One more week to catch "Monkey"

All things to all people (or audiences) is a rare wonder - and "Monkey: Journey to the West" at Lincoln center through June 28 is just such a wonder.

Based on a classic Chinese folktale, director Chen Shi-Zheng combines the modern music of Gorillaz, with acrobatics beyond Cirque du Soleil, costumes more fantastic than Lion King, and today's tv and video game culture.

Dragon Ball's original setup was the journey of a dateless girl, Bulma, who is trying to gather the seven Dragon Balls in order to have a wish granted and she finds Goku on the way.  Her first trip for the Dragon Balls also leads to her gathering two more companions who also have analogs in Journey to the West - a shape-shifting pig and a desert bandit.  Later in the series they are even joined by an actual monk seeking enlightenment.  While the beats of the story are very different, Dragon Ball is using the familiar framework to tell his story.

As explained by Lincoln Center's Eileen McMahon, six hundred years ago this "journey across the world was merely from China to India."  Now it has come  to New York, after a premier in Manchester, England, in 2007 and raves from Paris to London.

The heatwave is over.  Its time to enjoy New York's own Lincoln Center Summer Festival.  Watch the central fountain, as did some of the performers the other day, and celebrate New York in summer.














Dragon Ball's original setup was the journey of a dateless girl, Bulma, who is trying to gather the seven Dragon Balls in order to have a wish granted and she finds Goku on the way.  Her first trip for the Dragon Balls also leads to her gathering two more companions who also have analogs in Journey to the West - a shape-shifting pig and a desert bandit.  Later in the series they are even joined by an actual monk seeking enlightenment.  While the beats of the story are very different, Dragon Ball is using the familiar framework to tell his story



Anyway, I do know a lot about Dragon Ball and a little about Journey to the West.  Journey to the West is a Chinese novel considered one of the Four Great Classic Novels of Chinese literature, and is a highly fantastical account of a Buddhist monk's journey to India to obtain Buddhist religious texts.  However, the entire first portion of the story is actually about one the monk's companions, Sun Wukong, who is easily the most popular and recognizable character in the story.  It also served as the loose inspiration for Akira Toriyama's Dragon Ball manga and the anime that came from it, as several of the core cast of the early parts of the series are inspired by characters in the story.  In particular, the main character, Son Goku, is directly named for the Japanese rendering "Sun Wukong" and at the start of the series is a small boy with a monkey's tail.  Goku's initial concept art showed him as a monkey dressed very similar to popular depictions of Sun Wukong, in fact :)

Dragon Ball's original setup was the journey of a dateless girl, Bulma, who is trying to gather the seven Dragon Balls in order to have a wish granted and she finds Goku on the way.  Her first trip for the Dragon Balls also leads to her gathering two more companions who also have analogs in Journey to the West - a shape-shifting pig and a desert bandit.  Later in the series they are even joined by an actual monk seeking enlightenment.  While the beats of the story are very different, Dragon Ball is using the familiar framework to tell his story.

Dragon Ball as a show is less about fantastical journeys after the first story arc, and more about setting up lengthy and epic battles.  The original series, Dragon Ball, is more fantastical and light-hearted, and its sequel series, Dragon Ball Z, is pretty much just a series of lengthy fights with extremely powerful individuals (especially aliens and androids).  By the time of Dragon Ball Z, pretty much everything Journey to the West related was gone and while all of the characters were still on the show, aside from Goku and Krillin (the monk), they largely stopped contributing.

Most Americans that know about the franchise usually just think of Dragon

From: pat kinney <patsjapan@gmail.com>
To: Rebecca Richards <rebo1234@yahoo.com>
Sent: Friday, July 5, 2013 3:16 PM
Subject: Re: Your Question
pat kinney <patsjapan@gmail.com> 8:14 PM (11 hours ago)
to me