Cheap Saiyuki - Journey Begins (Vol 1) - with Series Box and T-Shirt (DVD) Price

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Customer Reviews of Saiyuki - Journey Begins (Vol 1) - with Series Box and T-Shirt

I found both the subbed and dubbed versions entertaining; despite violence and the dark tone, this is a funny series. All four main characters have interesting pasts and sharply defined characters, and they soon feel like old friends.

Son Goku shares the same basic characteristics here that he does in the original "Journey to the West", Dragonball, and all the other stories he's appeared in: he's eternally hungry, an excellent fighter, and he has a feral, almost uncontrollable side which could be dangerous to his friends. He's also adorable. Don't be misled into thinking this has anything to do with Dragonball (a series I'm also fond of).

Anyway, there's 5 eps per disc and 50 eps total, plus a gorgeous movie and 2 OVAs, so go ahead and take the plunge! Saiyuki is great fun.

Finally, one for the girls too!
Yes, three hot biseinen and one ever-hungry bakazaru (stupid monkey)! The official review above mentions how 'loosely' this is based on the classic "Journey to the West" but frankly Saiyuki is far closer to the classic legend than the much-touted Dragonball. Which *still* isn't saying much, unfortunately... ... If you want the original legend, Amazon sells some very nice translations, but if you want broody fun, handsome main characters and plenty of off-beat adventure, give Saiyuki a try.

There are dozens of anime series out there that feature girl-heavy casts all panting after one or two main male characters - the stuff of most 15-17 year old boys fantasies, it seems - and a powerful marketing force, at least in most producer's eyes. But half the world's population is female after all... this is an action-adventure series that still appeals to the boys for it's frequent use of rather slapstick humor as well as violence, but it's slanted to the girls too with a whole pack of angst-ridden characters just trying to survive in a strange and ever-changing fantasy world. That's another point to mention; this is an odd amalgam of fantasy/modern times. Just go with it! There are guns and jeeps and cigarettes but also horse-and-wagon transport, rural life, magic and apparently fuedal political structures. There is no real attempt made to explain the rational behind the world's setting, but then a great deal of anime asks you to accept even wilder premises, so Saiyuki doesn't break the mold that much. Except for the fact that the some of the 'villians' are more sympathetic at times than our heroes!

You'll hear the term 'bishounen' tossed around a bit on anime reviews, but that just means 'pretty boy' and is more commonly used because so many anime series tend to be about high school aged protaganists - however, 'biseinen', as I used it above, means 'pretty men' and that's a huge distinction. Because the Saiyuki men certainly ain't boys... except for Son Gokuu. Expect a bit more 'adult' humor and situations because of that.

I bought the NewType USA with the preview CD with the initial episode for this release on it. And the dub, frankly, stinks. The voices aren't distinct enough to make the characters unique and the 'Americanizing' done to the script drastically alters at least one of the main character's personality. Nope, sorry, Hakkai is NOT a foul-mouthed surfer-boy as he seems in the preview. He's supposed to be a soft-spoken, polite and rather reserved man. I shudder to think of what else ADV has changed about the dub story as well, given just the inital preview. So I suggest you watch the subtitled version instead to get the real Saiyuki experience. And no, this isn't a profound anime experience like "Spirited Away", but then, it's not touted as such. This is character-focused action-adventure that occasionally asks some interesting questions about loyalty, friendship and determination. But it's not deep and it leaves a great deal of it up to the viewer - or at least it did in the original.

I only gave this DVD 3 stars for ADV's version of Saiyuki based on the horrible dub preview disk. But if the subtitled version available on this DVD sticks to the actual story (and rumor has it that it does *whew*) then it's still worth the price. Frankly, I'm an otaku-anime-geek who only ever watches subtitled versions anyway but I understand the economic necessity of dubs for the general viewing audience - I just wish the material was treated with more respect by the importing companies. And while this means anime is coming over to the US faster and faster all the time, it's disturbing that companies like ADV feel it's their right to change the original stories so much. Leave it be. The cultural differences aren't *that* hard to explain - and the changes in the dub that I saw weren't improvements at all, in my humble opinion. They were just annoying.

But join Genjo Sanzo, Cho Hakkai, Sha Gojyo, Hakuryuu and Son Gokuu on their journey West! It's a heck of a ride...

