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Monkey King
Monkey King
Personal Info
Full Name Sun Wukong
Alias The King of Comedy
Race Anthropomorphic Monkey
Nationality Chinese
Status Turned into a Puppet
Martial Arts Bōjutsu
Kendo
General Info
Details
Debut Season 2 Episode 38
Closing Season 3 Episode 5
English Bill Tanzer (debut)
Billy West
Monkey King (Puppet)

Monkey King Puppet

The Monkey King is a prankster, show-off, and overall maker of mayhem, dubbing himself the King of Comedy.

Appearance[]

He first appears as a puppet, but when brought to life, he stands about six feet tall and has a red, shaggy mane of hair and a bushy brown beard. He is also a sorcerer, conducting spells through a wooden staff, but his magic is mainly used for comic value. (Whether or not anyone else finds it funny is not a priority to him.) Usually, he wears a green shirt with yellow trim, but he changes costumes to fit the mood.

Personality[]

Monkey King is known to be a prankster and joker, cracking numerous amounts of jokes/puns, even in the midst of battle. His sense of humor can be quite dark at times but he is never usually serious. He is also known to hold grudges, evidenced by the fact that he went to get revenge on Jackie and Jade after being released from his puppet form a second time. He enjoys being admired by the crowd but he can be jealous whenever the spotlight is taken away from him. Like the Enforcers, he appears to be a nuisance, but he can also be a threat at times.

History[]

Background[]

His origins are unknown, but in his introductory episode, his revival turns Jackie into a puppet, and when Jade asks for a way to set Jackie free, Monkey King replies, "One of us would have to be stuck in Dollsville, and I ain't never goin' back!"

Season 2[]

He first appeared in I'll Be a Monkey's Puppet, when Jackie bought a monkey puppet for Jade to use in her upcoming ventriloquism act for the talent show at school. Looking more closely at it, he saw a rhyme on the back that read, "To free me of glitches and put you in stitches, this merry ape begs: Pull my leg." Doing so, he transformed into a puppet, and the doll became a real monkey. Monkey King runs out and causes havoc on the town, and Jade and Jackie (animated by the Rat talisman) attempt to stop him. They only succeed when Uncle swallows his pride and gets a book with information about the Monkey King from a rival antiques dealer, who was the one who sold the doll to Jackie. Jade is able to trick the Monkey King into pulling Jackie's leg, and when he does, the magic reverses, restoring Jackie to human form and the Monkey King to doll form.

Season 3[]

The Monkey King is next seen in Monkey a Go-Go, when two construction workers are breaking down a wall and find the doll inside the concrete. One of them follows the rhyme and gets himself swapped to doll form. The first goal of the Monkey King is to get revenge on the Chans. He goes to the shop, "interrogating" Tohru into revealing that the others have gone to Hawaii. He catches up with them during their search for the Noble Monkey that bears the magic of the Monkey Talisman. Jade gets away, but he corners Jackie and Uncle at the mercy of his scythe and Grim Reaper costume. Jackie manages to convince him to try a funnier revenge, so he hangs them on a spit to roast luau-style. However, his attention is soon diverted by Haiku, the monkey with the talisman's magic. The tourists are impressed by Haiku's transformations, laughing and cheering as he changes, so the Monkey King tries to steal the show. His efforts fail tremendously, and his rage at being out-performed by another monkey drives him to steal Haiku from the now-escaped Chans and take him to a volcanic crater which he will cause to erupt via magic. When Daolon Wong shows up, not only is he also more interested in Haiku than the Monkey King, he points out that the eruption spell has not worked. It turns out that one ingredient (three pounds of wood) is missing, and to add injury to insult, Daolon Wong curses the Monkey King back into puppet form (which also restores the construction worker). As the Chans and Haiku clash with Daolon Wong, the puppet is knocked into the crater, which completes the spell and sets off the eruption. Daolon Wong is sent skyward, and the others try to flee but are buried in the flow. They resurface completely unharmed, realizing that it's not lava, but actually cherry gelatin. The last view we have of the Monkey King is as the Chans look down into the crater, seeing the doll encased in his red prison.

Powers and Abilities[]

Monkey King's fighting style consists of a mix between magic and physical combat. His main weapon is his staff, but he can also use other weapons such as swords and mallets. He is quite formidable as he is able to fight Jackie toe-to-toe evenly. As a Monkey, he can leap long distances. Unlike most of the characters in the series, he does not take his fights very seriously and will retort to using gags during battle.

Monkey King possess reality-bending powers that he can use seamlessly and often does in a rather comical and deadly fashion, mostly for his own amusement. He's prone to conjuring various mundane objects out of thin air, changing his outfit into something costume-orientated that he'll roleplay as, transforming his staff into numerous things (like a giant mallet, an axe, a harpoon, a gong mallet, a hook, a scythe, twirling batons, a curtain, a fishing net and even a hang-glider), and putting others in awkward situations (such as making Tohru spring out of a massive jack-in-the-box, pulling Jade out of giant top hat with bunny ears on her head, and tying Jackie and Uncle to a spit). He can move around in a small tornado, change his body shape, and animate objects into his minions as he did with a couple of poultry.

Weaknesses[]

Monkey King's main weakness is the fact that he is technically a magic entity himself. Since he was formed as a puppet, he could be converted back into a puppet in the following ways:

  • He pulls the leg of the victim who pulled his leg to allow him to escape his puppet form. The leg does not have to be attached to the victim.
  • A chi spell from a powerful chi wizard such as Daolon Wong.

Appearances[]

TV Series[]

Season 2[]

Season 3[]

Trivia[]

  • Monkey King's powers and personality are similar to The Mask from the 1994 film, comics, and cartoon series of the same name.
  • Despite having extensive magical powers, the Monkey King seems to lack the ability to change into other animals. However, it could be that he is indeed capable of doing so, but his extreme arrogance compels him never to change his appearance too radically.
  • Although the personality vastly differs, he seems to share several characteristics with Sun Wukong from Journey to the West. It is possible that his equipment is meant to further allude to the character, as his bō staff could be a reference to Sun Wukong's Ruyi Jingu Bang and the bracelet on his left arm could be a reference to the magical circlet Tang Sanzang used to keep Sun Wukong under control
  • After being brought to life and refusing to turn Jackie back to normal, The Monkey King compares himself to King Kong, referring to the latter as "that other monkey king". This is a glaring mistake on his part, as King Kong was actually an ape.
  • Despite being trapped in puppet form, The Monkey King still seems to be extensively familiar with a great number of iconic movies and musicals such as Planet of the Apes, King Kong, Titanic, Grease, Phantom of the Opera, and Frankenstein. However, throughout the episode "I'll Be a Monkey's Puppet", he makes several comments suggesting that he possessed a degree of awareness while he was a puppet. So it would be not be surprising if he had been exposed to advertisements for such productions over the years. Alternatively, it could simply be interpreted as the writers playfully breaking the fourth wall.
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