Don't Worry Kougaiji, You'll Get 'Em Next Time

Review: Gensomaden Saiyuki
Updated: 10/17/04

Anime/Manga/Gaiden/Merchandise/Fandom

Reviewed by: NotHayama

Title rating: PG-13 for the anime, R for the manga. Doujinshi and fandom range from PG to NC-17.

-50-episode TV series: Gensomaden Saiyuki (2000-2001), complete. Released in English by ADV, complete.
-25 episode TV series: Saiyuki Reload (2003-2004), complete
-26+ episode TV series: Saiyuki Reload Gunlock (2004-), still running
-2-episode OVA (1999)
-Saiyuki Movie "Requiem" (2001)
-Interactive DVD "Kibou No Zaika" (2002)
-15 audio dramas for Saiyuki and Saiyuki Reload
-9 manga volumes "Gensomaden Saiyuki" from G Fantasy Magazine, currently translated by Tokyopop up to vol. 4
-1 volume Saiyuki Gaiden (1996-2002) from G Fantasy Magazine
-4 manga volumes "Saiyuki Reload" from ZERO-SUM Magazine, plus new chapters of Saiyuki Gaiden (2002-present), still running
-2 video games (Playstation and Playstation 2, Japanese systems only)

Students of Chinese mythology and Dragon Ball fans (hoo boy, I can already tell this review's off to a good start) should be familiar with the Saiyuki myth. The story of Son Goku and his journey West is not only a famous legend, but is also probably the most common piece of mythology found in anime and manga. If you want historical accuracy and education, however, Gensomaden Saiyuki is not for you. If you like explosions, angst, and bishounen of the not-quite-as-pretty-but-at-least-you-can-tell-they're-male variety, then you won't be disappointed.

Genjo Sanzo, Son Goku, Sha Gojyo and Cho Hakkai are four guys headed West to eventually, after many, many sidequests, deal with the ox king Gyu-Ma-Oh. Between fillers and one-shot villains our four protagonists are chased down by a group of sympathetic villains led by Gyu-Ma-Oh's son, Kougaiji, who could just as easily be a whiny goth poet fueled by the angst of divorced parents. Fun stuff? It can be. Good characters? Very much so. High quality, thought-provoking material? Well ... I'll get into that.

Anime

The three Saiyuki TV series--Saiyuki, Saiyuki RELOAD and Saiyuki RELOAD GUNLOCK--were created by Studio Pierrot. Each of them is based somewhat off the manga, but the animators worked much faster than the manga-ka, so quite a bit of the anime is original material. Most notably, the second half of the first series is a long filler arc, and RELOAD begins with quite a few fillers and also takes a manga-based story in a different direction at the end of the series. This summer, Saiyuki RELOAD GUNLOCK the anime and Saiyuki RELOAD the manga had a story arc that was practically in synch, so they keep going back to the manga when new material is available. That's pretty much the only way to turn 13 volumes of manga into 100+ anime episodes.

"So Gojyo dates a nine-year-old and I bring about the destruction of a church? Um, is there any chance we could have a filler about women on the beach?"

Besides the premise listed above, the Saiyuki anime doesn't have much of a plot, per say. It's more a loosely-connected set of one-shots and short story arcs that build off each other to a certain extent, but mostly in terms of character development as opposed to plot.

It's really difficult to label the Saiyuki anime as good or bad. The best word would probably be "inconsistent." When reading the manga, the quality of the story goes up and down quite a bit, and the anime episodes based on manga episodes follow suit--but then, Studio Pierrot added fillers. Saiyuki has some of the worst filler episodes I've ever seen. An excellent episode is often followed by a horrendous waste of cels. When watching this series be prepared to be at the edge of your seat one minute and stabbing your eyes out the next.

The four main guys' personalities are fairly stereotypical: Saiyuki is one of a few titles (most notably horrible Weiss Kreuz) that we call "Four Bishounen Series," aka the main cast consists of the Brooder, the Playboy, the Genki (energetic) One and the Wildcard--in this case Hakkai, who could be called the Nice One or the Creepy One depending on the episode. However, as the series progresses the characters flesh out and become far more interesting than their Weiss counterparts. Character relationships quickly fall into a pattern used pretty much every episode: Goku and Gojyo bicker like five-year-olds until Sanzo whacks them on their heads, all while Hakkai sits there smiling in his vaguely off-putting way and tells them to calm down. This is simple enough that even the awful filler writers get it right. Where this gets interesting is when things start getting bad, and the way the four emotionally and psychologically screwed up main characters react to each other.

