 Anyway, it's anime day, we're gonna talk about Master Keaton, which is probably one of the most underrated anime to come out in the last decade. I mean, I'd barely heard of it, no one I know had watched it except the guys in Anime World Order. We finally decided to pick it up, mainly because we got it for $40, all of it. And it's badass. But before we talk about it, I just want to give a quick nod to the fact that, and I only do this because I know people don't listen to all the days, but Scott and I appeared on GeekSpeak talking about anime conventions not too long ago. Yeah, so if you're interested in hearing us talk even more about anime conventions, if our barl with three episodes about anime conventions? Yeah, not counting the coverage of each kind we've gone to. Yeah, it's not enough for you. You can go to speakgeekspeak.com and get another episode of us talking about anime cards. So there are some interesting questions there because he kind of interviews us and he asks us a lot of questions about things that we probably wouldn't have thought to say anything about otherwise. Yeah, I think that's real useful because, you know, the thing about this show is that we have lots of knowledge. Lots of knowledges. We're not omniscient, but... Well, you're not. You are not either. But we do know a fuck ton of stuff. And just talking to each other since we've said most things and since we both know that we both know things, we don't really say those things because it's sort of like understood. So having someone interview us is really the only easy way or one of the only easy ways for a lot of the information within our bodies to be communicated to the world. Hence the episode Ask Us Any Question. Yep, which went really well and probably going to have more of those in the future. Yep, as soon as we get a lot more listeners so that we can get a lot more new questions of different varieties. Yep, even though the graph of listenership is still somewhat exponential. Yep, which is all good. Yep, just wait until Otacon. I think that's going to be a big breaking point. Not just for us, but for a lot of podcasters. Yeah, I mean, Anime Next had a crap ton of podcasting going on relative to the size of the convention. I can only imagine how Otacon is going to be. I mean, Otacon has really had no podcasting presence before, at least no noticeable one. Because podcasting really took off, you know, in the years since Otacon, you know. Yep, and happily we're going to be the ones to break podcasting out there with our giant panel. But we'll talk about that more and more as Otacon comes up. Today, Master Keaton. Alright. Now, we've only watched the first three episodes. And they were all completely different. It's an episodic show so far. Yep, but I mean, the first three episodes very much seem to serve to enlighten us as to who is Master Keaton? Why is he a master? Why is his name Keaton? What is the show about? And I've heard the show described to me in a bunch of various ways that didn't make much sense. So I basically had to watch the show. Yeah, people would say, oh, it's an archaeology, something terrorist, something show. And I was like, what? One guy said it was Indiana Jones versus the terrorists. And I was like, what are you talking about? Insurance agent? What the hell? Yeah, and it is very much all of those things and more. Yep. I mean, everyone's seen Master Keaton. It's in every anime store. You see stuff from Master Keaton everywhere. There's not really stuff for it, but the DVDs are widely available. And I've seen Wall Skrulls. It's just, it's a dude, a normal looking dude. He's very... He's not even that. The art is actually not spectacular. I like it though. I like this style. It looks kind of like the second Lupin series with a bit of extra shininess. The guy is very much a... And I guess we'll... With a big nose. You know what? We'll spoil the first episode because that's a great way by going through the episode to kind of explain what this show is about. Yeah. Also, since it's episodic, there's no major plot spoiler by explaining the first episode. Yeah. It's like if I told you the first episode of Cowboy Bebop, I might spoil that episode because it sort of has a slightly twisty ending. You know? Yeah. But it doesn't really spoil the show Cowboy Bebop. So, see, first episode of Master Keaton. It starts with this guy, this normal looking guy, and it's kind of like the Indiana Jones where he's a teacher at high school. Yep. And he's teaching about archaeology of Greece, ancient Greece. Now, of course, just before this, they show some guy falling to his death over a cliff. And now you've got this guy teaching archaeology, and he seems like a cool, but very kind of nonchalant, silly dude. Yeah. Like, he's completely nondescript. Like, usually you see a character and you know what kind of character they are. Like, the badass looks like a badass and the hot girl looks like a hot girl. This guy looks like generic dude. I would call him a proto-kaji or a proto-huse. He's kind of that kind