Prepare for the Monkey magic

If I were to say to you, “Name a live-action children’s show in which most of the action comes from a Japanese television series, the show is dubbed into English and it becomes a huge hit.”

Yeah, I know most of you immediately said Mighty Morphin Power Rangers or Power Rangers Lightspeed or Power Rangers Zeo or any of the other Power Rangers iterations.  Some of you might even reference Ultraman, although I don’t really know how many Ultraman episodes made it to our shores.

But what if I told you there was another children’s show that originally aired in Japan, and was dubbed into English for the overseas markets – and became a huge, huge hit throughout the British Empire?

You’re wondering… what superhero show is Chuck referring to?

Well, it’s not a superhero show.  It is a retelling of a 500-year-old Chinese novel, and it features kung fu and Buddhism and some head-scratching English dubbing.

And it’s called Monkey.  Or, in some countries, Monkey Magic.

No, this is not an April Fool’s Day joke.  The show was based on the old Chinese book Journey To The West, and it ran in Japan for a couple of years.  The BBC redubbed the series with some of the most godawful Oriental accents, and aired it as a kids’ TV series.

Now think about this for a second. You might wonder if you stumbled onto an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and you’re wondering when Mike, Crow and Tom Servo are going to start riffing on the screen antics.  Then again, we all grew up with H.R. Pufnstuf and Land of the Lost, so this kind of surreal broadcasting should be somewhat decipherable.

During the series, Monkey and his cohorts escort a priest on a journey to recover some Buddhist scriptures.  On their journey, they have battles, they right wrongs, and in the end we get lessons of Buddhism and Taoism.

Were you able to get through the previous episode of Monkey without wondering why there’s disco music in all the fight scenes, and why the characters are so over-the-top childish?

Well, if you could handle one episode of Monkey…

Here’s a second one. It sets up the series arc about the journey to India to recover the scriptures.

I’m thinking this show was inspired by the wuxia films of Run Run Shaw… but there are moments where I’m thinking it was more inspired by the films of Run Away As Fast As You Can Shaw.  Although I will say that the actress that plays the priestess Tripitaka is quite easy on the eyes…

But if you ask anybody from England or Australia, they will immediately remember these episodes with fondness.  They will quote the time they watched the episode where Monkey and Tripitaka and Sandy and Pigsy had great adventures on their journey.

52 episodes of Monkey were originally produced in Japan; 39 of those episodes were dubbed into English.  The remaining episodes were translated in 2004 for a DVD boxed set – which, as you can imagine, is only available in Regions 2 and 4 (DVD players in the USA only play Region 1).

But that doesn’t mean that I can’t show at least one more episode of Monkey for your enjoyment.  In this episode… oh hell, I don’t know what’s going on.  I’m just going to sit and try to figure it out.

As I said before, if you’ve never seen this show, you’re in for a very surreal treat.  If, by chance, you have seen Monkey, I hope these three clips bring back some fun memories.

And I know that theme song is going to be stuck in your mind for days.

What theme song?

This theme song!