There goes the sun with the trip still on

Book report: Journey to the West

Introduction: “Hate mail” unsent and proto comic book

Dear Game Science:

I got good news and bad news.

The good first: thanks to you lot launching Black Myth: Wukong in 2024, my 34 years old cynical ass finally decided to read through Journey to the West. Clearly, your relentless marketing campaign did something.

The bad is that you Disney wannabe would wish that I haven’t read it. I am still not buying your so-called “first Triple-A game created in China”, you cynical assholes! Not only are you lot a bunch of creatively bankrupt public domain miners, you also added one more pointless sequel to a world loaded with the bastards. So, I am not going to conduct business with you. May you lot get chewed up soon after the next round of investment is in!

Yours Sincerely

A “neighbor” in the city hosting miHoYo’s global headquarters.

It seems like that my cold of “would rather read than game” is not going anywhere any time soon. So, I am blogging about a centuries old novel that inspires a recent bestselling game and resembles an animated series Giantbomb has a watch along podcast to.

No, the podcast is not All Systems Goku covering Dragon Ball Z Kai, even though that show does have the Japanized (Don’t look at me. Microsoft Word thinks it’s current.) name of Wukong on it. I am talking about Jeff Jeff’s Bizarre Adventure series two on Stardust Crusaders. The comic and the show are about a journey to the west after all.

While the late Akira Toriyama gave his hero in Dragon Ball the name “Wukong”, an ungrateful brat to escort, a pig-headed companion and a bandit turned comrade, the book dropped its Journey to the West facade as soon as its first material art tournament. JoJo Part 3, on the other hand, follows as closely as it can, its journey to the west is just longer, Japan to Egypt rather than China to India. The manga is as laser focus on its characters’ task as the Chinese novel, the former being kill DIO to save Holly Joestar Kujoh’s life, the latter being getting Buddhism holy text to enlighten all. Both feature a sausage party, though I have my doubt about Sun Wukong’s genital, him being a sentient monkey busting out of a rock and all.

Tune setting

Full-on campy corny fun!

----Chris Stewart on CCTV’s Journey to the West, the History of China’s 100th episode

It’s tempting to consider 1986’s Journey to the West as a reaction to that Japanese Monkey business earlier, very much like how those Russian language War and Peace flicks were reacting to Hollywood’s er, abridged adaption. But yours truly prefer to think it as taking cue from something like BCC’s I, Claudia: Chinese tv show makers back then just tried to make beloved books into beloved shows. Otherwise, the Four Great Novels would not have been all made into shows that are considered as definitive adaption even until these days.

Being a book in the Gods and Monsters fiction genre, Journey to the West the book is a playful one through and through. It’s only fair that a faithful adaption of such book to lay into the camp, corn and even cheese. Despite all the author’s poetic when it comes to monsters’ self-introductions and action, puns are used in more than one occasion and as early as the first chapter.

Take the name “Sun Wukong” for example, the “sun” in it is taken from Hu Sun, one of many ways to say “monkey” in Chinese. Though how those puns were used in the English translation, I would not know. I read it in the original Chinese. Still with punctuations, of course,

When tabletop game master is as inflexible as video game mechanics

Sun Wukong is the only character who gets a multiple chapters long origin story. It’s so robust on itself and separate from the titular westward trip that Shanghai Animated Film Studio managed to make its magnum opus, Havoc in Heaven just based on the first 7 chapters of the book. Well, minus Wukong’s training “montage” and easily defeating some Z tier monster in the beginning of course.

After Wukong gets his size shifting staff from the dragon-headed Chinese counterpart to Poseidon, what can be considered as the Chinese Olympians starts their crackdown. With all twists and turns ignored here, I just want to say that Wukong’s heavenly er uprising would make one certain Kratos eat his heart out. While the monkey has plenty time to enjoy the spoil he earns, the developers at Santa Monica never even lets their ashen skinned anti-hero enjoy a sip of ambrosia…

Anway, as the Chinese pantheon’s infernal solution to this monkey business fails, enters their friendly neighbor, the Buddha himself. Not one but two English speakers on the internet had described Wukong as an overpowered Dungeon and Dragon character, so I am taking the baton and calling Buddha an inflexible Game Master here. And his method is polar opposite to what the Wukong player does: while the latter brings additional sheets of paper (Seventy-two transformation along would take up several.) to the table as skill list, the former just prepares one single result whether one or twenty is rolled.

Combat for the most part is easy win for Wukong. But when it comes to passing speech check opposite Master Xuanzang, Wukong can never get a win for no matter how pig-headed Bajie’s words sound. All in all just to fill the number of Eight-one Ordeals, with Nine Times Nine being of significance in Buddhism. And before all that, Wukong cannot escape Buddha’s palm and is imprisoned for several centuries.

Then in chapter 8 there is Guanyin being a much nicer and far less bitchy Amanda Waller putting together a Task Force X for a long-term (Given that her showing up with clean-up crews for several times.) mission of 14 years. There are the aforementioned pig-headed Bajie, an underwater dragon prince turned horse (Whose only time getting a piece of the action is during Wukong’s first of two exiles.), just there to do a good job as punishment Wujing, and of course Wukong. All to escort the most spine-less wimp that side of Hal “Octcan” Emmerich from China to India.

When you don’t go to the “west”, the “west” comes to you.

