Reviews in Brief: Kazuya Minekura's Saiyuki

Kazuya Minekura's Saiyuki is something of a departure for Reviews in Brief, at least as it's been running so far: it's not yaoi, even though the character design tends quite markedly toward a bishonen aesthetic: characters are slender, muscular, androgynous, and very sexy, and that's where it stops. Pretty much.

The story is a retelling of an old Chinese tale, "Xi-You-Ji," usually translated as "Journey to the West." By way of forewarning, Minekura has written her title in kanji characters that also read as "Journey to the Extreme." The inside cover simply notes "Journey to the Max."

Once the world was a paradise called "Shangri-La," where all was in harmony, the foundations of law and religion were laid down, and men and demons ("youkai") lived together in a spirit of peace. And then a wave of minus energy started flowing through the world, created from the forbidden blending of human science and youkai magic: someone was trying to free the demonlord Gyumaoh, sealed in his castle five hundred years before. The Three Aspects summon the Buddhist priest Genjyo Sanzo, keeper of one of the Five Sutras, and charge him with stopping this sacrilege. He will have three companions: the Monkey King Son Goku, released from imprisonment for a crime he doesn't remember committing; Sha Gojyo, a kappa (water sprite), the son of a forbidden union between human and youkai; and Cho Hakkai, a legend himself, a demon slayer and keeper of the shape-changing dragon Hakuryu. This is the story of their adventures on the way to India.

It's a classic quest story, updated in an in-your-face sort of way: Goku is all stomach and fun, living for food and games -- and a good fight; Hakkai seems to be a kindly, somewhat abstracted young man who turns deadly in the blink of an eye; Gojyo has two weaknesses, good tobacco and bad women, and tends to chop his adversaries into cutlets; while Sanzo, who is a Buddhist only by misapprehension, smokes, drinks, and carries a pistol -- which he won't hesitate to use. And we see the dragon Hakuryu most often as the group's main means of transport -- a Jeep.

Minekura has put together a marvelous story, rich, funny, plumbing unexpected depths as the backstory on each character comes out, and refreshingly free of the black/white, good/evil dichotomy one might expect in a comic book adventure story. The graphics are excellent, somewhat more dense than I've been accustomed to, but clear and displayng a masterful use of tone. It's interesting to see Minekura's blending of Japanese, Chinese and Indian iconography, particularly in her portrayal of a group of characters with the worst attitudes you can imagine.

This one's from Tokyopop. The first series, which covers the first half of the journey, runs nine volumes, and is continued in Saiyuki Reload.

I am not, as I usually do, going to post the covers for each volume -- I mean, c'mon, there are nine of them -- but I'll give you an interior shot: