Monkey King anime?
 

To all the people familair with the subject, i'm wondering if there were any decent cartoon versions of the story (Journey to the West), or just based on the main character made recently? The only one i've ever seen was an old (probably from 70s), very cool cartoon based directly on the novel, both Journey to the West and the earlier one about the monkey king getting his staff and stealing the immortality pills. I also recently watched Read or Die, and the Genjo character reawakened my interest. So, is there anything out there worthwhile? I can't find anything on my own because apparently even though the original novel is chinese, japanese also adapted the character, and now he has tons of different names (sung-kung/goku/hsuan-tsang/sang-tsang/xuanzang/etc...), not to mention an unholy number of dbz fansites all over the web.

Wikipedia has a pretty good amount of detail to work from
SUN WUKONG

Monkey King was originally Monkey King...born out of a rock...can't remember who brought him to life though.

He became king of the monkeys and has a huge ego which prompted him to go to the heavens to steal the immortality peaches and generally wreck havoc wherever he went. He gained all his powers in the earlier part of the story and was later imprisoned under a huge rock for a hundred years by the Goddess of Mercy. And later rescued by Tang Sanzang and was bound to him as a diciple and thus given the name Sun Wukong.

Pigsy and Sandy comes in later on in the story. Sanzang's first companion is actually the horse :teeth:

The story of Journey to the West had been deconstructed and rewritten dozens of time....there's a warped version by Katsuya Terada too. IIRC there were Japanese, Chinese and Hong Kong dramatisations for TV and Stephen Chow created a 2 or 3 part theatrical comedic version (can't remember). I think the only anime I've seen of it was the same version you mentioned. There may be an update by the title Saiyuki or something similar.

Hope it helps.

Thanks Darth, this link was quite informative.
It's a shame that aside from that old cartoon there isn't much of anything decent out there. This Saiyuki thing doesn't look so good, but i'll look into it.
Thangs again.

a 52 episode anime called Gensou Maden Saiyuki which I've seen all of, and more recently, the second season of that series which I havent seen any of. I enjoyed the series, although it's not anything particularly amazing. A lot of funny scenes, but overall it progresses pretty slowly. A ton of filler episodes basically with less based on the main plot.

Taken from animenfo.com
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This anime is based on the a well known story in China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan about a real journey of one buddhist monk Genjo Sanzo (AD 629) who travelled from China to India.

The story preludes the chaos that begins in Togenkyo which is the holy land where humans and demons used to live together peacefully and got along well. However after the attempt of someone to use the art of chemical and magic together from the ancient scripture to return life to Gyumao, the super demon, one of the five gods who rule the heaven.

Genjo Sanzo, a sanzoboshi which is the highest rank of the monk, is called to Shayou Choan Palace. He is assigned to go to the west land where the chaos begins to find out who is behind all the turmoil that is rising and to stop its process. Son Goku, Sha Gojyo, and Cho Hakkai are assigned to join him. Sanzo didn’t agree to take them along at first because the three are demons, although each of them has part of human that sustains their sanity.
"



Son goku was born from a rock, has the extending staff, and is frequently called a monkey so he's who you're looking for. One of the 4 main characters. Probably the second most important

Saiyuki is pretty decent, I still enjoy the chinese wuxia movies (many adaptions) of the monkey king, wukong.

Monkey was created by both Heaven and Earth, he hatched out of a stone egg and, although he resembled the other monkeys in the area, he was a bit larger and more humanoid in appearance. Being that he hatched from the egg, he was initially referred to as 'The Stone Monkey.' He became their king when all the other monkeys were too afraid to jump through the water falls blocking the Water Curtain Cave. Since he was the only monkey brave enough to achieve this feat, they made him their king.

He learned great magical powers later on, due to his wanting to cheat death since he watched his own monkeys grow old and die. A patriarchal figure known as Suboddhi taught Wu'Kong the 72 transformations and how to fly on a cloud somersault. Later, after eating all the ripe Heavenly peaches and drinking the Elixir of life, he became immortal, but soon after challenging Buddha, he was tricked, then imprisoned under the Five Fingers mountain for 500 years. 500 years later, he repented and became a follower of Buddha and became the protector and disciple of the T'ang monk Tripitaka(Hsuan Tsang). Guan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy, was his spiritual godmother and she helped him many times in subduing demons and monster spirits.
Contrary to what you might have believed, Wu'Kong became Hsuan Tsang's first companion after his first companion ran off afraid of a tiger, which Wu'Kong promptly killed with his 'complaint rod'. Wu'Kong then skinned the tiger and wore it's skin as a skirt all the way throughout the pilgrimage to the 'Western Heaven'(India). Wu'kong later subdued the Dragon King's son that was then turned into a white horse for the T'ang monk to ride on(it would turn into a white dragon on occasion to help the T'ang monk and the Monkey King). Later, Wu'Kong subdued Pachieh(Pigsy) and Sha Monk(Sandy, a cannibal) and they too became disciples of the T'ang monk.

For more info, check out my Yahoo group entitled 'The Handsome Monkey King'

Original Chinese version the characters are called...

Monkey King(Sun Wu'Kong, Pilgrim, Great Sage Equal to Heaven, etc..) Chu Pachieh( Idiot, Pachieh, Wu'neng) Sha Monk (Wu'ching or sometimes Sandy)

Japanese call them San Goku, Chu HaKai, Sanzo, etc...

Chinese version is called Xi You Ji(Shee You Chi)
Japanese is called Saiyuki

Just an FYI :)

Monkey Magic!

"born From Egg On A Mountain Top"