Saiyuki RELOAD
The official sequel to Kazuya Minekura's Saiyuki, serialized in Monthly Comic Zero Sum from 2002 to 2009 across ten volumes.
Saiyuki RELOAD is a work serialized by Kazuya Minekura from March 2002 to June 2009 in Ichijinsha's women's manga magazine Monthly Comic Zero Sum. It is the official sequel to her representative work, Genso Makden Saiyuki, and was eventually collected into ten tankōbon volumes published by Ichijinsha between July 2002 and October 2009. Continuing the worldview of its predecessor, this work completely reimagines the pilgrimage story of Journey to the West as a near-future fantasy filled with firearms, cigarettes, and motorcycles: Tang Sanzang, Sun Wukong, Zhu Bajie (Zhu Wuneng), and Sha Wujing travel west from the Kingdom of Shambhala to Walnut City in the Tianzhu Kingdom to thwart the Bull Demon King's resurrection plan. The narrative pace is darker and more profound than the previous series, dedicating significant space to unveiling the protagonists' buried pasts and psychological scars rather than focusing purely on the subjugation of demons. The work maintained high popularity among female readers for a long time and spawned two TV anime series, Saiyuki RELOAD and Saiyuki RELOAD GUNLOCK, an OVA titled Saiyuki RELOAD -Burial-, and the concluding manga series Saiyuki RELOAD BLAST.