of character, but much more subdued. And much more clean-shaven. Yes. And a bigger nose. But I mean, right away, they're dropping all these hints. Like, he comes in and the headmaster of the school yells at him, like, eh, your page slip came back. You must have moved again. He's like, oh, whatever. And he looks at it, and he kind of groans at the meager pay. And then he also, you know, as he leaves class, he's like, oh yeah, no class next week either. And his students are like, he always does this. They're going to fire him someday. Yeah, they're like, why do you keep skipping canceling class? We want it. We're paying a lot of money for this, and you keep canceling. Screw you. But then it turns out you got a phone call from Lloyd's. Lloyd's of London, the giant insurance place. And the show even goes to a somewhat decent pain to explain what Lloyd's of London is. Because a lot of people don't exactly understand the difference between Lloyd's of London and your local insurance agent. Yeah, we're not going to get into it. No, we're not. Lloyd's of London is basically the king of insurance. That's all you need to know. Just think big insurance company. There isn't really a bigger insurance company. They insure everything fancy. If Trigun were a real world, they're the ones who would have sent Millie and Merrill out to handle all that business with Vash. Exactly. So he's called by them to go do something. So he takes time off work and goes off to investigate this thing. Which involves some sort of insurance scandal. Yep. Now the insurance scandal that happens is the guy who has pushed off the cliff at the beginning of the show had life insurance. The life insurance is going to not his longtime woman, but to the Ox Art Company. Yep, Ox Bayer. And the guy who owns the Ox Art Company is Ox Bayer. He is a shady looking dude. He is a very looking shady evil dude. And they make that pretty clear right away. Yep. And she lives on this peninsula. Well, his woman lives on this peninsula of Greece somewhere. And that's where he died. It's an ancient village. And now the funny thing is he makes a point like they mention multiple times that it's a windy island. And that's important. In fact, one thing I've noticed about the show is that anything and everything that happens is important. It's sort of like Scooby-Doo, but not visually. You know, I always say Scooby-Doo a lot. I don't know if everyone understands this, but if you watch an old episode of Scooby-Doo and you look at the image, in those days the coloring on the cells of animation would be really bright and stand out from the background. So you could tell if something was going to be animated because it would have to be on the cell. And you could tell if something wasn't going to be animated because it would be in the background. And the one example I always remember is that Scooby and Shaggy were standing next to this well with a bucket, you know, those wells they always have in cartoons. Yep, that don't exist anywhere really anymore. Exactly those. And they were standing next to it. And the well was this brighter color. It stood out from the background. It was on the cell, which means you knew they were going to fall into the well or that a ghost was going to come out of it. It was just obvious because it stands out. Like they're walking out of hallway and there's a bunch of lockers there in the school. And one of the lockers is all bright. That lockers going to pop open or they're going to open it. Exactly. So when something is Scooby-Doo, that means it stands out from everything else and is obviously important. Now without it being said, this is an important thing. Now the things don't seem obviously important, like way back when the pay slip thing and they're like, give us your new address. And he's writing it down and he rips these to paper. And the guy hands him some tape to tape up the paper. And he just kind of pockets it and walks away. And the guy's like, hey, Keaton stole my tape. That's a Scooby-Doo thing. It stands out and it becomes important later. So he gets to the island and sure enough, right away, he sees these insurance guys and they're very thuggish, threatening the woman. Well, they're not insurance guys. They're the Oxbear Art Company. And they're threatening this woman about something. And at first, the first time I watched it because I've seen the episode twice, I thought that the woman might also be in on some sort of scam of I didn't know who is the bad guy, the Ox Art Company or the woman. Or both, or neither. Now, this is the point at which the show, this is when the show really took a turn and we started to figure out what was going on because the situation's going on and Keaton drops some garbage like over the edge just as they're about to shoot this woman. And then he leans over like, oh, I dropped that. Sorry. I'm just some dumb guy. And then he comes down to pick it up and the Ox Art guys walk away. They're not going to shoot in front of this person. They don't know what's going on. They're just going to