Saiyuki: Don't ask, don't tell... don't care?

Sometimes epic literature invites bastardization. Sometimes it just begs for a video game. Sometimes it needs both. And MEN. Manly men, cuddling close to stave of the hard cold... of loneliness.

Enter: Saiyuki - The Journey West!


(To say that the images of our heroes shown above put them "out of character" would be putting it lightly.)

A dark evil clouds the land, the once peaceful demon-folk (basically elves) that lived alongside humanity have turned violent and bloodthirsty. A higher power calls upon an unlikely monk to gather 3 dangerous demons and half demons to halt the progression of this evil and save the land of Shangri-La from the return of an ancient evil.

So a clear problem is established, a specific villain is looking to return and you have the address for the general location of his resurrection, you have the means to stop this evil entirely AND you have a dragon that can magically turn into vehicles to haul your crew of warriors to accomplish the mission. So for the sake of all that is sacred, you head straight to your goal and save the world, right?

Pfft, whatever!!! Screw that noise! Turn the dragon into a jeep, dude! Road trip! Hey, got any food?

Which... basically sets the tone for the entire series. Instead on just GOING to bad guy central, our heroes stop for anything and everything within miles of their path of travel and whenever a craving for snacks comes up in conversation, which is to say that it comes up in EVERY conversation. Or cigarettes. Apparently the magical land of Shangri-La has a huge market for menthols. Nevermind if there's a pigeon or a branch laying in the road, that has the making of a 2-part episode.

By the time you're ten episodes in, you can see the writing on the wall in that our heroes couldn't find their asses with both hands and a map. But finding eachother's asses... that's a different story entirely. As the opening visuals convey there's some not-so-subtle homosexuality to be dealt with here, not that 4 dudes wandering the backwoods aimlessly for an unspecified amount of time with two of them constantly demanding things to put in their mouths is gay. I didn't say that. I just want to be clear.

When a guy HUGs like that, dresses like that and WALKs like that, there's telltale signs that distinguish which locker room he'd RATHER be looking into. Just sayin. Furthermore, I don't care that there's elements of homosexuality in this story and I would otherwise welcome more of it if it weren't trying so hard to be coy about it and go through all the by-the-numbers pairing with females (though, nothing serious because they can't let some chicks get in the way of their "fishing" time with the guys) and when trying to throw them at women doesn't work (which it doesn't) they throw them at the skeletons in their closet, which must be really scary for them because they're already so deep in the closet that they're finding Christmas presents!


(This is a major part of each episode. The whole "I'm not touching youuuu!", "He's on my side of the jeep!", "He keeps stealing my food!", "He's blowing smoke at me!", etc. stands as one of the major things that keep the audience in a constant state of amusement and confusion.)

There are two big strengths to Saiyuki, the first is decent visuals. It's not much to watch, but it's actually pretty pleasant to look at and in a visual media that really means more than you might think. Clearly more than Saiyuki's producers thought when they signed it on for another series and chucked the decent visuals out the window. The second big thing is that it has an absolutely amazing english dub that ADV Films put together, which makes it a much stronger series, not to mention one of the funniest things I've ever had the pleasure of watching. The language is more foul than most, but its all very appropriate for the context of its use and establishes better character depth as a result.

The action is debatable as it never reaches the overpowered and frenzied ballet of violence you see in the opening. It's mostly slowed to a crawl where there's a lot of posing and wisecracking amidst pointless angst over ideals, the concept of justice, the meaning of family, etc.

Mind you, these are fights usually involving the same eight characters taking place outside restaurants, hotels and grocery stores. Just to keep things in the proper perspective that this "epic" sets up for the audience. The theme set for the episode even becomes a discussion point for each the party members fighting and they kick comments back and forth like they're in some sort of therapy workshop.

I should touch on our antagonists at least a little bit. Our heroes' demonic counterparts led by Kougaiji (himself being dressed like Britney Spears' backup dancers), is the son of the great evil being resurrected, and his band of evil elves (consisting of a well-meaning meathead, a busty, airheaded sacrifice and his large breasted little sister who is basically a female Goku) at some point stop being a mere detriment to progress and become part of the damn decor because with their ceaseless appearances they abandon all tension or drama in their fights which becomes so casual that they practically ask each other to dance. To put this into perspective, they literally do that in the series after this, after which they make no apologies for beating a dead horse with uninspired, quip-driven combat that was already a weak point of the franchise.

The Characters, despite my bitching, are the greatest element this show has to its name. Its cast is so varied and bizarre that their motivations and resolutions alone aren't as interesting as their base personalities and how they interact with one another. The violent monk carrying a pistol has a strange and goofy back story, but seeing a genuine human warmth occasionally emanate from his person is profoundly strange and yet it's STILL not as strange as seeing all the characters (good AND bad, particularly Lirin and Goku) as they fawn over him and beg for his approval or even an angry glance.

As problems go they looked at Saiyuki and expected it to be as successful as say... Bleach or Naruto, so they basically bled the franchise to death as most episodes contribute nothing to the main plot if anything to the plot at all like they were waiting for investors to come raining down on them or something. It plods all over the landscape in trying to milk the errand our heroes are sent on without offering meaningful plot development, character arcs or coherent closure. The result of such sloppy work is an incredibly unsatisfying story.

Without wandering any further west, Saiyuki is a decent anime made better by ADV's dubbing expertise. On its own it's preachy, slow and dull. With the dub, it's preachy, funny, slow and entertaining. It's not the best show in the world, but it's certainly worth your time if only to see the difference a good dub can make on so-so anime titles. It's one the ADV's titles so it's not as easy to find as it used to be, but it's cheap on the secondary market and AnimeNetwork has the rights to show it still so it frequents Netflix's instant watch program on and off.



(Uh... why are you antagonizing the damn narrator? This is the opening for Saiyuki: Reload, the 2nd series intended to pick up after this one)

Spinning Off...
Misinterpreting the high praise Saiyuki received while in the wise hands of ADV Films, Pioneer/Geneon snatched the follow-up series without bothering to examine the show itself and without considering an appropriate english dub. The original series had a lot going for it in terms of great looking visuals, a marginally coherent story and ADV's outstanding english dub all conspired to make a much stronger and effective product than it would have been otherwise.

Reload, the follow-up series, has declining production values from the first episode on and lacked an even remotely acceptable dub, much less a worthwhile script that wasn't ripped verbatim from the base japanese translation. I actually threw in the towel early and stopped after the first DVD as the dub, visuals and lack of any obvious plot drove me away entirely. Since ADV didn't handle anything else and since my enjoyment of the series always ran a razor's edge anyway, Pioneer/Geneon made my decision very easy and I haven't been inclined to look back since. There's also a Saiyuki: Gunlock that followed Reload and that just blows my mind since Reload started off so badly and Saiyuki was already on shaky ground to begin with. FYI, I don't plan on discussing the spinoffs with any energy because I waste enough time in this world without trying to comment on turds and their levels of polish.