WTF Wardrobe: Sha Goyjo – Gensoumaden Saiyuki

Let’s face it, sometimes clothing and hairstyle design in anime is bad to the point of being ridiculous.  You sit, and stare at the screen and wonder who exactly would wander out of their house looking like that.

My example today is Sha Gojyo from Gensoumaden Saiyuki and his ridiculous pants.

They’re like hammer pants, capri style.  What exactly is the point of them being all poofy only to be extremely fitted at the calves?  It certainly doesn’t make them look any better.

Not to mention the actual front of the pants.  What the heck is that sticking up above the waistline?  Do I even want to know?

This ridiculous piece of clothing made it nearly impossible for me to take Gojyo seriously.  Any reaction I would have to a real person wearing something so silly looking got attached to the character, so even when he did something badass, I would still think, ‘yeah but those PANTS….’  They negated any hint of machismo he possibly had or could have, and simply relegated him to being bad.

If you’re wondering, yeah I’ve been posting about Saiyuki pretty heavily.  It’s one of my favorites, so you can look forward to more posts about it, good and bad.

I wouldn’t go on a field trip with you for anything

I’ve had some cause to regret my decision to watch all the anime I have in my binder from cover to cover.  The order that I put anime in was pretty random and I have a giant chunk of Naruto to be watching in the middle.  I’ll admit that I wasn’t exactly looking forward to rewatching Saiyuki, as I labored under the impression that it wouldn’t stand up to the more recent anime I had been watching.

I was wrong.  I still enjoy Saiyuki mightily, and I’m glad it’s still in my collection.  It’s one of the few anime I own that I have watched multiple times, some of the others being Trigun, Magic Knight Rayearth, and D. N. Angel.  I suppose that in itself may tell you something of what I prefer to watch: anime that has lots of action, humor, and characters that essentially don’t change much.

Which sums up Saiyuki pretty well.  The Sanzo party does not get along throughout the entire series (and by series, I’m only referring to Saiyuki itself, not the latter seasons Reload and Reload Gunlock).  Sanzo himself is unflinchly direct to everyone, declaring that ‘anyone that gets in the way of my mission, I will kill.’  Every time they’re in the car, Goku and Gojyo fight in the back, while Hakkai laughs and makes a sarcastic comment about it being peaceful and Sanzo eventually gets angry enough to threaten to shoot the both of them.  In an episode where an enemy sent a fake Goku, the others knew he was fake because the fake didn’t declare immediately that he was hungry.

After some anime where the entire season is comprised of the hero constantly second-guessing themself and wavering on every decision, Sanzo’s directness is refreshing.  He doesn’t waver, he doesn’t second guess.  If he sees someone in his way, he simply takes them out and keeps on his way.  I like that.  I tend to get annoyed with wishy-washy characters, because really, how hard is it to just make a freaking decision and go by it?

I’ll admit that the beginning animation is a little painful to watch, as there looks to be LOTS of photoshopping, but as the seasons progress, the animation takes off and really improves.  By the end of the series the animation is superb and special effects actually add to the story rather than distracting from it.  I can see what will become echoes of later series in the animation in Saiyuki.  Although, Studio Pierrot also does Naruto and Bleach, the consistency of quality unfortunately does not stay the same as Saiyuki, which is rather unfortunate.  It’s not a very fair comparison though, given the length of Saiyuki compared to the lengths of Bleach and Naruto, both of which run much, much longer, and therefore probably have different costs associated with them.  However, that is beside my point.

Saiyuki is pretty much the way I’d imagine any ‘extended field trip’ for any four people that knew each other would go.  Everyone would shortly get on everyone else’s nerves, and do the same thing, time after time after time.  I don’t find that repetition boring at all, although I imagine that kind of storytelling isn’t for everyone.

Now to sit back and watch Saiyuki Reload!  I still need to buy Reload Gunlock sometime :\  Maybe after I’m done watching everything I have now..

The anime in this review is provided by the author.