wait for another time. Yeah. I mean, this village is empty because it's one of the seasonal places where people only come in a certain time of the year. And this time of the year, the only people there are the woman, the guy who fell off the cliff and these Ox Art guys and Master Keaton who came to investigate. Now, at this point, I wasn't sure of something because Randy was seeing Trigun. For much of the early part of the show, you're wondering if Vash is actually awesome or just an idiot. And Master Keaton had that same feeling. We had a debate while we were watching the episode of, all right, is he an idiot or is he badass? And if he's badass, how badass is he? That was really my, I knew he was badass because he's the main character in the show and you know that he's going to come out on top at the end of this episode. But he might have been like a Captain Tyler badass. Exactly. Well, I don't think he was a Captain Tyler badass because he wasn't goofy. No, no, but he might have been. My question was how badass is he? I mean, maybe it does he get out of situations with clever stuff that doesn't involve violence? Or can he take out a gun and kill everyone when he needs to? What's his level and type of badassness? Because they haven't told you really anything about him yet. You don't have his background. You know nothing except that his name is Master Keaton. He teaches archeology and Lloyds of London hired him to do something. Now I'm going to say right now what level of badass he is. He is the badass wherein if he goes to a gunfight and everyone else has guns, he doesn't need a gun. Yeah, in a world where no one has superpowers, Master Keaton is the most dangerous, most badass motherfucker on the earth if there are no weapons also, I guess. Yeah, even though he's the most like normal looking, kind of guy. And usually his demeanor really doesn't match his badassness level at all. He's all smiley and friendly and cool. He's not torn by war or anything like that. He's just a happy friendly teacher. And in fact, one thing you notice is that as you watch more of the show, it's obvious that every single thing he says and does is 100% calculated. At least when he's on a mission. If he just makes an offhand comment, he did that for a reason. Absolutely. And the other thing is that the moments where the badass comes out, like the moment when action happens and like there's a sudden fight, one, the action is over almost immediately. Yeah, take that Naruto. Yeah. You know, friggin 10 episodes of a fight. Master Keaton uses like 10 seconds and he takes everyone out. Two, the smile goes away and he just has this like the coldest like I am a badass looked about his face. And a lot of times you don't even see the act like the action involving Master Keaton himself. You just kind of, they kind of show you enough so that you know what he did and they show you the results of what he did. But they never actually show you in full animation him doing everything badass. I think I saw him kick a guy once. Well, in the first episode, he does a bit. But, you know, he goes back, talks to the woman. They basically resolve the plot. The evil Ox Bayer guys realize that, alright, he's here to talk to this woman. Let's just go kill them both. There are no witnesses. Yup. Now, Master Keaton is talking to the woman and suddenly he's like, huh, and he looks out the window and he sees these guys coming. And at this point, the full badass comes out and you really start wondering, how is he this badass? They explain that as well, but I'll get to that. He reaches over, he's in a little tiny cottage and he goes to get a wooden spoon. He grabs a wooden spoon. And also, he asks the girl if there's a back way out. She says, yes. And he says, wait a minute. And he said, he's, you know, fiddling with things. And all the while, he's explaining, like, they've got guns. And he explains why he knows they've got guns because they're wearing sport coats. But the sport coats are buttoned and they're holding their right arms away from their body, which means they've got a left-mounted weapon. And it's pretty realistic stuff. I could see detectives using similar deductive methods. Yup. Anyway, and then they run off and the guys see him and they shoot at him. And he's running away and you're wondering, all right, how is he going to resolve this? He's got a spoon. He's also got some tape, if you remember. And also, earlier in the episode, there was another Scooby-Doo moment where he says, oh, this keystone is loose. Yeah, like there's an arch and the keystone is loose. And also, the island is very windy. Mm-hmm. Now, how does all this come together? Well, he runs away a lot with the girl. And he gets to the area he wants to be and he gets to a point where they see him and start running after him shooting. He ducks around the corner, takes a stick, jams it into the unstable earthworks and knocks over this giant wall, taking two of the guys out. Yeah, the rocks fall on their head and they're gone. Then the other rest of the guys come