#taichi keaton

[concord-and-cliches]

yeah i started reading naoki urasawa's body of work to an almost obsessive degree. what of it.

#contra art #fanart #comic #naoki urasawa #naoki urasawa's monster #naoki urasawa's pluto #billy bat #20th century boys #kyoko koizumi #master keaton #kenzo tenma #wolfgang grimmer #kevin goodman #kevin yamagata #eva heinemann #atom pluto #gesicht pluto #taichi keaton #atom #gesicht #pluto #monster #taichi hiraga-keaton #tetsuwan atom

[vexture]

More drunk Keaton panel redraw! Why the hell is he lowkey making bedroom eyes at Gagne?? /lh

#sunny's art tag #digital art #master keaton #taichi keaton #manga panel redraw #alcohol mention

[pseudepigraphon]

Image description: A digital portrait of the title-character of Master Keaton. He's a mixed Japanese-Englishman with a rounded oval face, a tall rounded nose, and dark hair brushed back but falling forward somewhat. Keaton gives the viewer a slight smile, brows raised. He is standing turned to the left, dressed in a suit, in front of J.M.W Turner's Rain, Steam, and Speed in an art gallery. End ID.

been reading master keaton and really enjoying it

#master keaton #taichi hiraga-keaton #newt art #im only partway thru so if this painting actually shows up in series ill be really embarrassed. it's not meant to be literal in that way #i like sending little snippets to friends and talking about it and every time they keep comparing me to him LOL #(both mixed white-asian. both in the world of material culture history . so on so forth. both wacky with it) #(minus the special forces thing i should specify.....)

[myspineisthebassline]

posts these keatons when they least expect it

first pic is a redraw of this^ my favorite image. and the second one is referenced from a columbo screenshot 👍

#someday i will learn to draw on a larger canvas #irvart #master keaton #taichi hiraga-keaton

[the-babygirl-polls]

Taichi Hiraga-Keaton - Master Keaton

Propaganda:

He is THE babygirl. The very definition. Middle aged suit-wearing divorced single father sillyboy.

#the babygirl polls #week one #taichi hiraga-keaton #master keaton #contains propaganda

[officialtokyosan]

#here my love #gif content #master keaton #taichi hiraga keaton #ep 33 #ova 9

[picory]

step aside, munchlax my sweet beast, it's niche manga man's time to shine!

#still keeping my desktop theme munchlax themed tho #also mayhaps i'll change back to my prev mobile theme some day. it was pretty nice looking #anyway ☝ taichi hiraga-keaton #quacks

[aspiring-holistic-otaku]

Ramble#11

This month's episode we focus on Naoki Urasawa, a living manga legend, a true goat of the medium and my number 1 favourite mangaka. Ever since I started this podcast, at least one episode on him was inevitable and even if I don't stick the landing I hope this encourages someone to go check out and even support his brilliant pieces of art.

I'll be following the usual format of things read this month and then going over older reads, this time going from least to most favourite. Afterwards in what I'd call a part 2 I'll be doing a bit of off the cuff ranting.

So without further adieu, let's get into it!

Urasawa works read this month:

Asadora! (2018 - present with 37 english translated chapters):

A young girl named Asa has her home town destroyed by a Kaiju that only she saw. For those unfamiliar with the term Kaiju, it's basically the genre of film centered around giant monsters, think Godzilla. Anyways, years later, after training to be a pilot so she can track the monster down as she's its only living witness, she's approached by a certain organization that's been tracking the beast, so she can be trained to defend the country.

Not really a first time read but the first time I checked it out in 2020 there was only like 15/20 chapters out so with there being like twice that now I figured I could put it as new + bite me

Not much to say as again there's not that many chapters but it was my first time seeing a female lead from urasawa and I thought it was cool that the first page of the first chapter set the time frame for this world threatening disaster as 2020, which was when I picked it up and around the time COVID kicked off, even though that chapter itself came out in 2018.

Yawara! (1986 - 1993) 331 chapters total but only 92 in English:

Trained by her 8 time national judo champion grandad to get an Olympic gold, Yawara has been doing judo since she could walk. But as she enters the springtime of her youth, she just wants to be a regular, cute and fashionable girl.

Now I figure some of you may be wondering "What's the problem? Why can't she have both?". Well firstly, you know fiction, there's no story without conflict no matter how ridiculous. But as the mc would put it, judo just isn't cute!

She thinks she'll be unapproachable if she becomes known for grappling and throwing people around which tbh is fair but if you know anything about training to be an athlete, especially an Olympic level athlete, the time dedicated to training is no small thing. In the manga her grandad makes her train every day starting at 6am before she goes to school then after school they train again at 6pm.

Again not the very first time I read it, basically I started like a year ago but only read like 5 chapters then got upset that it wasn't fully translated. Cause I figured if it's been complete since 1993 and in 2022 there's only 92 chapters translated I'd be blue balling myself to hell with what I assumed would be another urasawa great (side note, more reason for learning Japanese so I can be a translator)

And I'm feeling bittersweet in being correct in my thinking because I really really dug it. Very neat aesthetic I've gotta say as urasawa plays up yawara trying to be cute and dressing up and so forth. It was also my first time seeing urasawa not doing mystery, as Yawara is a fun light-hearted slice of life but it still has a great cast of distinctive characters with brilliant dynamics just as I've come to expect from all of urasawa's works.

Master Keaton (1988 - 1994) 144ch:

I'm just gonna go with the final volume's description here as it's pretty spot on

When the wall that separated the East and West falls, the twentieth century comes to an end and brings radical changes to the world. During this turbulent time, Taichi Hiraga Keaton has difficulty finding a job in archaeology even though his long line of cases as an insurance investigator doesn't seem to end. As he navigates through dangerous adventures, Keaton encounters some bittersweet lives…

If you glazed over for a minute there, basically the mc loves archeology, wants to be a professor and have his own dig sites and such but because of skills he picked up in the army, he has much better luck being an investigator.

Great scenery, neat characters but pretty episodic to the point where I'd want to call it an anthology as characters don't really carry forward much. There's a lot of nitty gritty details about wars, factions and etc. around the world in that time period which can be a bit overbearing at times but that's what give the characters and situations the impact they would have gotten if they stuck around longer.

Also gotta say it's pretty educational, not just in the mc basically being macgyver and building self defense weapons out of whatever is on hand kinda way, but it takes a good look at Europe and how fucked it was during that cold war period as it indirectly and directly references many real world events. Maybe it's just my lack of exposure but I haven't seen that much media outside of documentaries really pinpoint Europe and the effects of war there and not on a large high level country scale, I mean like really looking at the lives of civilians and how they lived and died during that time.

Lots of variety, as I said it's very episodic as almost every chapter has a different subject ranging from finding a lost animal to settling spats between holocaust survivors or proving a statue is fake

I also have to mention something I've always appreciated about Urasawa's works that really stood out in Master Keaton for me and that's the diverse and well done racial representation. There's people from everywhere and it doesn't have that feel manga tends to have of like a Japanese person drawing what they think other people look like or something, it just looks like a person drawing other people, feel like I'm wording that weirdly but that's how I'm wording it.

Happy! (1993 - 1999) 254ch:

One day a high school girl, Miyuki Umino that takes care of her 3 younger siblings on her own, is approached by Yakuza who tell her that her older brother ran out on loans amounting to 250mill yen, approx. 1.8M USD) and now she needs to pay up or be sold into prostitution.

While wondering what to do she sees on the news a tennis player earned that amount in winnings so she decides that despite the difficulty she has to try.

Pretty dark premise and I'm telling you she goes through some dark shit but it's a great story, brilliant characters as usual, loveable idiots abound, antagonists that you can really really hate. You don't have to be a fan of tennis at all to appreciate the heartwarming n heart wrenching ups and downs. Teared up at least twice.

This was my favourite Naoki Urasawa work I read for the first time this month, this manga really showed me Urasawa really has THAT range fr.

Older Urasawa reads:

Monster (1994 - 2001) 162 chapters, this was my 3rd read:

A promising young doctor, Kenzo Tenma, ignores his superiors orders to operate on their mayor and instead operates on a young boy called Johan, that came in first, as he firmly believes all lives are equal. The mayor dies and the boy is saved but this leads to unfair treatment by his superiors and being left by his fiance. Soon after, not only does the young boy disappear but his superiors die from poisoning, leaving him, staff and ofc the police baffled.

