Monkey (TV series)

西遊記 Saiyūki
Top: The Japanese title card for Monkey, reading "Journey to the West" Bottom: The title card used in the English-language dub
Also known as	'Monkey (UK)
Genre	Fantasy Shenmo Action Adventure Comedy
Created by	Wu Cheng'en
Written by	Motomu Furuta Hiroichi Fuse Hirokazu Fuse James Miki Moto Nagai Yooichi Onaka Mamoru Sasaki Eizaburo Shiba Yu Tagami Kei Tasaka Mutsuo Yamashita
Directed by	Toshi Aoki Jun Fukuda Kazuo Ikehiro Yusuke Watanabe Daisuke Yamazaki
Starring	Masaaki Sakai Masako Natsume Shiro Kishibe Toshiyuki Nishida Tonpei Hidari Shunji Fujimura
Voices of	UK dub: David Collings Maria Warburg Peter Woodthorpe Gareth Armstrong Miriam Margolyes Andrew Sachs
Theme music composer	Mickie Yoshino
Opening theme	"Monkey Magic" by Godiego
Ending theme	"Gandhara" by Godiego (s1) "Holy and Bright" by Godiego (s2)
Country of origin	Japan
Original language(s)	Japanese
No. of seasons	2
No. of episodes	52 (list of episodes)
Production
Producer(s)	Teisho Arikawa Tsuneo Hayakawa Yoji Katori Ken Kumagaya Kazuo Morikawa Tadahiro Nagatomi Muneo Yamada
Release
Original network	NTV
Picture format	4:3
Original release	2 October 1978 – 4 May 1980

Saiyūki (^?, lit. "Journey to the West"), also known by its English title Monkey, also commonly referred to as "Monkey Magic" (the show's title song), is a Japanese television drama based on the Chinese novel, Journey to the West, by Wu Cheng'en. Filmed in north-west China and Inner Mongolia, the show was produced by Nippon Television (NTV) and International Television Films in association with NHK, and broadcast from 1978 to 1980 on Nippon Television.

Two 26-episode seasons ran in Japan: the first season ran from October 1978 to April 1979, and the second one from November 1979 to May 1980, with screenwriters including Mamoru Sasaki, Isao Okishima, Tetsurō Abe, Kei Tasaka, James Miki, Motomu Furuta, Hiroichi Fuse, Yū Tagami, and Fumio Ishimori.

Saiyūki was dubbed into English from 1979, with dialogue written by David Weir. The dubbed version was broadcast under the name Monkey and broadcast in the United Kingdom by the BBC, in New Zealand by TVNZ and in Australia on the ABC.

However, only 39 of the original 52 episodes were dubbed (and broadcast by the BBC): all of series 1 was, but only half of series 2 was prepared for a version in English. In 2004, the remaining episodes were dubbed by Fabulous Films Ltd by the original voice acting cast, following a successful release of the English-dubbed series on VHS and DVD; later these newly dubbed episodes were broadcast on Channel 4 in the UK.

A Spanish-dubbed version of Monkey aired in Mexico, Costa Rica, Peru, Argentina, Uruguay and the Dominican Republic in the early 1980s. While the BBC-dubbed Monkey never received a broadcast in the United States, the original Japanese-language version, Saiyūki, was shown on local Japanese language television stations in California and Hawaii in the early 1980s.