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  Golden Horn takes off to his mom’s place and tells all the female minions what happened. His uncle (Great King Fox Number Seven) shows up, and they go back to the cave in search of revenge. The fox ends up getting killed when even Sha Wujing joins in on the fight, and Zhu Bajie delivers the final blow with his rake. Golden Horn goes after him for this, but with all three disciples involved in the fight now, it’s too much for him and he takes off. Wukong follows him and calls out his name. Thinking it’s one of his own minions, Golden Horn answers...and is sucked inside the vase. Wukong grabs the Seven Star Sword for himself!

  After all this, a blind person shows up and demands his treasures back. The mysterious person is actually Lao Tzu (who tends to the elixir of life); it turns out the two demon brothers were sent as a test for Wukong’s dedication to protecting the priest and those are his treasures, so Wukong ultimately hands over the weapons.

  The Dragon Ball Filler Story

  Kinkaku (“Golden Horn”) and Ginkaku (“Silver Horn”) are brothers wreaking havoc on a town. They have found that they love the vegetables there, and come once a month to eat all they want, drink all they want, and basically just be terrible guys. A little girl named Chao is off in search of a strong guy to come stop them. She finds a tiger dude, but he just wants to eat her. Goku ends up coming to her rescue and agrees to come beat up the bad guys since he’s training, anyway.

  What really strikes fear in the villagers is that the brothers have a magical gourd; they do “roll call” (randomly calling of names of the villagers), and if the villager named doesn’t answer them right away, they are sucked into the gourd and eventually dissolved into sake. Everyone is worried since Chao isn’t back yet, but she gets there just in time (with Goku in tow). The brothers notice a little baby, and ask what its name is. They eventually get the name out of the mother, but before they can speak it aloud (to a baby who obviously can’t answer back yet, since it’s only two weeks old...), Goku jumps in and starts beating them up. Kinkaku jumps in with a sword, and eventually Goku’s name is called out. He doesn’t respond, so he gets sucked into the gourd.

  Goku is saved from being dissolved by stretching out Nyoi-Bo near the top, but he can’t break out (even with a Kamehameha). Goku randomly decides that he needs to pee, so he just does so down to the bottom of the gourd. Since there’s swishing all around (due to the pee...), it sounds as if their captive has been dissolved, so the brothers open the gourd back up...only to have Goku jump back out and grab the gourd from them. He calls out their names in random order and an obnoxious number of times; they think they’ve answered the correct amount of times, but they’re actually one off, and are subsequently sucked inside. Goku makes them promise not to do bad things anymore, so he lets them out. The villagers keep the hoodlums under watch as they till the fields to make up for all the crops they ate, randomly calling out one of their names to make sure they’re paying attention.

  Journey Onward, Readers!

  If it has not become apparent from this quick look at one tiny story, Journey to the West is filled with humor, fighting, and all sorts of shenanigans...so basically, if you like Dragon Ball, you’ll love Journey to the West.

  There have been numerous translations over the years, not to mention abridged versions versus complete translations of the entire 100 chapters. A popular edition has always been Arthur Waley’s 1942 abridged translation (published under the simple title of “Monkey”). It is a fine translation indeed, but fans looking for the whole story might feel a bit short-changed by how abridged it truly is; in fact, virtually none of the monster-of-the-week stories, so to speak, are represented at all. Most of the tales of Xuanzang helping out villages with their own internal problems and conflicts are told, and while they are as heart-warming as any Dragon Quest vignette, there is a great deal more to Journey to the West.

  Fans looking for the real deal are encouraged to check out Anthony C. Yu’s 1982 (with a 2012 revision), four-volume, unabridged translation. All of the poetry is kept intact, all of the stories are kept intact, and all of the random peeing and bleeding and other juvenile antics are kept intact.

  Admittedly, I had a difficult time penetrating the dense text my first time through. The poetry in particular can be tiresome at first; characters will introduce themselves or perhaps the narrator will describe a location, only to be followed up with pages upon pages of flowery poetry yet again describing each facet in excruciating detail.

  Once you “get” the flow of the writing, though, the series becomes impossible to put down. It’s pulpy junk food as an adventure tale! The banter between Monkey and Pigsy is on par with, if not heavily surpassing, the best that Toriyama ever put to the page with his own characters. The fights elevate themselves to insane degrees, with incredible tales of double-crossings, weapon acquisitions, godly rage, and more.

