Legends Summarized: The Monkey King (Journey To The West Part 1)

---YOU ARE HERE---

Meet the progenitor of all brash, impulsive, superpowerful anime characters! Sun Wukong, the Monkey King and Great Sage, was the most impulsive of them all!

"Wreaking havoc in heaven is so much fun it should be illegal!" -Monkey, probably

I might cover something else before continuing with part two of The Journey To The West. It's kind of a doozy, and I'm having a lot of trouble convincing myself to cut some parts out. Watch out for Don Quixote in the meantime.

[benpepin]

Stone Monkey, after the laser eye incident: "Dude, being respectful is dangerous...never doing THAT again!"

And so he didn't.

[wedran]

I love how you said "pulls a Gilgamesh".
Gilgamesh: went on a journey for immortality, and was severly humbled by it, coming back home empty-handed but with an important message.

Wukong: BRUH, IM IMMORTAL 4 FRIGGIN TIMES!

[stevenneiman]

I think the weirdest part about this character is how he apparently had enough patience and self-discipline to train for seven years as a monk, when for the entire rest of the story he doesn't seem to have the patience to go seven MINUTES without murdering someone, pulling a prank that's only a small step down from a war crime, or picking a fight with a god.

[PanicByNumbers]

I love how absolutely chill and unbothered Buddha is in the story. He shows up, has a 'friendly' bet with Wukong and when the monkey loses the bet, he casually traps him under a mountain and basically says, 'Now stay there and think about what you've done."

[aych]

I read the book. This isn't an exaggeration. I kept expecting it to be. This is--this is exactly what happens.

[Silverwind]

Gilgamesh: Maybe I don't need to live forever. I should just appreciate the time I have, and live the life I was given to the fullest.

Sun Wukong: I'm sorry, is this some sort of peasant joke I'm too immortal to understand?

[nickcariglio]

Sun wukong as a baby: bows to the universe
Sun wukong as an adult: "Yeah, i pissed on god's fingers."

[inminutes]

son wukong: *sneezes*
"You have unlocked breath of death"
son wukong: Neat

[huntss]

Sun Wukong is that kid in games who's constantly adding superpowers so that he can win

[Smokeboats]

Sun Wukong: “You freed me. Why?”
Xuan Zang: “Mmm. Monke.”

[finisanidiot]

The monkey king's character can be summarized in that one tiktok sound
"Good morning everyone, god has let me live another day, and I'm about to make it everyone's problem"

[colukafeather]

Fun Fact: the 72 transformations aren't called that because he can transform into 72 different things, it actually allows him to turn into anything he wants. The 72 part comes from the fact that the abillity gives him 72 LIVES...

Meaning that even if his enemies made it past the many layers of immortality, they'd have to kill him 72 times before he accually died...

[Quinn-bqsv]

I love how Sun WuKong just *forgets* about his laser eyes for the rest of this book

[grantdotjpg]

Could you imagine being so powerful it requires the E N T I R E U N I V E R S E to stop you?

[axis]

I think when Wukong crossed his name off the ledger in the underworld, he was also thus immortal. And the de-immortalizing furnace burned his mortality away, so he's again immortal.
The dude really stacks his immortality.

[lostable]

I think the reason Sun can't use his laser eyes all the time is because he has to be respectful to heaven(like when he bowed to the 4 directions), and since he made it his immortal life goal to piss everyone in heaven off as much as possible on purpose or by accident, it's been locked out.

[vekkimheng]

This guy rampaged through hell and heaven, nearly killing the King of Heaven himself and only got stop when the Buddha stepped in. He's one of, if not the most, stupidly overpowered characters in all of we Asians love him for that.

[bigchooch]

Red speaks in such a way that's fast enough that you feel like you're being overwhelmed by information, yet you can perfectly understand all of it






_I love it_

[Lady_]

Ok but like after watching the LMK series I can only applaud the writers for making half the shit in the show so accurate to this story. Like damn

[infiniteoctopaw]

In my version of Journey to the west his full title is “The Handsome Monkey king” and it literally makes me giggle ever time the narrator calls him that. Because it’s infrequent enough to make me forget it so it hits hard literally every time.