please tell me this manga/comic/show exists i do not wanna have to make it
okok I've posted about this before but I'm watching animation content on youtube again while getting work done and by GOD I WANNA TALK ABOUT THIS AGAIN
There's a specific concept I want to consume as content/art so badly but it came to me in a stupid dream. BUT. Sometimes, a dream means I DID see a hint of it somewhere and my brain accidentally plagiarized it which provides me with the teensiest sliver of hope that exists already and I don't have to work on it
It's a kind of a reverse isekai, right? But instead of an instant portal, it's time passing. And what I mean by that is that it's a Sun Wukong story, but the branch off is that after the main events of Journey to the West he gets either water temple'd or trapped in magic sleep again, not for a few hundred years but a few THOUSAND.
He wakes up to an incredibly far-flung China that remembers his myth and only his myth.
The art style that operated in this dream was sort of. Textured but 3D? Think nimona's buttery lighting but instead of emphasis on light and shapes to operate with the stained glass and solarpunk-medieval style the models are textured in a way that just invokes traditional brushwork and colour bleed even in a more cyberpunkish setting. Think like. Whenever there's a night scene the astigmatism glow of lamplight bleeds a little, like ink feathering on paper.
It's a little bit of a Steve Rogers treatment in a way, the world has moved past him, but also completely mythologized and capitalized on that mythology. Rather than treat that man out of time narrative as an aspect of backstory, it's the MAIN character narrative, because this ISN'T a world that needs him. This world is doing pretty okay, actually.
Not about his feats or how cool his powers are or the 8 gajillion things the magic staff can do but just.
From the vaguely coherent notes that I could garner from my sleepily typed googledoc, it seems that I wanted this to be a love letter of sorts to the Asian diaspora experience? A specific sort of loneliness? Where the world you experience has a sort of disconnect in that it makes plain you belong there but you also don't, you never have, and there's no way to go "back" but going forward feels like groping blind through the muck. How much right to the past does he feel like he has? When it's been built into something he can't recognize and is clearly important to other people.
I want the pickup of the plot to gain him friends, family, maybe even a conflict or two but the stakes should never elevate vis a vis physical enemies to battle.
It'd be about 2/3 of this sort of narrative drawn story and the other 1/3 just hogwild worldbuilding and design
I've looked at a few other journey to the west adaptations but they mainly just use him as a funky lil action figure hero that's there to be cool as hell and save the day
99% likely this is just a thing my brain is made up and I'd need a several million budget and about 25 additional skills to start the ball rolling but hey, worth it to ask yall again
