Last time on the Journey to the West: the virtuous monk Tripitaka set out on his journey to the Thunderclap Monastery, where he was soon joined by the powerful but foolhardy Sun Wukong. Though the Monkey King was originally too stubborn and reckless to be controlled, Kuanyin saved Tripitaka from an early end to his story by inflicting a cursed restraining bolt on the uncontrollable Monkey King, forcing Wukong to finally put someone else's needs before his own. After defeating a monstrous river dragon, who then joined their team, the trio soon found themselves faced with new perils, for the mountains are full of greedy and murderous demons, and our heroes have a very long way left to go. So our heroes continue westward, and arrive at the outskirts of a nearby village, where Wukong notices an apparently unusual-looking young man. He immediately grabs the kid and starts interrogating him about the village, and although he's unsurprisingly rather reluctant to answer, the young man, whose name is G/Kao Cai, eventually spills that something's actually amiss, and the village isn't quite so idyllic as it looks. See, a while back, a big ugly monster shapeshifted into a handsome dude, and married a young woman from Kao Cai's extended family. Then after the marriage, he, uh, let himself go a little, and his father-in-law, the patriarch of the family, objected rather strenuously to having such a hideous monster as a son-in-law. So he sent Kao Cai out to find someone to exorcise the demon, which has so far been unsuccessful. Now, of course, Monkey's like, "Boy, are you in luck! I happen to be an expert at kicking demon ass!" So they enter the village and talk to the patriarch, who confirms that three years ago, this super handsome dude showed up asking for his youngest daughter's hand in marriage. The patriarch agreed, but the handsome dude turned out to be an ugly, shapeshifting pig demon instead. I'd make an online dating joke, but I'm more surprised by the fact that with shapeshifting as ubiquitous as it is in this world, why doesn't this kind of thing happen more often? So anyway, even though the pig demon's a pretty hardworking guy, he's suuuper ugly and kinda possessive, and all the patriarch really wants is his daughter back, and for the pig dude to not be affiliated with him or his family anymore. So in this exciting episode, Sun Wukong gets to serve divorce papers! So Wukong casually rescues the patriarch's daughter, - yeah, like that'd be hard for him - and then shapeshifts to look like her and lies in wait for the pig demon. Soon enough, the demon returns, and Wukong's all like, "Oh, man, uh, darling. My parents are just being so rude about us! I hear they're getting someone to exorcise you!" "Oh, no need to worry, sweet cheeks! There's no exorcist alive that can hurt me." "I think they said his name was... Sun Wukong..?" *dramatic music* "Well, it's been fun sweetheart, but I need to go disappear for a few-" *transformation noise* "Where're you going, ~darling~?" So they fight, and Wukong chases him back to his secret lair at Cloudy Paths Cave, and along the way, he learns that the pig demon actually used to be a member of the court of heaven who got sloppy drunk, hit on a woman way too many times, and got turned into a monster and kicked out of heaven as punishment. He would've been executed, but our boy the Gold Star of Venus intervened on his behalf. Not to be jaded, but that kinda seems like the only thing the Gold Star of Venus does. So then they fight, and it's awesome, but then the pig demon calls a timeout and runs away. So Wukong returns to Tripitaka and fills him in, and takes a moment to sass the Patriarch Kao for being a pretty bad father-in-law to his relatively hardworking demon son-in-law. And then he zips back to fight the pig demon again. So they fight some more, and eventually Monkey asks why the pig demon's fighting him with a rake, and the demon's like, "A rake? Ha! This is no ordinary rake! One blow from this and your very soul will be rent asunder!" *clang* "You were saying?" "I think I'd like to surrender now, please." So as it turns out, this rake-wielding pig demon is the very same rake-wielding pig demon that Kuanyin enlisted to help Tripitaka. So after Monkey learns this, he takes the pig, whose name, as you may recall, is Pigsy, back to meet Tripitaka, who's overjoyed to have another disciple to help him out. Everything is resolved shockingly quickly, and the Patriarch Kao throws a big fancy banquet for our newly expanded troupe of heroes, and then our protagonists continue on their way. So shortly thereafter, they encounter a friendly zen master known as the Crow's Nest zen master, who warns Tripitaka that--surprise--the journey will be absolutely packed with monsters and demons. But it's not like Tripitaka needs to be totally helpless. The zen master teaches him a sutra, called the Heart Sutra, that'll hypothetically keep him safe from harm when he recites it. Then he casually insults Wukong and Pigsy, warns Tripitaka to keep an eye out for a water spirit in the near future, and zips back up to his nest. So our heroes continue westward, when they abruptly encounter a tiger demon who introduces himself by ripping off his own skin. So they fight the demon for a little while, but finding himself outclassed, the tiger demon tosses his skin over a rock as a decoy and runs away. But not before grabbing Tripitaka. So the tiger demon takes Tripitaka to his lord, a cave demon, and they start debating how best to cook him. Meanwhile, Wukong and Pigsy figure out that the tiger demon escaped with Tripitaka and Wukong immediately charges off to find him. So they find the lair of the cave demon pretty quickly, and the cave demon sends out the tiger vanguard to fight Wukong. Yeah, you know how this part goes. Wukong kicks the tiger demon's ass, but this time, when the tiger demon runs away, Pigsy comes out of nowhere and killsteals like a boss. This is a very accurate representation of his