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Monkey

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The punkiest Monkey that ever popped is back, and on Blu-ray for the first time ever…

Full disclosure: there’s no way I can write a fully objective review of Monkey. Like many of my generation, this Japanese TV series based on Journey to the West (西遊記), one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature, dubbed into teatime friendly English by a variety of British actors, was the highlight of our Friday evenings in the UK. Rushing in from playing after school to catch it on BBC Two, with that irresistibly catchy disco theme by Godiego still ringing in our ears. I was seven-years-old, it was 6 pm in 1979, the only other thing on was national and local news, and we were still years away from a fourth terrestrial television channel.

For many of us, it was our first proper submersion into East Asian culture. Kung fu films had been and largely gone, making little or no impact on television of the time, and most of us were still way too young to have caught them at the cinema even if they had been still playing. Those films that were imported (and dubbed) often reflected a more grounded and contemporary approach to martial arts than the supernatural abilities and fantasy-driven wuxia films of the 60s and early 70s, from which Monkey took so much inspiration. For youngsters, the nearest we got was the David Carradine series Kung Fu, though this would problematic in its own ways. And in the UK at least, the consumer market for video players and rentals was barely getting started.

Its impact was genuinely felt. I doubt many of us thought too hard about its Asian origins as we pretended to rustle up our own cloud to fly on in the playground, but it’s perhaps no big surprise to hear many British fans of Asian cinema, and even those from further afield in Australia and New Zealand where this dubbed version also screened, cite the series hold over them. (The BBC-dubbed version never made it to the US, though the original language version was shown on Japanese-language stations in California and Hawaii.)

Each week we’d tune into to find Tang Sanzang, or Tripiṭaka, earnestly making his pilgrimage to India to retrieve the holy scriptures, aided – though often questionably – by his companions. The immortal Monkey King, freed by Tripiṭaka and now bound to follow him on his journey, and two former members of the Heavenly Host who were cast out and turned from angels to “monsters”. Zhu Bajie or ‘Pigsy’, obsessed with lust and women, and a sea monster and cannibal Sha Wujing or ‘Sandy’. Along for the ride, Yu Lung, a dragon now sentenced to assuming the shape of a horse after eating Tripiṭaka’s. And every week we’d find them facing perils of both demon and humankind, often covering a moral decision that reflected Buddhist or Taoist philosophy. At least, sort of…

The original Saiyūki (西遊記) production came on the heels of the highly successful Nippon Television adaption of The Water Margin, which screened as Suikoden (水滸伝) from 1973 to 1974 in Japan. Based on one of the other Four Great Classical Novels, it was a lush, big-budget production for the time, shot on film with a solid cast and sizeable armies to fight each other. Although, rather like our own Doctor Who, it often looked as if the filming crew had headed to a local gravel pit. It was a successful export, dubbed for various territories including Germany, Spain and Italy. But arguably where it made the biggest impression was the UK, where the dialogue was adapted by David Weir and re-voiced by a host of British actors.

Saiyūki was just as slick, even if the tokusatsu-style effects – including hilariously static tiny scale models pulled along in front of constructed sunsets and the occasional man in a giant monster suit – looked quaint back then. Several of the original directors were well established in film, including Jun Fukuda, responsible for Ebirah, Horror of the Deep, The War In Space and several films in the Godzilla franchise such as Son of Godzilla and Godzilla vs. Gigan, and Kazuo Ikehiro, responsible for several of the Zatoichi franchise including Zatoichi and the Chest of Gold and Zatoichi’s Pilgrimage. Former 60s Japanese pop frontman of Group Sounds band The Spiders, Masaaki Sakai, took the lead role as Monkey, young actress Masako Natsume as Tripiṭaka, the extremely pliable-faced Toshiyuki Nishida as Pigsy, and rival Group Sounds band member of The Tigers, Shirō Kishibe, played Sandy. And if the series benefited greatly from leftovers in the costume and set department from The Water Margin, occasionally looking like it had pilfered some discarded footage as well, the connection between the two series was made more implicit by the casting of its lead actor Atsuo Nakamura in a recurring role. The fight sequences might not have been in any way comparable to the films of the Shaw Brothers at that point, but they were still more exciting than much else we were seeing on TV, and the scale of the participants involved still impresses.

Add in a soundtrack from pop band Godeigo, at that point reaching the peak of their success, and you already had a phenomenon on your hands. Enlisted by Nobuhiko Obayashi to score his wacky horror House/Hausu and fashioned their own concept album around The Water Margin, they would quickly go on to create the theme for the movie version of Leiji Matsumoto’s Galaxy Express 999. Though it should be mentioned that despite multiple attempts by the BBC, the theme tune Monkey Magic failed to make the 40, while the Japanese-language theme to Water Margin by Pete Mac scrapped in, backed by their take on it. This perhaps wasn’t helped by them initially releasing the end theme Gandhara with the album version of Monkey Magic on the flip. An EP reversing the choice was released later, and it’s interesting to note the version of Gandhara there was the dual language version used in alternating episodes of the BBC version, though it’s only in English on the Japanese release. For many of us of the right age, most of our playground pretend fights were set to the instrumental version of Havoc In Heaven used in the series. (If I’m completely honest, I still hum it to myself now to get things done.)

