Author: Belne
Imprint: Asuka Comics DX
Publisher: Kadokawa Shoten
ISBN:4-04-852288-4
Reviewed by Jeanne
(What's *this* doing in Asuka? It ran in June magazine. I remember it doing it. Jeez, Asuka. Pirates of Tokyo Bay, out cutlasses and board any manga that sails by and take it as prize.)
Fun fluff from Belne, she of 'Belne's Love' aka Robert Plant and David Bowie drawn as manga characters Belne and Gardie. Looks like a yaoi version of The Journey to the West to start- there's our shaven-haired ineffectual monk, there's a coiled dragon eating his horse, there's a short-tempered Gokuu, there's a... blond dragon king who looks like Robert Plant carrying off our monk, there he is saying he's going to eat him, there he is uhh eating him, there's Gokuu grabbing his dragon ball from him at which dragon king returns to his original shape of how mortifying a sea-horse, there's chastened dragon turned into a white horse carrying Genjou Sanzou to the west and uhh there's our Robert Plant guy carrying Sanzou on his shoulders who's just bumped his head on a low cornice. We're in a high-school play, in fact, and the action weaves back and forth between the Saiyuki story-line being acted and the machinations of the actors themselves. The 'za' of the title is written with the kanji usually meaning seat, but one of its other meanings is 'theatre', which might be a tipoff to the framing device. (Equally for all I know it might be Belne's way of writing 'the.' All things are possible when the Japanese start playing games with kanji, as they rather like to do.)
Robert Plant (real name Takashimada), who plays all the youkai villains, has the hots for the sweet-natured and innocent head of the drama society who plays Sanzou. Gokuu- who's a girl- does too, and objects vigorously to the way Gokuu's ostensible lead part keeps getting turned into second string status. Against the background of their battle for the Buchou are enacted a number of witty parodies of actual incidents from the novel. Fun, as I say, and fluff.
I might add a small moan about the Robert Plantness again. I know his image was burned into the consciousness of a generation, and I do see why, and I do like Led Zeppelin, and I do like Belne-the-character and hell, I even like Eroica. But jeez louise guys. Ever hear of one Jim Morrison? The Doors, yes? James James Morrison Morrison is teh man. Trust me. (He had curls too, if it helps.)
But for me Za Saiyuuki is the source of one of the better Never Trust an Academic Talking About Yaoi stories, as described by Seishinja in Manga Bonbons. Sandra Buckley's "Penguin in Bondage": A Graphic Tale of Japanese Comic Books," in Technoculture (University of Minnesota Press; 1991) has a passage about the manga: "some scenes represent sexual contact in a more sinister or threatening way than the usually highly stylized romanticism of homosexual love that has become the magazine's standard fare. The July 1989 issue's 'Secret Series' includes the threat of cannibalism and the suggestion of fellatio but neither is shown explicitly, only hinted at." Threat of cannibalism? That's Gyuumaoh, guys, uttering the stock youkai line in Saiyuuki, 'we'll eat you up, we love you so' (And Max said No.) If Buckley had bothered to read to the end of the episode she'd have seen the actor playing Sanzou losing his bald hairpiece and yelling at Takashimada 'Read the script! Sanzou *doesn't* get eaten!'