Saiyuki Gaiden
A prequel to Kazuya Minekura's Saiyuki series, chronicling the celestial upheavals within the Heavenly Palace five centuries before the journey for the scriptures began.
Saiyuki Gaiden is a manga series serialized by Kazuya Minekura from May 1999 to May 2009, serving as the official prequel to her representative work, the Saiyuki series. The work was serialized across three different magazines: initially in Square Enix's Monthly GFantasy (1999–2003), a shonen manga magazine; it then moved to Ichijinsha's Monthly Comic Zero Sum (2003–2006), and finally concluded in its sister publication, Comic Zero Sum WARD. The tankōbon volumes were collected by Ichijinsha into four volumes (December 2005–July 2009). Set in the Heavenly Palace five hundred years before the main storyline of Saiyuki, the story depicts the bonds and tragedies formed between Golden Cicada Boy (the previous life of Tang Sanzang), the nephew of Guanyin; Marshal Tianpeng (the previous life of Bajie); Curtain-Rolling General (the previous life of Sha Wujing); and "Wukong," a golden-eyed child born from a stone in the lower realm. With a somber and melancholic touch, the original work reimagines the order of the Heavenly Palace and the Three Realms, establishing the emotional foundation for the characters' motivations in the main series. Between 2011 and 2013, it was adapted under license by Sentai Filmworks into three OVA episodes and a special titled Saiyuki Gaiden: Chapter of the Yellow Flower.