Kind of disappointing
I bought this anime's first volume outright for a few reasons: 1) I have always been fascinated by the "Journey to the West" story of Chinese legend, and 2) I owned a wallscroll of this anime and thought I might as well try to get into a new series, since 3) I had just finished collecting the entire Excel Saga collection.

Don't expect much development of plot. Some anime take three or four episodes before the ball gets rolling (some times even an entire series!) but right off the bat, episode 1, you get thrown into the conflict. From their explanation, a gas is moving through the land and making demons kill things. This is bad because demons for a long time have mingled among the humans. Apparently a group of individuals are not starting a race war between demons and humans, but they also want to revive an ancient evil spirit! To counter this, the gods (who can't do some divine intervention-style smack down I guess) hire Sanzo the priest to travel westward to combat the evil ones. He is accompanied by three demons: Goku, Gojyo, and Hakkai. Goku is the monkey king of fame. Gojyo is a water sprite who can't swim and likes to hit on women. Hakkai is...er...well he's got this monocle that looks like half a pair of glasses fell off his face, and his pet is a tiny dragon that can turn into a jeep and not much else.

I couldn't help but notice some thing as I went through episodes 2-5...namely how PREDICTABLE this thing was. When they went to an inn I thought to myself, "They're going to get attacked aren't they?", and sure enough they were. When they went to a Buddhist temple I thought, "They're going to get attacked, aren't they?", and sure enough they were. On Episode 4 they go to a house where the woman used to love a demon, to which I thought, "He's gonna come in the episode isn't he?", and sure enough he did. I kind of wish the series wouldn't try to throw in cheap action every episode and instead centered around their characters, since we've just been introduced to them and our only knowledge is that they're basic archetypes. Goku is the bratty kid, Gojyo is the womanizer, Sanzo is the slick n' smooth leader, and Hakkai is the effeminate male which dorky otakus across America will claim is gay for the rest of time. Plus, Goku and Gojyo fight over food in scenes that I had already seen about 1000 times before in the "Slayers" series.

Come to think of it...I noticed A LOT of cliches as I watched this - they overdo the stereotype anime affects to the nth degree. There are a lot of eye close-ups, pose-shots during a fight, and pre-battle tauntings. Not to mention every episode seemed to be on the verge of being melodramatic - for example in the second episode Goku meets a girl at an inn who hates demons because they killed one of her friends. When they get attacked by assassins she finds out Goku is a demon and says she hates him because he lied...which is a really bitchy thing to do considering the poor guy was defending her life right in front of her! I wouldn't mind things like the human-demon love affair in episode 5 except that its dragged on for almost 15 minutes of the episode's timespan. It wasn't any thing new, and Gojyo's involvement with knowing the demon lover is yet another anime storyline cliche: one of the heroes always knows one of the villains from a past life.

Another reason I wish they hadn't done too much action was because...well...the animators weren't GOOD at it. Action scenes usually consisted of a character in a fighting pose with lines flashing behind them, followed by a picture of the villain flying in another direction. I couldn't really call it exciting since I barely knew what was going on - editing problems made it seem like they didn't plan the fight scenes out at all ("Hey wait, he was over there...and he was over there...AAAAAAH!!"). Also, the affects are awful! You remember back in the day when you have that software called "Goo" where you could morph shapes? For a character exploding in episode 2 all they did was slowly expand their body out like you could do in the Goo program. It doesn't look like they blew up, it makes it look like it turned into two big donuts!! They tried the same thing in episode 3 with a slowly forming mist, but its so painfully obvious what they used to make the effect that its almost as bad as having a space ship with bright white string holding it up.

I was about to decide to sell this DVD and start anew with another series...but then I found out there was a sixth episode. I sat through it, and was impressed! They had action scenes that were actually well choreographed...and actually had MOVEMENT! Granted they still had melodrama, what with the love story between nominal villain #1 and his female sidekick (why is it so easy to have good looking women fall in love with you in these things?).

Right now I've decided to hold on to the 1st DVD, but I'll probably rent the second one first. If I don't like where the series is going I'll have to abandon all hope with it (although frankly I'll probably start on another series any way...). Reading the other reviews, I might be missing some thing or the series might get better. Oh well...I write this review with an open mind.