Saiyuki Review

Hello minions who thought this blog was dead! It is I, Rinrei, back with a new review! If you put in the effort to read the title then you will know that I am reviewing something called Saiyuki.

Saiyuki is a manga series that was created between the years of 1997 and 2002 with recent updates occurring now after the artist and author recovered from a critical surgery. The author is Kazuya Minekura who also wrote the sequels Saiyuki Reload, Saiyuki Reload Blast and the prequel Saiyuki Gaiden. This series is focused on four main characters who are loosely based on the main characters of the Chinese classic novel 'Journey to the West' and focuses on these main characters as they travel across a world infested with demons gone feral aiming to prevent the resurrection of Gyumaoh and prevent the madness from further causing conflicts between the humans and the demons. On the way they face assassins, dangerous adventures, and their own tragic pasts.

First of all, I'm going to go over what I find good about this series. My first choice is the characters. Gosh darn these characters. To start with, they seem to have basic personalities that clash with one another causing conflicts within the group. However, as the series progresses, these characters develop greatly into characters you can't help but love.

Let's start of with Goku. Goku appears to be a very cheerful, happy-go-lucky moron who only cares about what's up for dinner and fighting. That's just barely scratching the surface, though. The truth is that Goku was sealed away for 500 years in a prison completely isolated from the outside world with no memories of his previous life other than his name. The main reasons for this are revealed in Saiyuki Gaiden and will undoubtedly wrench your heart out, stomp on it, and then roll it into a pancake. That whole series makes you cry because you know what will happen. In some way, this is the main reason you love Goku, because he can still smile and be happy.

This connection with the characters spreads not only to our anti-heroes, but to our 'villains'. Unlike most villains in anime and manga, these villains have a good, legit reason for doing what they're doing and you can really sympathize with them (except Gyokumen Koushou who you just want dead, but knowing this show she'll also end up having a good reason and you will probably feel bad about hating her so much).

This series is also very capable of pulling on your heart strings by making you really connect with these character, both minor and major, and when a character actually cries (a rare occurrence unlike some anime) you feel really uncomfortable. The number of times I just wanted to hug a character because of something bad happening to them is unbelievable. The way they do this is with the use of music (mainly in seasons other than the first season) and the fact that this really is a sad moment. At times, the voice acting can be really good, and it's the dialogue of a vast amount of the series that really gets to you; you can really feel their pain and that's what makes this series good.

Now onto the not-so-good parts of this series. I must point out that a large majority of this is due to the first season where the author and the animation artists were trying to understand where the story was actually going, but I feel that if you want to keep a good fanbase you got to make a good first impression, and I feel the first season did not pull that off as well as it should have.

The voice acting was not so pleasant in my opinion. Sanzo's voice was too high, Hakkai's too airy, and Goku's too forced. Now I won't deny this was only in the first half of the first season where the actors were trying to get their bearings (much like how the author was trying to figure out what to do) and this definitely improved in the Gaiden series, but it still made it very difficult to find realistic. The dubbing in the second and third season was better, but I still didn't like how Goku's voice sounded and I would have felt more comfortable if Greg Ayres had stayed and used one of his more realistic voices. Other than that, it was okay and the only voice actors I particularly liked were Gojyo and later on Sanzo.

Again, this is just the first season, but I found the animation and colouring to be incredibly poor quality with overused speedline backgrounds and cheap angle shots that made us feel less engaged with the show. The only real reason I didn't like the colouring was because they made Gojyo's hair hot pink. The half-breeds in this series are all stated to have red hair and red eyes and yet here's Gojyo with hot pink hair. It's just a nit-pick but I still don't like it. Fortunately, the second season clears this up for us, allowing for more realistic colours and better fight sequences that make us feel more engaged with the incident.

In the first season near the beginning, some music is used at the wrong time. The music itself is amazing, definitely something to get addicted to, but in the first half it is definitely used when not necessary. Again, this is fixed in the second season.

A final little nit-pick of mine is the sloppy writing of the first half of the first season. The dialogue seems somewhat forced and the flashbacks appear unnecessary and awkward when they are used. This gradually improves as you get closer towards the end of the first season and seems almost entirely fixed by the second season and only gets better and better. The show hasn't ended yet (considering the author only just got back onto it), but I can safely tell you it's going to be an epic ending.

So, we've finally come to our conclusion. Saiyuki is actually a very good show, and if you watch from beginning to end you can see it progress from an amateur series into something you can really engage with. The only thing that drags this series down is the first season, but good news is that you don't have to watch the first season to understand the entire show since almost none of the episodes are completely linked together (mainly because it's a journey series), so I definitely recommend avoiding the first season if you want a good first impression.

Overall, I give this series a 4/5. Good job!