Title: Master Keaton Vol. 6
Author: Naoki Urasawa
Publisher: Viz Media
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 298
Genre: Mystery
Publication Date: March 15, 2016
The sixth volume of Naoki Urasawa’s Master Keaton has arrived! The episodic manga follows Taichi Keaton, who is an insurance investigator and an archaeology enthusiast, as he travels the world and solves unique crimes in relation to insurance fraud.
Final Word
I’ve gotten the chance to sit down and read through this volume and it’s another great work from Urasawa-san! I’ll detail the first few chapters here in my review.
We are given another 12 chapters here in volume six, starting off with The High Road of Gambling. This one didn’t really feel like a mystery and kind of ended abruptly. It dealt with Mr. Hiraga, a true gambler who never cheats who is asked to mediate between Allison Orwell’s grandfather Albert and another man named Faber Lawton. Mr. Hiraga finds Faber in a pub and decides to endear himself to him by playing a Japanese game called Cho Han; where you guess whether two dice will add up to evens or odds. It turns into a story where there is a problem between these two stemming back to the days when they were in the army. These two were also true gamblers, but Faber was accused of cheating to save Albert’s life and it caused bitterness between them.
Right after this we transition abruptly into Forbidden Fruit. We are rejoined with Keaton and his car breaks down. He is able to get a ride from a man named James who works for Arthur McManus, England’s foremost accountant and someone Keaton is apparently very aware of. After being introduced to McManus’s team, he’s invited to a party where the guest of honor is Frank Miller, a man who is to marry the chairman’s granddaughter. James doesn’t seem to like him one bit, calling him frivolous. This also ties in to an investigation Lloyd sent Keaton on where members of McManus’ staff were dying. They unveil it to be James by using a forbidden fruit to poison members of the staff, but Keaton senses it just from the conversation and ends up pointing out James as the culprit. This chapter didn’t really have much mystery because they flat out showed the culprit in the middle of it.
This brings us to Santa of the West. Keaton went from England to East Germany in this chapter. Here he is searching for a woman’s husband named Kurt who went missing. Now it’s Christmas and he still hasn’t returned. Turns out he disappeared because he’s wanted for murder, or more specifically, for killing a drug dealer. One day, Santa shows up at the home and delivers a present to his daughter. It was, obviously Kurt, but after delivering the present, he is soon arrested and the chapter comes to an end. During the chapter, it’s explained that it’s highly likely that Kurt will walk due to self-defense, though, so even though the chapter ends on a bit of a sad note, they prop you up for an unseen happy ending.
These are just some of the cases you will read in the sixth volume of Master Keaton. Going through them case by case will probably end up spoiling the entire manga as it’s pretty hard to talk about the cases without revealing everything in each chapter, but it was, yet again, a fantastic read. Chapter 4 offers up some color pages which are, like always, amazingly done by Urasawa. I will say my favorite chapter was The King’s Tears and without spoiling too much, it’s probably because I’m a sucker for medieval lore and some of that ties into one of Keaton’s investigation! All in all, if you’ve been a reader of this series so far, then this volume will surely not disappoint as this volume had a lot of great adventures!
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**This item was provided for review