around the corner, guns drawn, and he's made basically a sling kind of device out of this spoon and the tape. And it's a stick. And he rips these rocks at the guys and takes them all out except the head guy. He throws two rocks, you know, obviously rocks from the crumbled wall and he hits two of the guys in the head, square in the front of the head with flying rocks. Like they're down. Yeah, only Ox Bayer is left. And they're standing there confronting each other. And now I'll note that when Ox Bayer first saw Master Keaton, he thought that guy looks kind of familiar. Mm-hmm. And also, when Master Keaton was first given the picture of Ox Bayer, he thought, I know this dude. Yeah. But he didn't say how he knew him. He just made it obvious. Well, he saw the picture and he said Ox Bayer. Yeah. I know him. But he didn't say like how or why. He's just like, I know this dude. Mm-hmm. So now, Ox Bayer's got a gun and Master Keaton standing there with his sling. And Ox Bayer just reaches for the gun, aims up and fires. And it cuts to Master Keaton and he's just standing there. He doesn't even flinch and the bullet misses him. It barely misses him. And then he flings the rock and takes the Ox Bayer guy out. Yep. Then he walks over with a badass look on his face. He's standing over him and he says like, the guy's whole name, like blah, blah, blah, Ox Bayer. And then you have this flashback of... Ox Bayer is like, huh? Yeah. I know you now. You're the master. The master. It cuts to SAS survival training. That is the German equivalent of the SWAT team times a million. I thought, no, I thought the SAS was the... No, no, not German, not German. The special air service. All the Counter Strike names. The SAS are badasses. They're badasses. And it cuts to this flashback of Ox Bayer going through survival training and he's copping out of... You know, it's the typical walking through the mud with a very heavy backpack. And he's failing. Like he's falling over. Yeah, like Ox Bayer is walking in the dark within the mud, heavy backpack, and he falls over tired. And then you see Master Keaton standing there with the same heavy backpack, completely unfazed and untired, going like, uh, get up. Was he? Yeah, and it's apparent that Master Keaton is in fact the instructor. And not... He wasn't in training with Ox Bayer. He was training Ox Bayer. And then he says very clearly, like, if you'd remembered your lessons, firearms are not as useful as an improvised sling weapon in windy climates. Yeah, heavy rock won't get blown around by the wind, but a bullet will. And then Ox Bayer's like, Oh, son of a bitch. You're the master. And this is pretty much the first episode. And actually we really explained all the stuff we needed to explain without actually ruining the plot. Yeah, because the second and third episodes, which is the only ones we've watched, had the same formula. There's a situation involving insurance somehow. They send Master Keaton to take care of it. He's the master. The end. It's awesome because you see how he does it each time. Yep, and it's very realistic in most cases. And it's also very varied. It's not always a similar case, you know, where like, oh, some guys are troubling a woman. It's all sorts of different cases involving different insurances on things. And it can get pretty crazy. And also, for the first three episodes at least, they keep dropping little hints into, like, Master Keaton's life. And bit by bit we learn more and more about him. And how masterful he is. Yep, like, there's a point where one guy in the second episode we watched, yeah, the second one, where they, Master Keaton's doing all this badass stuff. So the guys like, do a background check on this guy. Then at the end of the, like, near the end of the episode, they're reading the background check. And they're like, whoa, this guy's a badass. Yeah, because in that episode, they kept talking about who was the professional and who was the amateur. And they were like, at the end, they were finally like, we were the amateur. He was the professional. Yep, but don't think that this show is cliched at all. The show is really kind of unique, in that it's episodic and it's, I would liken it a little bit to Lupin, both in the style and just in how much I love it. It just doesn't, it's like Lupin without goofiness, if Lupin was on the side of good. Yep, like take Golgo 13, which is just badass dude killing people. And take out, like, the hardcore sex and the incredible violence. Yep, then take Lupin and take out the silliness and mash them together and at Indiana Jones and terrorists. Yeah. That's what Master Keaton is. I think of Indiana Jones, just a friendly guy and not a greedy dude. Also, aside from the actual show itself, which one I love, but the animation is pretty good, especially for when it was made. Yeah, I think it's not the greatest, but it fits what's going on. It's definitely passable. It's typical. I really like the music except for the closing song. The closing song is just kind of like pop-ish crap, but the rest of