10 years later during a string of serial killings, a key witness ends up being a patient of Tenma's but is killed for trying to reveal this by Johan, the real killer, now a young man who reappears in front of the doctor. Even more shockingly, he reveals himself as the one who killed Tenma's superiors all those years ago. Because of similarities in the murderers then and now, police pin it all on Tenma so he goes on the run across Europe to find the young man and clear his name.

Undeniably engaging from the jump, the ever building draw being who the fuck is this Johan dude? where'd he come from? why the fuck is he killing all these people? etc. etc.

Great side characters as usual with interactions that I can only call truly genuine whether they were sweet or sour.

There's a lot of nice interplay on the meanings of life and death, the notions of fear and hope, humanity and the inhumane, all weaved into every intricate thread of this story.

Not to be a hater but personally its relative popularity, as in relative to his other works, is a little upsetting. I get that it was his first critically acclaimed banger but he's done so much since then that isn't talked about enough for me. His later stuff not having anime adaptations doesn't help but if you've read and watched enough media adaptations in general you know that tends to mean diddly squat in terms of the quality of the source material . The industry unfortunately runs more and more on fan service every day.

Pluto (2003 - 2009) 65 chapters, read 3x:

The destruction of one of Earth's greatest robots and the murder of a leading figure in international robot rights seem unrelated at first, but both bodies were made into some bizarre collage with the central motif/pattern being a pair of horns placed by their heads, making them obviously related. The confusing thing is that the only thing that could destroy one of Earth's greatest robots is an even stronger robot, but could a robot really be related to the murder a human? Gesicht, a robot detective is put on the case and eventually comes to realize that all of Earth's greatest robots, himself included are being targeted.

As you can expect with any futuristic robot media there's an exploration of the concept of humanity vs the artificial but it's done so tenderly for lack of a better word and I'm not sure how often it's done that way in these noir type beats. Especially from the viewpoint of a robot mc.

I've probably said this for all his works so far but there's brilliant cast, great dialogue, great art that the context pretty much demanded and even though it's based on an arc in Osamu Tezuka's tetsuwan atom, better known as astro boy in the west, the greatest robot on earth arc to be specific, Urasawa really rose to and in my mind completely surpassed the challenge of adapting the work of he who is called the God of manga.

Also like man it's so crazy good for how short it is, please read this.

20th century boys (1999 - 2006) 249 chapters + 16 in the wrapup sequel 21st century boys, I've read both 2x:

The story follows a group of childhood friends, now adults who are trying to patch together their memories in an effort to uncover a conspiracy that seems to be based on games they used to play about saving the world from destruction.

It's pretty difficult to describe the events of the story further but it definitely stands out in my mind as the grandest scale of anything Naoki Urasawa has ever done though I wouldn't put it past him to go further.

As I said the story follows friends trying to patch together memories so the time period goes back and forth quite a bit. It can be pretty jarring trying to follow it strictly by year so I'd recommend just thinking about it in three tone periods, namely; childhood, present day and miscellaneous flashbacks. Separating childhood from miscellaneous flashbacks as their childhood remains within a constant range but as the story moves forward and present day changes so does the range of flashbacks they have.

That should hint a bit at the scale of this whole thing but outside of the breadth, there's a depth of characterization and dynamic that I haven't seen elsewhere.

Side note, if the length is frightening it's the type of read I'd recommend savouring anyways.

Billy Bat (2008 - 2016) 165chapters, this is my 4th time reading this:

A Japanese American mangaka/cartoonist, Kevin Yamagata, suddenly has his workspace taken over by police claiming they're investigating one of his neighbours for being a Soviet spy. In the middle of protesting this, one of the officers sees the comic he's working on, Billy Bat. He says he's seen it before in Japan, basically calling Kevin's work a copy. Kevin takes offence but admits he was stationed in Japan for some time and may have seen it and subconsciously copied it. As one of the lasting lessons his father taught him was that you can't steal people's stuff, he goes to Japan to seek out this potential original creator.

The story unfolds as he meets an artist that tells him the bat is actually something passed down throughout history, throwing him right into the middle of several conspiracies concerning real key incidents throughout modern history.

On top of everything, the bat starts talking to him, urging him to find a supposedly important and immensely powerful scroll.

