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  • Truely a Rip-Off?

    An interesting comparison between elements of the Sonic Universe and elements of a popular Japanese anime.

    When Monkey Khan first showed up, anyone with sight could recognize that the so-called “Cyborg” seemed an awful lot like a character from the DB/Z/GT universe, namely Gokuu, Gohan, or Goten. However, when Khan got a small transportation cloud that was a dead-ringer for Kintoen/Nimbus, that was the last straw for many comic readers, including myself.

    Insults started flying around, degrading Khan for everything from his cloud to the fact that he couldn't be an anthro.

    There's a question I would like to ask about this manner: 1) Can Khan truely be considered a rip-off of Gokuu, considering that the very idea for the Saiyajin hero was taken from an ancient Chinese legend “Journey to the West?”

    The answer is: Perhaps, perhaps not. In order to understand this, you would have to know a lot about the “Journey” story, and quite a bit about Akria Toriyama's work.

    The nickname given to Khan when he saved that village was “The Monkey King.” Those who have seen the first DB series know that this was a nickname given to Son Gokuu on the account of the monkey-like tail that grew out of his backside. (Those who have only seen DBZ have no clue what I'm talking about, considering that Gokuu's tail had already been removed by Kamisama before DBZ began.) The character in “Journey” was also given this name, mainly because he WAS a monkey.

    The entire story where Khan, Sonic, and Tails took out Mount Stormtop bared an unsettling resemblence to the episode of DB where Gokuu, Oolong, and Buruma had to face Guyamou/the Ox-King and his daughter Chichi. The only difference I saw was that the mountain in DB was called “Frypan.” I'm not sure if this takes place in “Journey”, I'm not that far in the story.

    Also, there was the matter of Khan's little flying cloud, which seemed a great deal like the Kintoen/Flying Nimbus that Kamesennin/Master Rochi gave to Gokuu as a present fot helping Turtle. From what I remember of “Journey”, no such cloud was mentioned.

    And finally, we have the fact that a good deal of the key elements in the Sonic universe came from DB/Z/GT. There's the seven Chaos Emeralds, devised from the seven Dragonballs. Sonic/Knuckles/Tails'

    transformations into their Super/Hyper forms came from

    Gokuu/Gohan/Bejita/Trunks/Goten's abilities to go SSJ (Super Saiyajin for the unknowing ones). And was that a Saiyajin tail I spied on the Princess Sera of the anime? (And for those of you who would argue that she's half cat, those aren't cat ears, just huge hairbows. Notice they changed colors between eps.?)

    Given all of the evidence, I would say that it makes perfectly good sense if the comic staff wished to pay homage to the Saiyajin people by making one of their characters like them. I just wished they had picked someone better than Monkey Khan, who is too much like Gokuu for his own good. (Except that Gokuu doesn't have that huge of an ego.) This is Rahepsi Nightflash, signing off!