Master Keaton

Master Keaton (MASTERキートン) is a Japanese manga series created by Hokusei Katsushika and Naoki Urasawa. It was serialized in Big Comic Original between 1988 and 1994 and ran for 18 volumes (144 chapters in total). An anime adaptation of the series aired between 1998 and 1999 in Japan on Nippon Television. A total of 39 anime episodes were produced.

Though the manga series has not been translated into English, the anime series was dubbed into English and dual-language DVDs were available for English-language markets, but are now out of print. The manga's target audience was Japanese men in their 20's and 30's, a comparatively older target audience than is common for most anime series.

Story
The story revolves around Taichi Hiraga-Keaton (平賀＝キートン・太一), the son of Japanese zoologist Taihei Hiraga (平賀太平) and well-born Englishwoman Patricia Keaton. Keaton's parents separated when he was five, and young Taichi moved back to England with his mother. As an adult, he studied archeology at Oxford University, in part under the tutelage of Professor Yuri Scott.

At Oxford, Keaton met and later married his wife, who was a mathematics student at Somerville College. The couple later divorced, with Keaton leaving his five-year-old daughter Yuriko (百合子) in her mother's care. After leaving Oxford, Keaton joined the British Army and became a member of the SAS, reaching the rank of master sergeant and seeing combat in the Falklands War and as one of the team members that responed to the Iranian Embassy incident. His combat training serves him in good stead as an insurance investigator for the prestigious Lloyd's of London where he is known for his abilities and his unorthodox methods of investigation.

In addition to his work for Lloyd's, Keaton and his friend Daniel O'Connell operate their own insurance investigation agency headquartered in London. Even though Keaton is fairly successful as an insurance investigator, his dream is to continue his archaeological research into the possible origins of an ancient European civilization in the Danube River basin.

Characters

 * Taichi Hiraga-Keaton: Norihiro Inoue
 * Taihei Hiraga: Ichirō Nagai
 * Yuriko Hiraga: Houko Kuwashima
 * Charlie Chapman: Masashi Sugawara
 * Daniel O'Connell: Shinpachi Tsuji
 * Hudson:
 * Narrator: Keaton Yamada

Theme songs
Opening Theme Song Ending Theme Song
 * Opening Theme music by Kuniaki Haishima
 * "eternal wind" - Performed by BLÜE (Episodes 1 - )
 * "A Sigh" (ため息, Tameiki) - Performed by KneuKid Romance (Episodes - 25)
 * "From Beginning" - Music by Kuniaki Haishima (Episodes 26 - 39)

DVD
The English version DVDs were released by Pioneer Entertainment/Geneon Entertainment Inc in association with The Ocean Group. The first 4 DVDs were released prior to Pioneer's switch to Geneon. Each DVD had 5 episodes, except the last one, which had 4, and all included an English translated dialog along with the original Japanese dialog. The DVD volumes and their US release dates are:
 * Master Keaton - Excavation I (DVD 1) 2003-06-10
 * Master Keaton - Excavation II (DVD 2) 2003-08-12
 * Master Keaton - Killer Conscience (DVD 3) 2003-10-14
 * Master Keaton - Blood & Bullets (DVD 4) 2003-12-09
 * Master Keaton - Blood & Dust (DVD 5) 2004-02-10
 * Master Keaton - Fakers & Friends (DVD 6) 2004-04-13
 * Master Keaton - Life & Death (DVD 7) 2004-06-08
 * Master Keaton - Passion Games (DVD 8) 2004-08-10

Controversy over the "true" creator
Hokusei Katsushika is a pseudonym for Japanese comic story writer (not an artist) Hajime Kimura, who was a co-writer of manga Golgo 13. It had been generally believed that Kimura created the story, while Urasawa did the artwork. After Kimura died of cancer in December 2004, however, Urasawa claimed in an interview with weekly magazine Shuukan Bunshun in May 2005 that Kimura stopped to work as a story writer due to a personal conflict with Urasawa at one point during series, after which Urasawa alone created both story and art. Because of this, Urasawa demanded that the fonts of the name Katsushika appear smaller than Urasawa on the comic's cover. A manga story writer Kariya Tetsu who was a close friend of Kimura and an influential figure in Shogakukan opposed this action vehemently, which resulted in the discontinuation of the further publication of the comics as of July 2005.