Journey to the West (1994 Nippon TV Series)
A 1994 live-action television adaptation of Journey to the West broadcast by Nippon TV, starring Toshiaki Karasawa as Sun Wukong.
Journey to the West (1994, 西遊記) is a live-action series broadcast by Nippon Television (NTV) from April 28 to September 23, 1994. It was produced as a high-profile revival, following the success of a special drama aired for the station's 40th anniversary in 1993. Toshiaki Karasawa starred as Sun Wukong, making it one of the most memorable representative works of his early acting career. The series was originally planned for 22 episodes, but due to fierce competition in its time slot from TV Asahi's music variety show Music Station, as well as frequent preemptions for baseball broadcasts that disrupted viewership, it was ultimately shortened and concluded after 17 episodes. The plot follows the consistent direction of Japanese Journey to the West adaptations, giving a modern packaging to the fantastical adventure of Tang Sanzang, Wukong, Bajie, and Wujing as they travel along the Silk Road to Tianzhu to retrieve the scriptures, while incorporating a wealth of Japanese-style aesthetic monster designs and comedic elements. Currently, only the first episode was ever released on VHS; because it went out of print, the series became a "semi-lost" work in media history for a long time, until it finally resurfaced on May 13, 2018, when a user uploaded it to the Internet Archive. As a transitional Journey to the West series of the 1990s in Japan, this work serves as a bridge between the era of Masaaki Sakai and the various remakes of the 21st century.