  There are plenty of other Journey to the West references in Dragon Ball if you care to dive in. The Furnace of Eight Trigrams, An’nin, the Mountain of Five Elements...the entire ending-filler-arc to the TV series is filled with references and retellings.

  Journey to the West references are so prevalent in Japanese media that you have probably seen them countless times without realizing it. Without even going into full-on Journey to the West-inspired episodes, you’ll occasionally see passing references and costumes.

  Other shows will do one-off episodes retelling the story in their own way. Characters like Ginkaku and Kinkaku have not only appeared in Dragon Ball, but have been adapted as somewhat major characters in Naruto!

  If you are a Dragon Ball fan, you owe it to yourself to check out Journey to the West. A story about a monkey who gets trapped under a mountain and then cleans up horse crap can’t be too bad a read, right?

  MIKE (“VegettoEX”) is one of the co-founders of Kanzenshuu and enjoys poop jokes.

  Dragon Ball Theology

  Gods, deities, guardians, attendants…

  By Jake Schutz

  In a V-Jump interview that was part of the lead-up to Battle of Gods, Toriyama explained that “gods and aliens” have long been staples of his work. That’s why he designed Beerus as a cat: to help set him apart from the gaggle of gods that had come before. Over here in the U.S., nobody would bat an eye if you said DBZ features loads of aliens, but if you said it features a ton of gods too, you’d probably be met with more than a few blank stares. Here, the series isn’t typically seen in that light, and a big part of the U.S. reaction to Battle of Gods was hype based on the idea that this was the first time Goku and the gang would take on a foe of literally godlike power. A big part of it, of course, is that this is the first time FUNimation has really embraced the mythological side of the series. Their Battle of Gods English dub freely tosses around the G-word, whereas before this they mostly tiptoed around the issue by claiming there’s a Guardian of Earth named Kami, and a Supreme Kai in charge of a bunch of other Kai guys. Even on the Japanese side of things, Toei was apparently confident that fans would find the title enticing, and not just think “oh, is Dende finally going to throw down with Mister Popo?”

  One factor in this bit of collective amnesia is that while the series has more gods than you can shake a pointed stick at, they tend to not quite live up to expectations. In that same V-Jump interview, Toriyama explains that he prefers to make his gods pretty much the same as humans. Nothing better demonstrates this than the fact that one of the first major gods in any of his works, the God of the Galaxy who appears towards the end of Dr. Slump, is an older gentleman who likes puns and dirty mags, and who happens to look exactly like Kame-sen’nin. In the Dragon Ball tankobon #3 Q&A corner, Toriyama is upfront about how he recycled this god’s character design for one of his human characters. And just as Dr. Slump’s God gets casually outclassed by Arale and friends, the various deities throughout Dragon Ball likewise get surpassed by the Z-Warriors before too long.

  While Dr. Slump’s version of God doesn’t turn up until almost the end of the series, we’re introduced to the conce
pt of gods right off the bat in Dragon Ball. Shenlong means “Divine Dragon,” and in chapter 1 Bulma refers to him as the “god of dragons,” while in chapter 23 Pilaf prophetically calls him “God’s dragon.” But these initial references aren’t followed up on until the release of the Adventure Special, when the manga was midway through the Demon King Piccolo story arc. In the Q&A section of this special DB-centric issue of Weekly Jump, a fan asked Toriyama about who made the Dragon Balls. This prompts Toriyama to say he’s “thought up something really cool”: that the Dragon Balls’ creator “would have to have been God, I guess.” Apparently Toriyama was quite taken with this idea, since he incorporated it into the main storyline as soon as the Piccolo arc wrapped up. Since Piccolo broke Shenlong, in chapter 162 Goku has to go ask Shenlong’s creator to fix him. And as Karin explains, Shenlong’s creator is “God, of course.”

