monkey magic! that first egg was named THOUGHT!

i started rewatching MONKEY (last watched very intermittently in my late teens)

potent mix of insanely cheaply made, benignly problematic (e.g. everyone dubbed, but with bad asian accents)* and emotionally complex (more complex than i expected going back in anyway)

the ep i just watched (the "king of youth" ep) had the following moral: the young will inherit everything so you can't exactly be AGAINST them but also they are arrogant idiots and they suck

*burt kwouk was the eng lang narrator so i guess his accent is actually his own?

one aspect i like from the LORE (chinese mythology and wu cheng'en 16th-century novel, i have no idea how precisely rendered) (i have an unread copy of it somewhere in a box) is that everyone from anyone on or near the mythological pantheon is always already fed up wth everyone else, including some of the various buddhas and bodhisatvas -- aside maybe from tripitaka these realms are far from serene!

anyone s/b anywhere

He knew every magic trick under the sun/to tease the gods and everyone and have some fun! I don't know if I have much to say but I did watch a lot of it back in the day (it must have been re-run in the mid 80s? Otherwise I'd only have been 7-8). I remember vague confusion over whether tripitaka was a boy or a girl, and the episode where monkey flies to the edge of the universe and graffitis & pees on the pillars of heaven - SPOILER ALERT when he gets back tripitaka shows that the pillars were her - er his - fingers and monkey didn't even fly out of his hand.

It's pretty exhausting to watch because of the terrible dubbing which seems to there to be send the whole thing up.

... to be said in Burt Kwouk's voice.

I'd like to see it with subtitles but I imagine that's not possible. Now how about one of these crappy channels re-running "The Water Margin"?

i would maintain that the original is strong enough -- and the translation detailed enough* -- that you can set aside that aspect of the dubbing fairly quickly, just by paying attention to the details of the dialogue? the surface is one-note yes but it's by no means everything that's going on (you only have to look at the costumes to note that the original is not exactly a po-faced self-serious version, it's more like a school play)

*accurate? i don't know of course but i don't think this is an eric thompson / magic roundabout deal

ps monkey and pigsy i get but why is sandy called sandy? (short for alexander?)

Apparently it's from the translation of his Chinese name, which means "sand monk".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sha_Wujing

Or "sand aware of purity", to be precise. But, yes, it does make him sound like he might have some Scottish ancestry.

His fall from grace happens when he broke a valuable Jade or Crystal vase or goblet ... he was punished by the Jade Emperor, who had him struck 800 times with a rod and exiled to earth, where he was to be reincarnated as a terrible man-eating sandman, orc, ogre, troll, oni, demon, monster, or hulk. There, he lived in the Liúshā-hé (流沙河, "flowing-sand river", or "quicksand-river"). Each day, seven flying swords sent from Heaven would stab him in the chest and then return. He had to live in the river full-time to avoid the punishment.

this jade emperor sounds like a dick.

And you think you've got problems.

Loved it as a primary-shool child and came back to it round the turn of the century with pleasure & some surprise at the kind of lessons being chucked at 8 year olds back in the day.

Desire is a trap. Lustful desire makes pig of people, and slaves of pigs. One single word makes possible all civilisation. It's a small word, a magic word, yet it transforms, frees everyone. You must whisper it to yourself. The word is "no".

It is time for another journey to the west

I bought the source book a few years ago thinking I'd get through it quickly read the first few chapters and then went off to read something else or a couple of hundred other things. So really need to get back into it. Had been interested in reading the back story since watching the tv show in my teens or pre teens. So hopefully get back to that this year.