the music is just very good and atmospheric. I just don't really notice the music, you know, going on so much. Like, you know, there's some enemies that have like a soundtrack that stands out like a sore thumb. Like a noir. Or like Haxxine. Yeah. But this show is just one of those... In fact, I would submit that Haxxine wasn't worth watching except for the fact. It was a mediocre show. The music alone pushed it above the mediocre. That's true. In my opinion. True, but no, in Master Keaton, the music is sort of an instrumental, atmospheric background music. It doesn't stand out. I don't really notice it. In fact, I couldn't think of any of the songs in my head or sing any of them in my head right now. See, I can remember well just that it really... It doesn't stand out, but it feels... It's really good and I like it. It's the kind of music that I like. I just don't even notice it. It's so... I don't know. And also the opener has a good song. And the opener itself is... It's not like revolutionary or anything, but it is atypical of a lot of the shows from that era. It's not just the fast cuts to action, fast cuts to action J-pop song. It's very much a good song and just kind of this not really epic, but very atmospheric, almost moving thing that ends with a very poetic scene. It's just an opener. It's not really a special... I wouldn't put it on the list of best openers or the list of worst openers. It's just... It seems standard to me. I liked it. I would put it a little bit above the pack because remember, in that era, most shows, of course, even today, most shows, now it's J-rock instead of J-pop. But most shows back then were generic J-pop. Often it was Megumi Hashibara and just a bunch of cuts from the show. I don't know what era you think Master Keaton is from. Very broadly. I'm thinking 90s. Let's go actually find out where it was from. What year was Master Keaton actually made? I'm almost there. All right. I'm not going to edit this out, so I'll just keep talking. We found Master Keaton mostly because Anime World Order yelled at us to watch it. 98 and 99. Wow. It's a lot later than I expected. Yeah. I thought this was going to be a much earlier show, but actually it's a very recent show. Wow. It's actually kind of weird because then that means that it was using sort of an older anime style in a later time. Yeah. Because I really would have pegged it for a lot earlier than that, like five or six years. Yeah. This thing has an opener that's sort of like a 70s, 80s style, maybe even, you know. Yeah. Disregard all my J-pop stuff then. Or like a late 80s, you know, those kind of shows. But no, actually it's a much later show using a sort of an old style. I guess I really like that. I mean, it seems like a lot of shows will go with whatever the prevailing style of the times is. Usually crap shows. But this show really seems to buck that trend. Yeah. All in all, it's an excellent show. You can get it pretty cheap, I imagine. You can get it on Netflix easily. I highly, highly recommend it from the three episodes I've seen. Here's something. The guy who directed Monster, all the TV anime, also directed Master Keaton. You know. And also directed some movie that I never heard of and whatever. See, I can kind of see that. But then again, I didn't like Monster, the anime at all. Yeah. Who knows? Well, now I'll qualify that. I liked Monster until it just got so implausible I couldn't deal with it. Kind of like Noir. Noir started out so awesome. Like, this is going to be an awesome show. And in the course of five more episodes, it turned into like the crappiest show I was watching. Anyway, Zia, that's Master Keaton right there. Yeah. Definitely the $5 per DVD is worth it. And later in the series, you know, it definitely, like I can tell from looking at the back of the DVD cases that plot, some sort of longer plot develops and is concluded in the final episode. And you'll get like some three-part stories, maybe even a five-part story. I don't even know. I have to go look. Yep. Now, we'll cover the show again. Once we've seen all of it, we'll do our typical Geek Nights final thoughts. So if anyone wants to listen to that and is interested in the show, I'd recommend in the next couple months watching all of Master Keaton. I say couple months because it's going to take us a while. We're watching a whole bunch of shows, and we have lives, and we have podcasts, and we have conventions. And this weekend we have a convention. Yep. And we're done with Master Keaton. And that was Geek Nights with Rym and Scott. Special thanks to DJ Pretzel for our opening theme. Be sure to visit our website at www.frontrowcrew.com. If you like our podcast, you'll love our forums. Make sure you visit them. You can send your email feedback to geekknights at gmail.com. And if you want, you can leave us a voicemail at 206-333-1537. Geek Nights airs every weeknight, Monday through Thursday. Geek Nights is accorded with absolutely no studio and no audience. But unlike those other talk shows, it's actually recorded at night.