Can you please explain what's going on here?
A while ago, I started reading a book that involved a lot of fantasy stuff, with the protagonist being the descendant of a famous "sage" of the past and his friends being various magical beings who help him.
Anyway, the book I was reading had the protagonist fall off a cliff and die in the first chapter or something, and the author decided that he would then be reincarnated into a magical monkey.
It was just after the cliff-falling, I guess, and his new name was Gukumatz.
The book was very good, and I've since read quite a few fantasy books with similar premises, so I kind of enjoy this concept.
The guy in the original post here is Gukumatz, who is going down the hill to get to the princess -- the princess will give him "an elixir for wisdom" (it's a metaphor for being reincarnated) and then he'll know everything, because he'll be the sage himself, his parents' greatest accomplishment.
The problem, of course, is that, as Gukumatz goes downhill, he becomes a monkey. In fact, he becomes all monkeys, the other animals in the forest growing smaller and smaller and becoming progressively more monkey-like. There are lots of monkeys in the forest -- most of them hate him, except for a few who respect him as a sage and want to help him. There are also other forest creatures that are much, much more monkey-like, like the snake guy in the picture -- you can only sort of see him in this picture, but I remember that one guy looks like he was a particularly nasty monkey. In the background of this picture is a human figure who is "so wise" that he doesn't even realize that his life is hopelessly messed up, and he doesn't have the slightest idea that the monkey is there, so Gukumatz's situation seems hopeless.
And when I say this is a "really good" book, I mean it really really is. This is very, very clever.