Something must be said about the main villains, because they are one of the oddest and most entertaining parts of the show. Kougaiji and his crew are nicer and generally more concerned with not hurting innocent civilians than Sanzo's group--they also fail miserably at every task they're given. Goku doesn't even have to break a sweat to kick Kougaiji's ass. This is both interesting and irritating; interesting, because it's a twist to the normal formula, and irritating because the show lacks a threatening or even just competent villain that lasts more than a few episodes. As the story continues with the later two anime series, a few villains who started off as side characters come more to the forefront, but they still remain disorganized and not particularly threatening much of the time.

If you like coherent, hole-less plots with beginnings, middles, and ends, this series will probably drive you nuts. For an adventure show with a specific goal at the end of it the story is strangely unfocused. We know they're heading West, but they don't seem to care when they get there, or what they're going to do if they make it, or seem to think about what they're doing at all. Toward the end of the anime the writers realized the manga storyline was nowhere near an ending and instead came up with a lengthy filler plot that, despite cool moments, doesn't resolve anything. The last few episodes in particular leave a lot to be desired.

I know I'm scared.

The setting of Saiyuki is a bizarre mix of ancient Chinese, modern, and fantasy. It's pretty cool if you don't think too hard about it. The four guys drive around in a jeep that spends the rest of its time as a dragon, Sanzo's weapon is the amazingly cool exorcism gun, and the group's journey is funded by the Gold Card of the Gods. Just don't start asking yourself where a bunch of filthy city people with no electricity got a credit card scanner and everything will be fine.

The quasi-fantasy world of Saiyuki is flawed in more than just details, however. It is the home of two races: humans, who look like ordinary people (or as ordinary as anime characters ever look), and youkai (AKA demons), who have pointy ears and sharp fingernails. In normal times, both races were on good terms, but at the time of the series youkai have been going crazy because of Gyu-Ma-Oh's bad influence. This is a major plot point and one of the basic premises on which the show is based. However, apparently this insanity is selective or something. Some youkai are crazy and out of control, some are plain evil, and others are just fine. Yet the main characters don't show even the slightest remorse for killing tons of them. There are lots of series where random bad guys are nothing but cannon fodder, but this series goes out of its way to talk about how these villains are crazy, that killing them constitutes murder, and that this is something to angst over. But it never comes up as an issue. I mean, it's one thing to say that if someone's attacking you then you have to kill them, but do you have to rattle off snappy one-liners while doing so? The physics, morals, and societies of Saiyuki are so skewed that in order to enjoy the series you have to ignore them or simply decide you don't care.

The English-language release of the Saiyuki anime has met with a certain amount of criticism, most notably on script changes and the different version of Cho Hakkai's character in the dub. Personally, I think the dub cast did a pretty good job--the changes in dialogue made lines sound better in English, and as much as I enjoy hearing Akira Ishida (the Japanese voice of Hakkai) act, I also found Braden Hunt's (the English voice of Hakkai) different take on the character to be really interesting and fun to hear even if the acting wasn't quite as good. Differences in the script and acting can make watching a dub interesting, giving new insight or new subtleties to an old series. I know many people will not agree with me on this. As usual, whether or not you like the dub will depend more on your personal dub tolerance than the actual quality of the performance.

Other Animation

The first piece of Saiyuki animation was a mediocre OVA (video series). It was pretty boring filler material, and the voice cast was mostly different from that of the TV series (except for Akira Ishida as Hakkai, whose voice is instantly recognizable and completely awesome)--but the cast, despite featuring the voice of Recca for Goku, was not as good as the later one for TV.

"Requiem" is the Saiyuki movie that came out in Japanese theaters in 2002, but I've yet to see it. The most recent piece of Saiyuki animation is called "Kibou No Zaika" (The Sin of Ambition), a choose-your-own-adventure story playable on a normal DVD player. Since there's a lot of new animation in it, it can be worth a grab for many Saiyuki fans. A note for anyone planning on buying the bootleg of this DVD--I've heard the disc only plays through the animation without the interactivity, so purchase at your own risk. This is God's way of punishing you for buying a bootleg.

Manga

The Saiyuki manga was created by Kazuya Minekura, whose website can be found here. She began the series in 1994 as a doujinshi, and was picked up for the magazine G Fantasy in 1996. In 2002 the series left G Fantasy and moved into ZERO-SUM magazine under the new title Saiyuki RELOAD. ZERO-SUM has also been re-releasing their own versions of the original Saiyuki manga with new cover art. The Saiyuki manga is being released very slowly, with only 13 volumes of manga created over more than 8 years (hence the anime's problem with filler episodes). The manga is currently coming out in English through Tokyopop.

The Saiyuki manga is more focused and story-driven than its anime counterpart. Although there are still quite a few filler-esque one-shots, they usually further the plot or character development in some small way. There is also much less of the internal inconsistency of the anime, though youkai still get murdered to the tune of crappy one-liner comedy, at least they're all consistently crazy/brainwashed or have a good reason if they're not. As the story progresses, some of the minor villains from the anime get bigger parts, solving the no-actual-villian problem in a much more seamless and obvious way than the anime.

