Saiyuki (1997– )

Four beautiful men in a jeep, with guns and cigarettes.

Keep the four travellers and the road west, throw out the piety, and you still have the best possible engine for a story about people who cannot stand each other and will not leave.

You want the fandom pillar, and you want the pilgrimage with its collar undone.

What it keeps and what it changes

Keeps: the party. Sanzo, Goku, Gojyo and Hakkai map onto the novel’s four exactly, and the tension between them is the novel’s tension.
Changes: the century and the mood. This is a violent, funny, chain-smoking road manga, and the sutras are a MacGuffin.

Whose story is it?

all four of theirs, in rotation — the most genuinely ensemble version here after the CCTV series.

How much time does it ask?

Kodansha’s hardcovers run 400 pages each.

Kodansha Comics, The Original Series Resurrected Edition — 400-page hardcovers.

Where to find it

Buy the hardcover — Bookshop.org →

Other ways to get it: Hardcover — Amazon ↗ · Kindle — Amazon ↗

Borrow it free: Borrow on Libby ↗ · Find at your library — WorldCat ↗

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More ways west: The Anthony C. Yu Translation, revised (2012) · Julia Lovell’s Monkey King (2021) · Arthur Waley’s Monkey (Grove Press, 1958)