodes are arbitrary like in one episode Keaton helps a German businessman to locate his long-lost daughter, in the next one we meet an old lady looking for her childhood love in some foreign land, and in another we get to see Keaton's past.
I do have to say that some episodes are kinda predictable mostly in the second season. But who cares about the story when you have such great cast. Modern anime try really hard to be over-convoluted just to look cool but characters remain "shallow" as ever e.g. FMAB. On the other hand, Master Keaton is simple and therefore drama feels so realistic even in obviously predictable episodes.
Keaton is ethical who even sometimes helps people outside of his job and seems unrealistically perfect at first glance but later we see that he has his family issues, he is not socially well-off, he has no stable job and he is quite indecisive of what he wants to do with his life as an archaeologist and is not satisfied. He is only professional as an SAS agent and ends up saving the day because of his qualifications. He learned history, served army, taken survival courses so no doubt he is perceptive, strong, dependable. But there a few ass-pulls here and there. But like I said before, our main character for every episode is different and we care about that character even more than Keaton at the end of the day.
The animation and music are brilliant. Naoki Urasawa's art is undoubtedly one of the best. The character designs are so realistic and the art really fits the atmosphere like in Monster. I highly recommend you to watch it in dubbed as it takes place in Europe. English voice actors did a great job and they even used different european accents for different countries, really well done.
Master Keaton is serious, mature and at the same time lighthearted and optimistic and has realistic characters full of depth which modern anime lack. So underrated... it deserves so much more...
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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