  But this God turns out to not be quite what anyone would expect. For one thing, he looks just like Piccolo, who at this point is the big bad of the entire series (imagine if Batman went to heaven and found out God looks just like the Joker). God wasn’t always God: he used to just be a talented martial artist, like Goku. And like Goku, one day this martial artist met God. The problem is, Gods have lifespans just like regular folks, so this God needed a successor to take over when he kicked the bucket. The martial artist wanted the job, but to meet requirements, first he needed to expel all the evil from his heart. When the old God died, the martial artist became the new God, the evil that used to be in his heart became Piccolo, and the rest is history.

  If you’re a bit confused, I should explain that the Japanese word for God is “Kami” (神). The FUNimation English dub left the word untranslated, typically treating it as the character’s name rather than his title, and for his title they used “Guardian of Earth.” “Guardian” became their catch-all PC replacement for “god” throughout the series, up until their dub of Battle of Gods. Even in Japanese the different gods in Dragon Ball are described as “watching over” their domains, so “guardian” isn’t an awful description for them, and the term does have something of a history being used as a replacement for “god” (see for instance ‘70s Doctor Who, where the “White Guardian” and “Black Guardian” serve as off-brand stand-ins for God and Satan). Viz’s manga translation mostly leaves “Kami” untranslated when referring to the green guy, but also usually keeps it clear that the term means “God” and is a title, not a name. They even introduce the character simply as “God” in Dragon Ball volume 16 before switching over to “Kami” (often with the Japanese honorific “sama” tacked on the end), and they freely use “god” to describe all the later ones who pop up.

  In his Daizenshuu 4 interview, Toriyama admits that when he created Piccolo, he hadn’t yet thought up the idea of Namekians. Instead, he says he only came up with that when he introduced God. But even this might surprise some: right off the bat, Toriyama intended Dragon Ball’s God to turn out to be an alien. Of course, Dr. Slump’s version of God lives in a house in outer space and monitors civilizations on planets throughout the galaxy. And God’s backstory in Dragon Ball is that he started out a martial artist and only became God when the old God gave him the job. That this martial artist turns out to be from Namek rather than Earth doesn’t make too much of a difference in Dragon Ball’s worldview.

  Instead, the big theological implication of Toriyama throwing aliens into the mix is that once Raditz shows up and we learn there are all sorts of other inhabited planets out there, “God” is suddenly demoted to simply the “God of Earth.” That’s what Enma calls the green guy, when he brings Goku over to the afterlife in chapter 205…though he’s still usually referred to simply as “God” throughout the rest of the series, and we never do learn his name (another reason English speakers tend to leave “Kami” untranslated and treat it as the character’s name). The implication is that every planet has its own God, equal in status to Earth’s version, but in the manga we never really see or hear much about these guys (even in the anime, we just get one-off references to the God of Planet Vegeta, or the God of Planet Conuts). Instead, we’re introduced to their superiors, the next level of the divine hierarchy.

  First there’s the aforementioned “Enma Daio” (Great King Enma)…a deity Toriyama didn’t simply make up, for once. Originally Yama Raja (King Yama), the Hindu God of Death, he was incorporated into Buddhism and in this way ended up a standard feature of the afterlife in the Japanese imagination. He turns up in more manga and anime than you would believe, including Dr. Slump. When Goku died, it was inevitable that he’d meet this guy. Toriyama’s only real innovation in depicting Enma is that he dresses him and his ogre servants up as typical Japanese salarymen, and gives the whole afterlife a relatively realistic air. As he says in Daizenshuu 4, this was mainly done to set the afterlife apart from God’s rather mystical palace down on Earth.

  Next up on the totem pole, we have Kaio, the “King of Worlds.” As the ogre who drives Goku to Snake Road explains, Kaio “stands above all the gods of the universe.” In other words, since Earth and all the other planets in the universe each have their own God, Kaio is in turn king of all those worlds, and by extension king of all those gods. This simple setup stands until near the end of the Namek story arc. In chapter 323, Kaio introduces himself to the Great Elder of Namek as the “Kaio of the North Galaxy,” and later in chapter 328 he tells Bulma that Namek is outside of his “domain” (apparently meaning the North Galaxy). The Dragon Ball Z Anime Special II, a magazine released shortly after chapter 328, features a roundtable interview with Toriyama and several DBZ anime staff members, including series organizer Takao Koyama and chief animator Minoru Maeda. Koyama mentions that since the Kaio we know is actually just the Kaio of the North Galaxy, then “that means there must be a South, East, and West Galaxy, as well…” Maeda says “they could be quadruplets,” and Toriyama likes the idea: “Quadruplets! Oh, that’s good.”

