is an animated television series produced by B-Factory and animated by Group TAC. The story is an adaptation of the 16th-century novel Journey to the West. To avoid religious implications, the Buddha was named "The Guardian". The series was distributed in the United States by Sachs Family Entertainment and aired there in syndication from September 19 to December 12, 1998, with reruns lasting until September 26, 1999. Bandai Entertainment released Monkey Magic on VHS and DVD in the United States in mid-1999. Additionally, the series aired in Japan on TV Tokyo from December 31, 1999 to March 25, 2000. Sunsoft produced a PlayStation video game based on the series. Characters Main characters Kongo (Sun Wukong or Goku) Kongo stars as the main character within the Japanese anime series Monkey Magic. In the series, Kongo is portrayed as a brash yet ambitious monkey, who seeks to gain divine powers in order to become the strongest warrior there is. Although a monkey, Kongo is quite extraordinary, possessing a head as hard as stone and showing remarkable physical strength. After learning the mystical arts of the celestial deities, Kongo is able to gain supernatural abilities, becoming one of the strongest characters in the series. These abilities varied from being able to summon a jet cloud - which corresponds to your will of movement, shape-shifting his body into different forms, and being able to make multiplications of yourself by blowing a few strands of head hairs. Later on in the series, Kongo attains longevity after eating 100 pearls of life, which significantly extends his lifespan to over one million years, and a powerful weapon, the Celestial Power Rod, which is proclaimed to be the strongest weapon in the universe. Similar to the novel, Kongo was born from a rather large meteor that had fallen down from the heavens and had crashed on Flower Fruit Mountain. From this meteor, Kongo was released as a young little monkey. This astounded the other monkeys who initially did not accept Kongo into their tribe, until Kongo is able to oust the prior monkey king, gaining the monkeys respect and loyalty as their new leader. Being born from the meteor and possessing a head as hard as stone, Kongo is initially given the nickname "Stone Monkey". As Monkey King, Kongo leads his band against the human villagers beneath the mountain in order to defend their home. After learning of