Exploring master keaton’s Germany: A Japanese perspective on the end of the cold war

Abstract

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Japanese manga (serialized comic book) series Master Keaton entertained readers with the globe- trotting adventures of its Anglo-Japanese protagonist, Taichi Hiraga-Keaton. Keaton’s work as an insurance investigator for Lloyd’s of London took him on journeys throughout Europe and Asia, including visits to a newly reunited Germany. When the Master Keaton manga was adapted as an anime (animated television series) in the late 1990s, four of the manga’s Germany-centric plots were included in the 39 stories selected for animation. The television episodes faithfully reproduced the original illustrations and dialogues created a decade earlier, and were aimed at the same mature audience for which the manga had been written.