As casting Masako to play the male role of Tripiṭaka might hint, the series was always intended to be much lighter in tone than its predecessor. (Something that’s often been forgotten on discussion around the English-language take on the series, often given the total credit for the comedy.) Masaaki, Toshiyuki and Shiro have an exceptional physicality to how they play their roles that goes far their actual voice. Famously only ever working off a brief precis of the original episodes, Weir’s script draws heavily on Arthur Waley’s 1942 truncated adaption Monkey: A Folk-Tale of China, taking Waley’s versions of the characters names. It allowed him the freedom to concentrate on matching the mouth movements rather than the plot. Often there’s more than a little British innuendo around the dialogue, which doesn’t always click, some misinterpretations of cultural seem glaringly obvious now, and I’m not entirely convinced by the interpretation of those Buddhist and Taoist philosophies either.

Director Michael Bakewell enlisted a small ensemble of British actors to voice the roles, many of whom had been involved in Water Margin. These included some whose faces were already famous, such as Andrew Sachs, recognised for playing Manuel in Fawlty Towers, and Miriam Margolyes, who would get a whole lot better known in the 80s and 90s, as well as Peter Woodthorpe, David Collings, Maria Warburg and Gareth Armstrong. And therein lies part of the problem looking back: this was a cast of white actors using east Asian accents. This isn’t to suggest they did a bad job. It’s obvious that, for the lead characters at least, they took their job more seriously than Weir, closely listening to the original dialogue and mimicking the actor’s voices and performances. But from a contemporary point of view, that feels awkward. Even on an archival documentary included on the new boxset, the commentary struggles between deriding the dub as ‘so bad it’s good’ while applauding the actors and the job they did. And to be fair, in many ways both viewpoints are true.

And just how well does the series itself hold up? It’s all quite enjoyable, but the repetitive nature of the series hardly makes for a ‘binge-worthy’ boxset. That was fine when we watched long television series one episode at a time, week after week. On the whole, lacking any major narrative arcs beyond the first three episodes that establish the series. I can’t see anyone making their way through too many episodes without needing a decent break. Nor can I see it winning many new fans, though I expect some younger audiences may be as drawn to it as we were, as long as you’re not put off but how they play next.

It’s worth making the point that even before the English dialogue, there were various levels of interpretation going on. Even more than the Water Margin series had before it, the original Monkey TV series looked to Shaw Brothers and the four-film adaption they produced in the late 60s. Masaaki draws heavily on Yueh Hua’s performance as the cheeky Monkey, episodes 2 and 3 of the first series emulate the first film Monkey Goes West, at points almost note for note. (Particularly when Monkey disguises himself at one point as Pigsy’s fiancé when they first meet, occasionally changing back to his male form without being noticed.) Shaw Brothers, in turn, looked to the character’s popularity in Peking Opera, including hilarious songs for the characters, and the Wan Brothers animations Princess Iron Fan (1941) and Havoc in Heaven (1961).

Season two of the series went off the boil somewhat. The first episode finds us getting the band back together again, even though it hadn’t split at the end of season one. One of the biggest changes was Tonpei Hidari replacing Toshiyuki as Pigsy, and just like every Darrin, he was never as good. (Toshiyuki would go on to great success appearing in a live-action series adapted from manga Tsuribaka Nisshi, which ran from 1988 to 2009, and as a recurring character in Takeshi Kitano’s Outrage. He also rather appropriately provided the voice of one of the demons in A Letter To Momo.) Shunji Fujimura also joined the cast as ‘Horse’, now occasionally taking human form. Perhaps its success waned, as this would be the last series in Japan and we never got to see Tripiṭaka complete his quest. The BBC left half the second season, 13 episodes, on the shelf deciding these episodes were too dark in content for a suppertime time slot.

In 2004, after reruns on Channel 4 (yes, that fourth terrestrial channel) and a successful DVD release, Fabulous Films decided to reunite the English-dub cast members and finish the final 13 episodes, which were in turn broadcast and released on DVD. One positive addition was British-Chinese legend Burt Kwouk, effectively repeating his role on the Water Margin series.  It’s worth noting that the original versions of these episodes were actually included as a bonus, in their original language with subtitles, on the initial series DVD release. Fabulous Films have now followed the same path they used with Blu-ray release of The Water Margin a few years back, debuting the Monkey series on Blu-ray for the first time worldwide. Though this does look better than the previous release, it still feels bound to the materials available. The dubbed version may have been transferred from and to film, but it was still copied. Some of the defects on the first episode for instance, which look a little like video tracking, are still there now. Into the second season, colours often take that yellowish hue of NTSC (though this doesn’t seem to conform to those left behind first-time around). Unsurprisingly, the better quality does little for the effects either.

Overall the new boxset feels a little underwhelming. As well as the aforementioned documentary, made at the time the cast were brought together to dub the new episodes (and rather too geared towards promotion than a serious look at the original phenomenon), there are scripts to the original 70s dubbing sessions tucked away on the discs as PDFs. What’s really missing, and what would really have made this extra special, would be the inclusion of the original language episodes, subtitled, even in SD format. Part of the issue likely is that they do not exist in that format, at least not without a lot of effort. What we have is the English language version, complete with edits, even minor, that would make it impossible to reverse and reinsert the original audio. (Not to mention the effort of subtitling 39 40-odd minute episodes.) We do, however, have those 13 episodes in that format, which have not been included. As such, this may not be for the completists as it is for those that haven’t already bought the set at all yet.

That said for many of us the magic is still there, Monkey Magic, but this might not bring any new fans to the show. Now play the record…

Monkey: The Complete Series is available as UK Blu-ray and DVD boxsets now.

The post Monkey first appeared on easternkicks.com.


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