But the most noticeable aspect of the manga is the art. It's amazingly detailed, uses a ridiculous amount of screentone, and is both creepier and prettier than the anime art. The manga volumes are oversized and beautifully put together with color pages in the front--and if you have any interest at all in the series I'd suggest picking up one or two. The image shots have quite a bit of ridiculous fangirlish posing, including the notorious "I don't know how to button my pants" shots. Also note that the manga is quite a bit more adult and hardcore than the anime; where the anime had youkai exploding in bursts of light, the manga has spilling intestines, and where the anime had women wearing shirts, the manga has extremely detailed nipples.

The story of Gensomaden Saiyuki is made considerably more complicated by the Saiyuki Gaiden, a story about the pre-incarnations of the four Saiyuki boys. It appears as a few scattered episodes of the anime and a separate manga volume, plus some sporadically published chapters in the same magazine as the main Saiyuki story. The Gaiden is more plot-driven and fits together better than the main Saiyuki storyline; unfortunately, at this point in time it's really short and incomplete, and because the ending hasn't been written yet it's unclear how the past lives relate to the present ones. The manga version of the Gaiden is still running in ZERO-SUM Magazine, although apparently there hasn't been a new chapter in quite a while.

Merchandise

Did anyone else see this coming? Saiyuki's large cast of pretty boys have their faces plastered on everything from binders to tarot cards. They also bring out multiple calendars every year, most of which are on Lianne's wall. The merchandisers know their audience; if you're a big fan of any of the few female characters in the series, good luck finding anything with them on it. The Saiyuki boys have also cut quite a few audio dramas available on CD.

There's nothing the Saiyuki boys (or their past life counterparts) enjoy more than lying around in a big pile.

Kazuya Minekura's gorgeous art can be seen in a bunch of artbooks, entitled Backgammon 1, 2 and 3, and Salty Dog 1 and 2. I'm pretty sure that none of them are entirely Saiyuki art, but she's a good enough artist that she can draw whatever she likes and people will eat it up. There are too many good Saiyuki goodies out there to list them all in a review like this, but search around Journey to the Rest (linked below) if you want more information. Suffice to say, Saiyuki fans are among the luckiest when it comes to cool extras.

Fandom

First of all, here's Tokyopop's official page for the manga, and this is ADV's official site for the anime. Amusingly enough, before I went searching through ADV's actual site I mistook the official page for a fanpage that wasn't good enough to link to, with its sloppy design and lack of useful information.

There are some really great general Saiyuki sites out there. Journey to the Rest is an amazing, up-to-date Saiyuki news site that also features info and scans of doujinshi. Saiyuki is an extremely complicated and successful project, so if you need any basic information this is the place to look (it was also invaluable for finding dates and episode numbers for this review). Saiyuki.com is another extensive general info site.

Saiyuki has lucked out in the fanfiction department--it's easier to find a pretty good or even excellent fic for Saiyuki than it is for most other series. There's quite a bit of shounen ai and yaoi out there, so if you're sensitive about that kind of thing you'll have to be careful. Either way, searching the Saiyuki archives on fanfiction.net can be very rewarding. Also, if you're in the mood for a good AU, go to this site. It's an alternate universe fic about the Saiyuki boys in jail and comes in two versions: yaoi and non-yaoi. Just keep in mind the fic is very adult (NC-17) and ain't for the kiddies.

On an unrelated note, while searching for Saiyuki reviews I found this. It's a link to a review of a Japanese mini-series based on the Saiyuki myth (not the Kazuya Minekura manga version) that apparently was dubbed over and ran on the BBC. Just look at those pictures and tell me you're not amused.

And two seconds later, Goku's head bursts into flames.

Overview

Saiyuki is a guilty pleasure. Every time I watch the series I get annoyed at all the inconsistencies, plot holes, and awkward moments. The real reason it bugs me so much is that I'm attached to the series and its characters, and it annoys me when Saiyuki falls short of being the awesome show it could have been. Still, the manga makes up for many of the anime's shortcomings, and as long as you're a Saiyuki fan you won't run out of new stuff to feed your addiction for a long, long time. For being damn entertaining, Saiyuki gets 3.1 stars.

Lianne: What happens when you have a shounen ai/yaoi artist do a shounen series? Intriguing character stories tied together by a thin plot, no boy/boy action despite what the fangirls will tell you, and a lot of male flesh in the cover art. Saiyuki is engaging both for its genre merging and its unique qualities, and the Sanzo/Goku relationship isn't like any other manga relationship I've ever seen. 3.25 stars--it could've been way better, but there's still a lot of good as it is.