I was lucky enough to stumble on an animation project from Eyeshield 21 manga artist Yusuke Murata. Currently it is only a collection of silent teaser clips, but they are very promising. Based on an article by Anime New Network and eight minutes of animation, here is what it is about. Zaiyuki is a Japanese mythical creature know as a kappa. Sadly, he is not a very good one and does not live up to expectations. One days he wins a trip to India in a lottery. Along the way he is given an egg and as soon as he arrives at the airport it hatches releasing Sun Wukong. Everything goes off the rails from there!
In case you haven’t noticed Zaiyuki is based on Jurney to the West. This 16th century Chinese novel by Wu Cheng’en has inspired many anime series. One key difference with this anime is its version of the pig man Zhu Bajie. He is not a man at all… She is a pig girl named Rose! It is not often we get a pig kemonomimi and she also can handle an anti-material rifle. Looking at the video Rose will not just be a pretty face but a force to be reckoned with.
So far Zaiyuki looks like an amazing anime series in the making. It gives me strong 80s and 90s anime vibes and I mean that in a good way. I like what I am seeing, and I’m going to keep an eye on her… this project. Hopefully, we will get a release date in the future!
So what do you think?