Journey To The West

***Journey To The West*** is a video series about the novel "Journey To The West" which is one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature. It is also one of the original Stories about the 5-man Band trope.

It is narrated by Red, and is part of the *Legends Summarized* series.

## Characters

### Main

* Tripitaka - a pure-hearted virtuous monk chosen by the Buddha to journey to the Thunderclap Monastery and retrieve three magical scriptures called the Tripitaka to deliver to the eastern people. Voiced by Blue. Running gags involving Tripitaka include him always believing obviously-disguised demons are real people and always getting kidnapped or imprisoned by demons. Tripitaka also goes by Xuanzang (he's based on the actual historical character) and is an incarnation of Golden Cicada, a bodhisattva and former disciple of the Buddha, and as such is a target for the entire demon population, as eating him grants immortality.
* Sun Wukong - the boisterious and impulsive Monkey King, and the muscle of the group. Wukong gained immortality in five different ways before the gods just decided to boil him alive, at which point he broke out and went on a rampage through heaven before being stopped by the Buddha. Voiced by Red. Running gags involving Wukong include him doing impulsive things and getting in trouble for it and doing reasonable things and Tripitaka not believing his reasoning.
* Pigsy - a celestial spirit who was cast out of heaven and imprisoned in the form of a pig demon. Pigsy wields a 9-pronged rake that can rend the soul of any being asunder with one blow, and is very prideful and cowardly. Voiced by Red. Running gags involving Pigsy include him trying to prove he's better than Wukong and running away, and him killstealing.
* Sandy - another fallen celestial spirit who was cast out of heaven to become a river demon. Sandy is very much the voice of reason in a group full of general idiocy and pulls Wukong and Pigsy together in the absence of Tripitaka. He wields a magical wooden staff.
* Dragon Horse - an ENORMOUS F\*CK YOU DRAGON assigned to be Tripitaka's new horse after his old one was eaten (ironically, by himself). The Dragon Horse's first major instance of action comes when an ogre imprisons Tripitaka and captures Sandy, and forces Pigsy to get Wukong to help them out. The Dragon Horse is capable of shapeshifting and breathing fire. A running gag involving the Dragon Horse is Red questioning if he'll ever do anything of value.

### The Court of Heaven (the Taoist pantheon)

* The Jade Emperor - the Emperor of Heaven and the head of the Taoist pantheon. Voiced by Blue. The Jade Emperor is impulsive and tends to favour execution over reason, and often has to be talked down by the Gold Star of Venus. A running gag involving the Jade Emperor is him constantly screaming "EXECUTION!" at people who have commited usually minor crimes.
* The Gold Star of Venus - the Jade Emperor's right-hand god and a Confucist immortal. Voiced by Red. The Gold Star of Venus is apparently the only voice of reason in the entire heavenly beauracracy, and sometimes disguises himself to help out Tripitaka and company.
* Lao Tzu - a Taoist immortal and an alchemist of heaven. Lao Tzu first gets involved in the Sun Wukong incident when the Monkey King eats his pills of immortality, and is the one to suggest sticking Wukong in his Brazier of the Eight Trigrams to extract the elixir from his body. This doesn't work.
* Prince Ne Zha - a child prodigy of a warrior in the Heavenly court. He nominally reports to his (longsuffering) father, Deveraja Li, though he normally does his own thing. He travels on wheels of flame and carries a spear of heavenly fire. He can also transform into a three-headed, six-armed giant bearing all manner of flaming weapons, which represents his ultimate form.

### Buddhas and Bodhisattvas (the Buddhist pantheon)

* Kuan Yin - a merciful bodhisattva and Tripitaka's ever-watching guide on his journey to the west. Voiced by Red. Kuanyin is merciful by nature, but for all that is good and sarcastic in the world, DO NOT PISS HER OFF. Red Boy learned this the hard way. Kuanyin is frequently consulted by one of Tripitaka's disciples - usually Monkey - whenever something particularly vexing gets in their way. She lives in the Southern Ocean with a retinue of servants and disciples, but most commonly travels with her disciple Moksha, who also acts as her bodyguard.
* The Buddha - the head of the Buddhist pantheon. Voiced by Blue. Having attained enlightenment/zen, the Buddha is calm and unruffled throughout much of the series, as well as being practically omnipotent and omniscient. He first gets involved when Monkey rampages through the court of Heaven, defeating him in a duel and imprisoning him in a mountain for 500 years to be eventually rescued by Tripitaka.