My favourite piece from urasawa, brilliant in every respect, please please please please read this.

That's it for this first part, if you're still here, thanks for listening, please please read these, urasawa is a goat, a legend a phenomenon.

Just to share some resources before I go into the part 2 bit which may have spoilers irdk yet, there were two YouTube videos I really liked that I highly recommend.

The first was 'The greatest mangaka of all time' by the masked man and second was 'A guide to manga's greatest master' by the omnibus collector.

The first video is about 10 minutes long and uses the quality of Monster, 20th century boys, Pluto and Billy Bat as their rationale for why Naoki Urasawa is the greatest mangaka of all time.

The second is 20 minutes and pretty much covers Naoki's entire career and body of work, giving pretty rad descriptions of all his pieces, inspirations for them and a bunch of other really neat info. Bonus For those of you who are int that sort of thing, they also show the physicals they own off all the manga they talked about. really appreciated that. thank you omnibus collector.

Really appreciated these videos as most animanga fans and discussions focus on monster, sometimes 20th century boys and rarely anything past that unless they're ranking which I'm really not interested in.

There's also a third video I mention in part 2 of the episode I'll link here as well.

Anyways thanks again for listening, stay hydrated and listen in for some rambles if you're also into that kind of thing.

#just another day #mm..manga #naoki urasawa #asadora! #yawara! #master keaton #happy! #monster #pluto #20th century boys #billy bat #Youtube #writeup

[sol-rust]

a while ago on twitter you posted six headshots of mystery show detectives with x files twin peaks and columbo. I’m super curious, who is the man in the middle and the girl at the bottom? is that laura? love your work btw

the man is Taichi Keaton from "Master Keaton"(manga/anime)! and yeah, Laura Palmer; thanku!

[kopawz]

how the FUCK did you read 72 chapters of manga that quickly

i am a very fast reader, my teachers told me to slow down so often during group-readings that i wasn't called on to do it anymore. now i'm an english major, call that the "read-to-fast-to-english-major" pipeline

2. i have a very long commute to work (40 minutes), and i need to pass the time SOMEHOW (if you have any other manga suggestions, please send them, i'm not good at finding these things myself)

3. sorry this is turning into a "go read it post" so um. go read master keaton if you can handle material that often covers the topics of war, murder, and the racism in the 80's, and some likely outdated archeology facts by now

4. taichi keaton is endearing, and naoki urasawa has such a way of drawing people that's so nice, and the storytelling is very compelling- i just kinda kept reading! when i like something i just kinda keep going

5. no really; keaton's got it all: he's divorced, he has a daughter he would do anything for, he picks up random hurt animals, he has military survival training, he's a dweeb for archeology, he can't keep a job for more than a few months. enthralled by this man.

keaton pictured chasing after an icecream truck (later to chase it downhill via bicycle) because his daughter said he should try some

[greenliar]

taichi keaton is the type of character i dont think about often but whenever i get to see him my brain gives me an instant serotonin boost

#fanart #illustration #digital art #procreate #anime #manga #art #sketch #taichi keaton #hiraga taichi keaton #keaton #master keaton #naoki urasawa

[vexture]

So friends wanted Grimmer/Keaton and I want this to be a thing now haha

Taken from a movie screen shot with tweaks and changes, listened to a lot of Rammstein while drawing :>

#sunny's art tag #spicy art #gotta love using silly sounding alt tags #taichi keaton #wolfgang grimmer #master keaton #naoki urasawa's monster

[fakeosphere]

i feel as though loving keaton might be more esoteric than moving lain

#master keaton #taichi keaton #myart #sketch #husband

[myspineisthebassline]

taichi hiraga-keaton was a very strange insurance investigator on adderall

#myt verdict after reading master keaton vol 1 is that hes just an Average Man with ADHD

[the-babygirl-polls]

Babygirl Polls Lineup: Week One

Hello everyone! Here we have the lineup for the first week of the Babygirl Polls! Thank you so much for all your submissions!