The real-life story of one Xuanzang in the seventh century is a tale about faith and courage. The same cannot be said about the fictionalized Xuanzang in Journey to the West, even with its mystified beginning. When Journey to the West was written, it was said that intellectuals in China were likely re-introduced to biblical tales through records of one Admiral Zheng He’s sea voyage. Funny thing being that the tale of Moses might be taken as origin myth for some sect of Hinduism. Reading about how this fictionalized Xuanzang as an orphan in a bucket picked up some monk did make one wonder if that’s how Wu Chengen put in what he knew about foreign myth in the book.

Then there is Li Shi Min’s two days long stay in the underworld. It’s a 50 50 on whether Wu knew about them sequels to the Iliad, both feature a heroic king ventures in and out of the underworld. Being the emperor who ushered in the Chinese golden era called Tang, Shi Min gained his power through kin-slaying. And one of reasons why he was painted as a good ruler is that he felt guilt for said kin-slaying until the day he died. So, this trip to the underworld might not come out of foreign influence but just how the emperor was seen throughout history.

Journey to the West was sold on its seamless transaction between Chinese myth and Buddhism lore. Read it as a Baptist Christian and listener of History of Rome, it’s hard not to see Xuanzang being mystified into an infant orphan floating in a bucket as foreign to China tales peppered in. Guess it reads better in a novel than one teenaged orphan followed his elder brother into a temple after their father past.

Good Budda, man! Grow a spine!

Fear your god-tier enemies, but fear your pig-headed comrades more.

-----Modern Chinese proverb

It’s very likely the line above came from gaming. First in the Massive Multiplayer Online context, as Raid Bosses wipe out the whole crew just because some motherfuckers do not do their parts. Then it was applied to less-than-helpful friendly AIs. My mother, who do not play video game and is not too happy about the fact that I do, use the line to describe how siblings of her generation are divided and conquered by their parents and Hobbs’ Leviathan alike. Disfunction in families caused by distrust and disunity among siblings in short.

The dynamic among Wukong, Bajie and Xuanzang in Journey to the West fills the bill, with too much is asked of Wukong and too much is given to Bajie by Xuanzang. It’s not exactly a dynamic adventure speculative fiction writers nowadays would create, unless they are deliberately taking a piss on the Zhu Bajie archetype.

While the historical Xuanzang is a believer so devoted to his faith that he got to India by hook by crook and eventually finished his study well enough to meet the emperor of Tang, the one in this work of fiction is just a needy coward. When he lost his first horse and Wukong needed to scout ahead, this worm of a man asked the monkey to stay by his side until that dragon prince turned horse came along. The other two joined the party just so Wukong can do what he does best: destroy anything in his way.

While Wujing is doing his job well, Bajie is a thorn in the thigh of this story. While he got one moment or two of destroying some enemies, this visually talking pig-headed motherfucker is more trouble than help, caused Wukong first exile from the party and were damsel in distress more often than not. With the so-called Eighty-one Ordeals feel like retconned in by the penultimate chapter, one got the feeling that the author just did not know how to handle this one at first. But the rest of party going “Oh, shut up, Bajie!” as they entered India proper does feel so satisfying.

Will hunt monsters for food, shelter and/or passage

It would be fair to say that the party in Journey to the West is usually on the offense, even though they are monks believing in love and peace. With Xuanzang being an old virgin, all sorts of monsters believe that eating him up would give them immortality. So half of the book is about he getting caught, then probably Bajie getting caught for look like food then Wukong and Wujing got them out. And if the monster has some ties to heaven, Guanyin would show up with a clean-up crew to take it in.

The book being considered a “great novel” might come from the formula changes up in latter chapters, including friends Wukong made apparently before he got on Chinese Olympians’ shit list. There is one evil monk-killing king that was heavenly appointed so Wukong had to suggest the party disguise their way through. King got punished by having him along with all members to go bald instantly, guess only some intellectuals back in those days would find it to be justice.

Then there are 2 monster hunts as payment for the food offered. First time by a rich king, and of course Xuanzang would remain in his court as a hos.. I mean guest. Second time by some poor peasants, and only because monks were accused of being free-loaders when they refused. Those 2 episodes happening back-to-back does make one wonder if the book were written by one single author. Oh, well, coming up with 81 ordeals ain’t easy, it was surprising to see those kept straight in the penultimate chapter.

Conclusion: those late to a party shall weep at the gate

Only thing is: that Journey to the West looks like a walk in the park compared to what I went through!

-----Tagline for Puppet War Chronicle Vol 1 (of 3) King in the Castle by Suo Hefu

Reading Journey to the West among science fiction novels written in Chinese and the second to third decade of 21^st century is to see the 16^th century novel’s long-lasting influence. The aptly named “Newer Generation” sci-fi novelists almost always take up the road trip framework when they got ambitious enough for something long form, while their predecessors of “New Generation” usually prefer talks in situation rooms and experiments conduct in all sorts of labs to solve some crisis.

Then there is Game Science and how they opened their game with enlightened Wukong facing another heavenly crackdown. “What kind of Force Awakens bullshit is that?” I dare to ask. When Shanghai Animated Film Studio was at its most Disney wannabe phase a quarter century ago, they shoehorned Sun Wukong into an animated feature that the warrior Buddha has no business in. But at the very least, seeing the monkey king being a mentor figure back then is still better than this meaningless sequel horseshit now.

Journey to the West being a pure fantasy novel among the Great Four probably has the most satisfying ending with the whole party achieve some degree of enlightenment or another. Within the other 3, 2 have known ending points in history and they are no fairytale. Dream of Red Chamber is pretty much about the decline and fall of one once prestige house. None, I dare say none contains possibility space for sequels. Yet, in Game Science’s Disney wannabe ambition of taking two steps in one, they made a sequel of Journey to the West. So happy all those millions sold, but don’t think you all did anything meaningful here.