### Demons

* Cave Demon King - A demon who commands an army of tiger demons with the true form of a mink. One of the demon tigers captures Tripitaka and the Cave Demon King fights and bests Wukong with his wind magic. Wukong later returns with the backup of the bodhisattva Lingqi and the demon is defeated by the magic of the Flying Dragon Staff.
* White Bone Spirit - A demon who tries to kill and eat Tripitaka in three different disguises: a young woman, an old woman and an old man. Each time, she is defeated by Wukong and is presumably killed the third time, due to her corpse appearing.
* Gold/Silver Horn Demon King - A pair of demon brothers who inhabit a demon stronghold atop a mountain and possess five sacred treasures, each with its own special power. The older brother, Gold Horn, is more reasonable and willing to admit defeat, while the younger brother Silver Horn is more impulsive and unwilling to admit defeat. They are later revealed to be a pair of Lao Tzu's lab assistants who were turned into demons by Kuanyin to test the pilgrims. This does not exactly explain why they had a demon mother or uncle, though.
* The Bull Demon King - Also known as the Venerable Great King, the Bull Demon King is one of several demon kings who formed an alliance with Sun Wukong five hundred years before the Journey to the West. Voiced by Blue. The Bull Demon King is the father of Red Boy, and is apparently able to recall the exact hour and date of his son's birth many years after the occurance of the event.
* Red Boy - The son of the Bull Demon King and a powerful fire mage, raised by Rakshasi for many years to cultivate his pyrokinesis. He is now capable of calling on the True Fire of Samedhi, an insanely powerful firestorm that is capable of hurting Sun Wukong. After quite foolishly picking a fight with Kuanyin, Red Boy was brought down by the bodhisattva and was forced into servitude.
* The Scorpion Demoness - A female demon who kidnaps Tripitaka in the Country of Women. Her true form is a giant scorpion. She once listened to the Buddha reciting scriptures but stung him on his hand when he brushed her aside. Suffering from the pain of the sting, the Buddha instructed his disciples to bring her to him but she had already fled by that point. She tried to seduce Tripitaka but imprisoned him to be eaten instead when he repeatedly refused her advances. She is notable for the fact that she was able to injure and defeat both Monkey *and* Pigsy with her venomous sting, forcing them to call for backup from Star Lord Mao, a heavenly warrior.

## List of episodes

* The Journey To The West: Part I(this is the backstory of the monkey king)
* The Journey To The West: Part II
* The Journey To The West: Part III
* The Journey To The West: Part IV
* The Journey To The West: Part V
* The Journey To The West: Part VI
* The Journey To The West: Part VII
* The Journey To The West: Part VIII
* The Journey To The West: Part IX
* The Journey To The West: Part X
* The Journey to the West: Part XI

## Gallery

*Part I**Part II**Part III**Part IV**Part V**Part VI**Part VII**Part VIII**Part IX**Part X*
### YouTube links

* Part I
* Part II
* Part III
* Part IV
* Part V
* Part VI
* Part VII
* Part VIII
* Part IX
* Part X
* Part XI

## Trivia

* Red has stated that Sun Wukong is one of her favourite voice roles. Blue also likes voicing the Jade Emperor.
* Episodes of Journey to the West from episode 1 onward have been bookended in a similar manner to Dragon Ball Z. For example, at the beginning, Red says something along the lines of, "LAST TIME ON JOURNEY TO THE WEST, X character did X thing and fought X demon to save X other character (usually Tripitaka) from X horrible fate", and at the end, something like "Will X character overcome X personal issue? Will X character get X thing another character has got? Will X character do something next time? Find out next time, on JOURNEY TO THE WEST!"