I'm usually attracted to any retelling or adaptation of the Journey to the West saga, and this was what first attracted me to Saiyuki, but I wouldn't have kept reading (and continued on to Saiyuki Reloaded) if the art and story were not consistently enjoyable. My disappointments were few: I wish the main characters were a little less abusive of each other -- even though it is manga, I understand, and not real life -- and I was disappointed that the storyline was left hanging, incomplete, at the end of Saiyuki. Saiyuki Reloaded might more accurately be called Saiyuki Continued, or even have kept the same title. But those are my chief complaints, and aside from those, I really have enjoyed the drawing and plot in this series.

The plot of Saiyuki develops gradually with occasional revelations about the main characters all contributing to the reader's understanding of their interactions with each other and others they meet. The general sense that the group is being led on by the gods, maybe even toyed with by them, underlies the whole story. Since that's a general feeling that pervades many people's lives, or a least a question we have to deal with, it makes for thoughtful moments to combine with the explosive violence in the story. This theme of being the playthings of the gods becomes dominant visually as well as through plot developments in some of the latter chapters of Saiyuki.

I finished Saiyuki and went on to Saiyuki Reloaded especially wondering how the character of Son Goku would continue to develop. The glimpses of his past, as well as his unleashed power, in Saiyuki fit with the Monkey King legend well enough that I was most intrigued by what would happen to him as the group got closer to (and arrived in?) India. But whether the unholy priest Genjyo Sanzo would find any sort of resolution in his life, and what would happen to Gojyo and Hakkai, are also worth finding out. This added to some curiosity about whether we'd find out more about some of the interesting secondary characters met along the way.