Alakazam the Great (西遊記)

Alakazam the Great (Japanese: Saiyūki, 西遊記) is a 1960 Japanese animated feature film produced by Toei Animation and released by Toei on August 14, 1960, adapting the Monkey King legend of Journey to the West from Osamu Tezuka's manga Boku no Son Goku (ぼくの孫悟空).¹ It was Toei Animation's third theatrical feature, following The Tale of the White Serpent (1958) and Young Sasuke Sarutobi (1959), and it became one of the first Japanese animated features shown commercially in North America under its English title.^{2 • 3}

Production

Toei Animation (then Toei Doga), founded in 1956 at Ōizumi in Nerima, Tokyo, released one theatrical feature per year in its early years, and each drew on a classical story with an established reputation, a policy the director Yabushita Yasushi considered appropriate for long animation.⁸ Saiyūki was the studio's third feature.²

Tezuka's involvement. The film is based on Tezuka Osamu's manga Boku no Son Goku, his own variation on the Chinese classic Journey to the West. Tezuka, who had dreamed of making animation since childhood, handled the original plan and story structure and worked on character designs and storyboards, his first full engagement with animation production.^{6 • 9} He left the project during the preparation stage, but the National Film Archive of Japan notes that the modern sensibility he aimed for is reflected throughout the finished film.⁶ The manga artists Ishinomori Shotaro and Tsukioka Sadao joined as his assistants and contributed some key animation; Tsukioka's drawing speed and expressiveness reportedly surprised those around him.⁶

The film's ending became a lasting point of friction. Toei wanted a happy ending for entertainment value, and the film was completed that way; Tezuka's official site suggests the experience taught him a lesson that shaped his later career as an animation creator: to express what he wanted, he would have to produce it with his own money.¹⁰

The key-animation credits include Mori Yasuji, Kumakawa Masao, Ōtsuka Yasuo, Daikubara Akira, and Furusawa Hideo, with Yamamoto Sanae as animation supervisor.^{1 • 5} Among the roughly ninety credited in-betweeners and animators were later notable figures including Sugii Gisaburō, Hayashi Shigeyuki (later known as Rintaro), Kotabe Yoichi, Nakamura Kazuko, Okuyama Reiko, and Ōta Akemi.^{11 • 10}

Reception and release

The film won the Special Grand Award at the Venice International Children's Film Festival and was selected by the Ministry of Education and recommended by the Excellent Film Viewing Society in Japan.⁷ Toei's own retrospective calls it a landmark entertainment work that showed the future of Japanese animation films on the commercial side, and one of the points of origin of the Japanese animated feature.⁷

North America. American International Pictures edited and dubbed the film and released it in 1961 as Alakazam the Great, with the teen idol Frankie Avalon singing the theme song.³ The scholar Hongmei Sun, author of Transforming Monkey: Adaptation and Representation of a Chinese Epic (University of Washington Press, 2018), describes it as a 1960 musical anime based on Tezuka's manga adaptation of the Chinese classic, created under the influence of the Chinese animated film Princess Iron Fan.³ The film was also exported widely in Asia, following The Tale of the White Serpent and Young Sasuke Sarutobi.¹³

Later circulation. A digital remaster of the film was included in Toei's vintage-animation retrospective programs, and a 4K remastered version runs on the Toei Channel television service.^{14 • 15} The National Film Archive of Japan scheduled new 35 mm screenings in 2026 as part of its Toei Animation series.⁶

Place in animation history

The film sits at a formative moment for Japanese commercial animation. Its staff list reads as a roster of the people who would build the industry: Ōtsuka Yasuo and Mori Yasuji in key animation, with in-betweeners who later directed or animated major works, and Tezuka's first, uneasy contact with the studio system that he would soon circumvent by founding Mushi Production.^{1 • 8} The Tezuka collaboration itself was a one-time arrangement; his next Toei theatrical work, Arabian Nights: Adventures of Sindbad (1962), credited him only for screenplay.¹⁶

References

1. ALAKAZAM THE GREAT, Tezuka Osamu Official
2. 西遊記（1960）, 映画.com
3. Hongmei Sun (2018), Transforming Monkey: Adaptation and Representation of a Chinese Epic, University of Washington Press
4. 西遊記, 日本映画海外ポスターアーカイブ (JaMGPA)
5. 西遊記 (1960年のアニメ映画), animemorial.net
6. フィルムでみよう！東映アニメーション-5, 国立映画アーカイブ (NFAJ)
7. 西遊記 ストーリー・作品情報, 東映アニメーション 作品ラインナップ
8. 第18回 東映動画初期劇場作品を作った人々 その1, 練馬アニメーションサイト
9. 劇場｜アニメ｜手塚治虫 TEZUKA OSAMU OFFICIAL
10. 西遊記｜アニメ｜手塚治虫 TEZUKA OSAMU OFFICIAL
11. Alakazam The Great (1960), The Internet Animation Database
12. 映画アニメ 西遊記 (1960) - allcinema
13. 初期東映動画における教育映画の位置, 早稲田大学リポジトリ
14. 東映ヴィンテージアニメ デジタルリマスター上映企画 プレスリリース, 東映アニメーション
15. TOEI CHANNEL PROGRAM GUIDE 2020
16. アニメ一覧, 手塚治虫データベース

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026

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