overall characterization for the rest of the story. Anyway, Wukong flies back to the cave with the tiger demon's corpse, and taunts the cave demon until he comes out to fight. So they fight for a while, and are actually pretty evenly matched, but when Wukong busts out his special attack and duplicates himself, the cave demon counters with his own BS OP special and whips up a veritable hurricane of wind, that blasts Wukong with enough force to temporarily blind him, making it impossible for him to continue fighting. Wukong and Pigsy manage to escape, and try to figure out what to do next, and they find their way to a nearby cottage, where a friendly old man and several young farmers let them stay the night. The old man also gives Wukong a healing balm for his eyes, and when he wakes up the next morning, he can conveniently see again. This is also when he learns that the cottage never existed, and that the old man and the farmers who took care of them were some of the heavenly spirits assigned to help Tripitaka on his pilgrimage. Ok, the rules for what these god dudes can and can't do are hella arbitrary. I'm starting to think they're just messing with them. So Wukong decides to try the stealth route for this particular mission, and turns into a mosquito to sneak into the cave demon's lair, whereupon he finds that Tripitaka is both still alive and rather grumpy at his delayed rescue. On his way out, he overhears that one of the cave demon's minions ran into Pigsy, but obviously didn't see Wukong. So the cave demon speculates that either he managed to kill Wukong with his wind, or the Monkey King ran off to get help. But that'd be absurd, because there's only one person who can resist the cave demon's wind, and that's the bodhisattva Lingji. So Wukong zips back to Pigsy, and with a little help from the disguised Gold Star of Venus, - my god, that is all he does - they find their way to the home of Lingqi, where Wukong explains the situation. The bodhisattva explains that he previously defeated the cave demon, but allowed him to remain in the mountain so long as he didn't hurt anyone. Seeing as this rule has been broken, Lingqi grabs the Flying Dragon Staff and prepares to unleash some righteous butt-whooping. So they fly back to the mountain, Wukong busts down the door, and he goes a few rounds with the cave demon before the demon starts charging his special attack. But right before he unleashes it, Lingqi throws the Flying Dragon Staff at him, whereupon it turns into an actual dragon and punts the cave demon into a mountain so hard that he reverts back to his true form, which is apparently a mink. So Wukong and Pigsy rescue Tripitaka, then get lunch and continue on their merry way. So soon enough, they reach a huge, turbulent river, which would be bad enough on its own, but then a huge, monstrous demon pops out of the river and makes the situation even worse. Wukong nopes outta there with Tripitaka in tow while Pigsy and the river spirit fight. Wukong stands guard for all of five minutes before the need to assert his badass status takes hold and he dives into the battle, whereupon he immediately ends it by whacking the river spirit really hard. The spirit freaks out and dives back into the river, whereupon our heroes start planning their next move. They agree that unfortunately, the river spirit is probably their best bet for getting Tripitaka across the river. But there's just one problem: Wukong actually sucks ass at fighting underwater. So it's up to Pigsy to go down there, lure the spirit up to the surface, and then let Wukong kick his ass on dry land. The plan works pretty well, except Wukong is - say it with me now - too impulsive, and the spirit dives back into the river as soon as he sees the Monkey King coming at him. They try again the next day, but this time the river spirit is wise to their tricks and refuses to take the bait at all. Wukong finally decides that the best thing to do in this situation is to go find Kuanyin, since she wouldn't have sent them on an impossible journey, so she has to have a plan. And, unsurprisingly, she does! See, this river spirit is - say it with me now - the same one she found on her way to Chang'an, and the first spirit she enlisted to help Tripitaka on his way. She sends Moksa back to Wukong whereupon he calls the spirit up with the byname that Kuanyin gave him, Wujing. So Wujing, aka Sandy, learns that the scripture pilgrim was right there the whole time. And if either of his disciples had bothered to mention anything about the scriptures, this whole debacle could've been avoided. Once again, good communication fails to save the day. So now all our protagonists are assembled: Tripitaka, the mortal divine monk at the heart of the story, Sun Wukong, the impulsive but insanely powerful muscle of the group, Pigsy, the gluttonous celestial soldier seeking forgiveness, Sandy, also a disgraced celestial warrior, and the only party member who can swim, aaand the horse. Hey, you were in a river when they first found you! You clearly know how to swim, why couldn't you fight Sandy? Or just take Tripitaka across the river in the first place? *horse sound* Don't give me that kind of backtalk! What do you even do? *horse noise* I don't care if you're an allegorical representation of the human will, you're a goddamn dragon. You have no business being this disappointing. Ok, now that the story's been entirely set up and our cast has been assembled, the Journey to the West becomes very episodic. It's a real monster of the week kinda thing, with a new mountain and corresponding monster every couple chapters. Now, they're all good, and you should really just read the books, but for the sake of education and also pure fun, I'm gonna be covering the more memorable, dramatic, or funny episodes in a series of shorter videos, with one to each episode, while skipping over the filler and the eight-chapter power-up sequences. So get ready, for Journey to the West, Kai!! *cool music*
