Based on an ancient Chinese tale, Saiyuki takes place back in the dark ages of prehistory, when demons and men lived together peacefully.  Something has happened though, and a dark force has fallen across the land.  Now demons have become violent and are attacking humans whenever they find them.  A trio of sages detect the source of the ills: someone is merging science with black magic and trying to resurrect a powerful demon.

To prevent this, they send a monk and three demons (who have not been overcome by the dark force) on a journey to the west; to India.  There they are to stop the resurrection of the dark god.   The four who are chosen are Sanzo, a powerful monk who posseses a powerful 'scripture,' Goku, the Monkey King who is always hungry, Kakkai, a quite and thoughtful demon who is good in a fight, and Gojyo, a randy water sprite who constantly fights with Goku.  As the four travel to their ultimate destination in Kakkai's familiar dragon that can turn into a Jeep, they encounter teams of demons who are intent on ending their journey early.

This show is fairly episodic in nature.  Though there is a bit of continuity, for the most part there are stand alone episodes, with the occasional two-parter, that have the team traveling to a new town and fighting the demons that they find there.

This volume starts off with a two part episode where someone from Hakkai's past comes back to haunt him.  Literally.  Chin Yisou, a demon that Hakkai thought he killed, shows up to exact revenge.  But instead of trying to kill Kakkai, he sets his sights on the other members of the party so that Hakkai will have to suffer the pain of seeing his friends killed.

The group then goes to a temple with a strange tree that is feeding on the monks that live there.  Then there is a lighter story where Goyjo has the night off and goes looking for a date, but ends up spending the evening with an little girl who says she needs him.

The second disc starts out with a good double episode that fills out some of the characters background.  This story recalls how the four traveling companions first met, and at the same time provides motivations that make the characters more three dimensional.

The next pair of shows are stand alone episode.  First the travelers encounter a mist covered town where everything is turned to stone.  In the final show Hakkai and Goyjo join some old friends in hunting demons, only to find that the group they've joined has captured Yaone and are planning on killing her.

This series is enjoyable, though not anything special.  I really liked the two-part episodes, the one on the first disc where Hakkai's background was fleshed out some more was very good..  The episode where Goyjo helps a young girl was pretty funny too, but overall this show is just average.  It has the feel of a "monster of the week" show at times, but the nice thing is that it unexpectedly will present an episode that has a lot of continuity.

Though the show is pretty good at times, the thing that I really dislike is the frequent references to modern day conveniences that didn't exist in ancient China.  The group travels around in a jeep, they pay for their food with an ATM card and Sanzo packs a gun, but the villages that they encounter have no electricity or any technology at all.  I'm sure this was done for humor's sake, but I just found it distracting.

The another strike against the show is that the animation is pretty cheap.  While not the worst that I've ever seen, it is pretty well down on the list.  Most of the show is still images with just the characters mouths animated.  A lot of the action scenes consist of still images that are panned across or zoomed in on.  I will admit that they do a good job of giving the illusion of motion, but it's just an illusion.  The show does use some infrequent CGI effects, such as when demons explode (bloodlessly) after being killed.  This motion just serves to remind viewers how limited the rest of the show is.

This two disc set comes in a clear single-width double keepcase.  There are four episodes on each disc, each one of which seems to be identical to the original releases.

Audio:

This DVD has both the original Japanese soundtrack in Japanese, and a 5.1 English dub.   I alternated language tracks as I watched the show, and enjoyed the Japanese track a bit more.  The English dub was fine, there really wasn't anything wrong with it, but I felt that the Japanese voices sounded better coming from the characters than the English ones.  Both dubs sounded good, with no hiss of distortion being present.

Video:

The full frame video quality was about average for a recent show.  There was a fair amount of aliasing, but the colors were bright and the image was sharp.  A solid transfer that fits the show well.

Extras:

The both discs in this set includes clean opening and closing animations, a reel of production sketches and many text pages of cultural notes.  The last of these I found very helpful and interesting.

Final Thoughts:

This is fun show, but just average.  The plot moves a little slowly, but the individual episodes are fun.  ADV has repackaged these at a reduced price, with a double disc set having the same MSRP as the original individual releases.  At that price it makes it easy to Recommend this series.