As it turns out, One-Punch Man co-creator Yusuke Murata is now working on his own anime take on the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West. If you’re familiar with that comically ridiculously superhero story starring our bald caped caper Saitama, then you can imagine how zany Murata’s version of Journey to the West is. Or rather, will be, as soon as we get to see it. Which might be sooner than we thought, based on the teaser videos Murata released. You can check those out below:
Zaiyuki: Journey to the Hilarity?
Yusuke Murata (Eyeshield 21 artist, One-Punch Man artist) has just released a pair of teaser videos on Twitter showcasing his new original anime project Zaiyuki done in collaboration with Village Studio. The 2 teaser videos are basically Part 1 and Part 2 of a nearly 3 and a half minutes long teaser video. Apparently, the reason why we’re getting this split video is because Twitter won’t allow a non-Blue account to post longer videos. Yet another strike against Elon Musk, apparently.
Anyways though, the 2-part teaser trailer for Zaiyuki reveals some very interesting things about it. The most obvious thing is that this anime takes place in a modern setting, with cars, planes, and everything. It’s a bit reminiscent of Saiyuki by Kazuya Minekura, really. The only difference is that Yusuke Murata seems to be making a much more light-hearted story than Saiyuki.
As another difference: the main character of Zaiyuki appears to basically be Sha Wujing (Sha Gojyo in Japanese), with him depicted as a kappa rather than a river ogre. Not only that, but he’s actually the one to…hatch Sun Wukong (Son Goku in Japanese) out of his rock-egg. When riot police arrive to detain the pair for causing a ruckus at an airport, it’s Tang Sanzang (Genjo Sanzō in Japanese) and a genderbent Zhu Bajie (Cho Hakkai in Japanese) who come to their rescue. Mostly by smashing their van through the airport’s glass walls and driving off with them. Inevitably, this causes a high-speed police chase. With the police shooting at them, and fem Hakkai shooting back with a Barrett M82 anti-materiel rifle.
Zaiyuki: Release Details
So how does this crazed caper of an anime end? Unfortunately, we’re just going to have to wait for the eventual debut of Zaiyuki to find out. Even more unfortunately though, Yusuku Murata doesn’t mention a release date in these teaser videos. We’ll just have to wait for him or Village Studio to give us that info later. Tune back into THS to find out the release date when we do.
