Journey To The Best (New Years 2025)

That's right everybody, it's that time of year once again!! It's the beginning of a new year, the time to get with friends and family, you drink a whole lot of champagne, cider or whatever you guys like to drink this time of year and make a New Year's resolution that I know for a fact nobody will follow through on!! 😁 Anywho, I've decided to do something I've been into for a while now. While I was planning what to do for this year, I had a pretty good thought on what I wanted to do. Do you know what country is really good at celebrating the New Years? China. For those of you who don't know because you either didn't pay attention in class or just more of a f*cking idiot then my brothers, China has this thing called "The Lunar New Year", the beginning of a new year based on lunar calendars or, informally but more widely, lunisolar calendars. Lunar calendars follow the lunar phase while lunisolar calendars follow both the lunar phase and the time of the solar year. The event is celebrated by numerous cultures in various ways at diverse dates. They do things like reunion dinners with family, they have these lantern festivals with different lanterns that are hung around the town, and even these pretty cool parades that sometimes have people carry these large paper mache dragons that they move around to look like it's actually flying like a real dragon. I honestly think it's my favorite kind of New Year... But, do you know what else besides the New Year traditions I think is the coolest thing to come out of China? Their four most beloved classic novels. Romance of the Three kingdoms, Dream of the Red Chamber, Water Margin... And the most iconic of the four... Specifically 'Xi You Ji'... AKA, "The Journey To The West". The very story that inspired Akira toriyama's most beloved Manga and anime series, "Dragon Ball", along with a couple of other animes that were also inspired by this story like "Saiyūki: Reloaded". For those of you who don't really watch anime enough to know the ones that was inspired by this novel, Journey to the West is a 16th century Chinese novel by Wu Cheng'en. It's considered one of the greatest Chinese novels and is said to be the most popular literary work in East Asia. The novel is a mythological story based on traditional folktales. It tells the story of a real-life Chinese Buddhist monk, Hsuan Tsang, who traveled to India in the 600s to bring Buddhist scriptures back to China. So basically what I'm saying is before we had Akira toriyama,... We had that guy. So with these concepts in mind, I thought what could be a better way to celebrate the new year then celebrate Journey to the West by dressing up as some of the characters in an epic New Year's picture? So here we are... You've got, me, Adam and Milo all dressed like the three disciples of Tang Xuanzang while flying with a big orange Lung Dragon. First there's me, dressed as the one and only Monkey King, Sun Wukong (Aka Son Goku) riding on the somersault cloud while wielding his iconic weapon, the Ruyi Jingu Bang. I of course am dressed as Wukong because I've always been self considered a main character who's built different, always updating any power necessary to take on any villain to save the world. And then riding on the back of the dragon, you've got Milo as Zhū Bajie, the shapeshifting Pig demon and former general of Heaven, and Adam as Sha Wujing. Adam is cosplaying Friar Sand because his loyalty and position as the brains of the operation definitely matches that of Sha Wujing, always being the straight man of the group. While Milo is dressed as Pigsy because not only is he the chunky one of the group, but he's also very cowardly and a major perv towards women sometimes. These roles couldn't fit any better... Now I didn't have enough room to add any of the other characters, but if I did, I would probably put Neren as Tang Xuangzang because she's always been depicted as the calm type. I also would have put Brandon as the six eared macaque because much like Brandon being a dark edgy rival of mine, the six eared macaque is often depicted as an iconic rival to Sun Wukong in the original story, because macaque framed him for attacking Tang Xuangzang after he was thrown out of the group again.

Believe me when I say this... This picture took me FOREVER to make. It's bad enough that I'm already struggling with a couple of other projects, but with the deadline of a new year coming... UGH, so tiring. But I suppose it's all worth it in the end, because this is the most amount of work I put into a drawing in a long time.

Happy New Year's everyone, I hope everyone has a great time in 2025!!