Klarion Bleak (Young Justice)

Dante Sparda (Devil May Cry)

Ace Ukiyo (Kamen Rider: Geats)

Bro Strider (Homestuck)

Michael Schmidt (Five Nights at Freddy's)

Cole Brew (Rhythm Doctor)

Peppino Spaghetti (Pizza Tower)

Negan (The Walking Dead)

Todd (Not Me: The Series)

Dan (Not Me: The Series)

Sound (My School President)

Nuengdiao (Never Let Me Go)

Adolin Kholin (The Stormlight Archive)

Xue Yang (The Untamed)

Aaron Warner (Shatter Me)

Jean Descole (Professor Layton)

Curt Mega (Spies are Forever)

Klavier Gavin (Ace Attorney)

Ghost (Call of Duty)

Emperor Belos/Phillip Wittebane (The Owl House)

Wen Kexing (Word of Honor)

Miles Edgeworth (Ace Attorney)

Taichi Hiraga-Keaton (Master Keaton)

Akk Pipitphattana (The Eclipse)

Dean Winchester (Supernatural)

Bruce Wayne/Batman (The Batman (2022))

Kenzo Tenma (Naoki Urasawa's Monster)

Jason Todd/Red Hood (DC)

Usami Tokishige (Golden Kamuy)

Char Aznable (Mobile Suit Gundam)

Harry Du Bois (Disco Elysium)

Vegas (Kinnporsche: The Series)

Barry the Chopper (Full Metal Alchemist)

Khatha (Midnight Museum)

Ronald Lynch (Home Movies)

Ballister Boldheart (Nimona)

Rex Dangervest (The Lego Movies)

Emmett Brickowski (The Lego Movies)

Knife (Inanimate Insanity)

Nickel (Inanimate Insanity)

Balloon (Inanimate Insanity)

Nona (Locked Tomb Series)

Laudna (Critical Role)

Ryu Suyeol (Bad and Crazy)

Paul Matthews (Hatchetfield)

Gregory House (House MD)

Ingo (Pokemon)

L (Death Note)

Elijah Volkov (Camp Here and There)

Kevin (Welcome to Night Vale)

Yuma Kokohead (Master Detective Archive: Raincode)

Alex Horne (Taskmaster)

Vash the Stampede (Trigun, Trigun Maximum, and Trigun Stampede)

Greg Davies (Taskmaster)

Byron (Pokemon Diamond/Pearl/Platinum)

Shang Tsung (Mortal Kombat 1)

Garry (IB)

Homelander (The Boys)

Cardan Greenbriar (The Folk of The Air Trilogy)

Omega (Mega Man Zero)

Clive Rosfield (Final Fantasy 16)

Cassian Andor (Star Wars)

Ted Spankoffski (Hatchetfield)

Tang (Lego Monkey Kid)

Tomura Sigaraki (My Hero Academia)

Liam de Lioncourt (Monster Prom)

Matthew Patel (Scott Pilgrim Takes Off)

Ethan Winters (Resident Evil)

Kim Dokja (Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint)

Waver Velvet/Lord El Melloi II (Fate Series)

Dave (Dave and Bambi)

Yoo Joonghyuk (Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint)

Envy (Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood)

Akira Nishikiyama (Yakuza/Like A Dragon)

Eddie Diaz (9-1-1)

Simon Petrikov (Adventure Time and Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake)

Sanji (One Piece)

Adrien Agreste (Miraculous Ladybug

Romeo Montague (& Juliet)

Luz Noceda (The Owl House)

Lance Dubois (& Juliet)

Francois Dubois (& Juliet)

William Shakespeare (& Juliet)

Chesed (Lobotomy Corporation)

Cesare (Bigtop Burger)

Morris (Stardew Valley)

Kinger (The Amazing Digital Circus)

Estinien Varlineau (Final Fantasy XIV)

Frederick Chilton (Hannibal)

Leon S. Kennedy (Resident Evil)

Jaskier (The Witcher)

Geralt of Rivia (The Witcher)

Radovid (The Witcher)

Trafalgar Law (One Piece)

Zagreus (Hades)

Shadow The Hedgehog (Sonic)

Sepiroth (Final Fantasy)

Vegeta (Dragon Ball Z)

Charlie Kelly (It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia)

Reverend Rod Putty (Moral Orel)

#poll lineup #week one #the babygirl polls

[officialtokyosan]

#SHIMMIE SHIMMIE SHIMME #gif content #master keaton #taichi hiraga keaton #ep 22