  Since Kaio sits out most of the Cell story arc, it’s not until the Buu arc that Toriyama gets around to incorporating the idea that the blue catfish is just one in a set of four into the main story. In chapter 428, the South Kaio turns up to watch as Goku trains under North Kaio’s supervision. He’s curious to see Goku since Goku’s supposed to be one of the best warriors in the “North Area” (for whatever reason, the term “galaxy” isn’t used here and the two Kaios’ domains are referred to as the “South Area” and “North Area”). Shortly afterwards, the DBZ anime aired the afterlife tournament, a filler story arc set between the Cell and Buu arcs, and featuring all of the Kaio. Not only do we meet the Kaio of the North, South, East, and West Galaxies (it’s “galaxies” again, instead of “areas”), but we even get to see their boss, the Grand Kaio, the god in charge of the entire universe. Toriyama provided the character design for the Grand Kaio and also the distinctive “snow globe” style design for the Dragon Ball cosmos, briefly shown during DBZ episode 195. It’s safe to say that Toriyama’s involvement with this filler arc was probably a factor in him introducing South Kaio into the manga a little while before he and the other extra Kaio popped up in the anime.

  Besides Maeda’s playful suggestion of Kaio quadruplets, this new setup probably takes some inspiration from the Four Heavenly Kings of Buddhism, a group of gods who watch over the four cardinal directions. They turn up in Journey to the West, and in Japanese pop culture any group of four outstanding individuals tends to get labeled as “Four Heavenly Kings” in reference to them. That’s where the Elite Four in Pokemon get their Japanese name from, and elsewhere in Dragon Ball Garlic Junior turns up with his “Four Heavenly Kings of the Demon Clan” (aka the “Spice Boys” in FUNimation’s English dub). Though it’s more of a stretch, we might also remember how Dorothy and friends made a cameo at the Tenka’ichi Budokai, and that the Land of Oz is likewise divided into four regions (north, south, east, west), each ruled by a witch. Another inspiration? Actually, Toriyama seems to have a thing for dividing stuff up based on the cardinal directions.
Besides splitting the Dragon Ball universe up into four galaxies/areas, the main locations on DB Earth follow the same pattern: West City, South City, East City, North City…as above, so below.

  Grand Kaio’s reign as top dog is short-lived though. In chapter 440, Piccolo asks this mysterious “Shin” fellow if he’s the Grand Kaio (the first and only time he’s mentioned in the manga), but he turns out to be someone even higher: the Kaioshin, literally the “God of the Kaio.” So not only do you have a god on each planet (like the God of Earth), but you’ve also got kings of those gods (the Kaio), and those god-kings have a god of their own (Kaioshin). And of course, Kaioshin isn’t alone. In chapter 445, Kaioshin explains that there used to be five Kaioshin, but the others all fell to Buu and so now he’s the only one left. Later in chapter 508, he further explains that these five Kaioshin were divided up in the same way as the Kaio: a Kaioshin of the North, South, East, West, and then a Grand Kaioshin above them all. The lone surviving Kaioshin was actually the East Kaioshin back then, and in chapter 479 we’re introduced to his ancestor, the old perverted East Kaioshin of 15 generations ago.

  So for each Kaio, there’s an equivalent Kaioshin (or there used to be, anyway). In the main series it’s never really explained what the point of this somewhat odd setup is, but later guidebooks like the Daizenshuu say that while the Kaio just watch over the living world, the Kaioshin watch over the afterlife as well. When Toriyama drew the map of the Dragon Ball cosmos for the Daizenshuu, he took the design he had come up with earlier for the afterlife tournament filler arc, but expanded it to include the Kaioshin’s realm as well (a process he explains in his Daizenshuu 4 interview). While Dragon Ball’s living world and afterlife are crammed inside a single huge ball, the Kaioshin’s realm gets a separate ball all its own, which revolves around the other one like a moon so that they can monitor it. A nifty idea, though one that seems like it arose mostly from the way Toriyama tacked the Kaioshin’s realm onto his pre-existing cosmos design.