I never read Gene Luen Yang's "American Born Chinese" comic, but the Monkey King and I go way back. There have been attempts to depict him in American media before, usually with pretty poor results. In Asian media, however, he's everywhere. I'd be worried about how Chinese viewers would react to the show's version of Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, except that he's been reinterpreted and remixed into so many different versions over the years - including Goku from "Dragonball" - that I doubt this version will make much of an impact. "American Born Chinese" isn't for a Chinese audience, after all, but seems aimed squarely at second and third generation Asian-Americans. Like me!
Jin Wang (Ben Wang) is a Chinese-American teenager trying to fit in with his mostly white classmates when a new Taiwanese student named Wei-Chen (Jimmy Liu) transfers to his high school. The two become friends, but Jin has trouble reconciling his desire to conform with embracing his Chinese heritage, and Jin's friendship with Wei-Chen often clashes with his desire to look cool to his Caucasian friends and his crush Amelia (Sydney Taylor). His home life is also in crisis, as his mother Christine (Yeo Yann Yann) and father Simon (Chin Han) have been arguing over work and finances. Wei-Chen, however, won't give up on Jin. It turns out that he's secretly the son of the legendary Monkey King (Daniel Wu), and stole his father's magic staff in order to find a missing, powerful artifact. And he's sure that Jin can help guide him to it.
"American Born Chinese" is a very YA affair. A big chunk of time is spent on high school drama, as Jin deals with an embarrassing social media post, winning a place on the soccer team, and juggling priorities. At times it feels very similar to the MCU series "Ms. Marvel," except that it treats Jin's identity struggles more seriously, and the underlying mythology of its fantasy characters is much, much stronger. Several familiar Asian actors make appearances, including most of the cast of "Everything Everywhere All at Once." Michelle Yeoh plays the Goddess of Mercy, Guanyin, who looks after Wei-Chen on Earth as his self appointed Auntie. Ke Huy Quan plays Freddy, a stereotypical Asian character from an '80s sitcom, who has become a popular internet meme. Stephanie Hsu and James Hong show up in smaller parts, along with Ronnie Cheng, Poppy Liu, Jimmy O. Yang, and Leonard Wu as our villain, the Bull Demon King. The tone is kept very light and very fun, and there's a big martial arts fight in nearly every episode.
The show's Chinese bona fides are pretty good. There's a lot of dialogue in Mandarin Chinese, and I watched these scenes without subtitles, just because I could. I was happy to find that these parts of the series were completely comprehensible to me, though the accents of the actors vary greatly, because the cast is so international. There's an entire episode that retells the story of the Monkey King sneaking into the Royal Banquet, but framed to emphasize his friendship and falling out with the Bull Demon King. If you actually know how the events are supposed to play out from "Journey to the West," it's a little eyebrow raising, but doing the whole thing like an installment of a chintzy '70s television serial, with the costumes to match, mostly makes up for it. And I'm glad they included this episode, because the rest of the time the Monkey King is acting like a stern father, instead of the naughty hellraiser he's always been in the stories.
The best parts of the show, however, are about Jin's parents. I loved seeing their dynamic and especially their mismatched mindsets about how to approach getting ahead in life. It hits close to home for me, and is something I've rarely seen addressed in Western media. I also liked the way Jin's issues with his identity are addressed. There's not much direct bullying going on at school, but there is a lot of pressure not to stick out, lots of ignorant insensitivity, and constant hits to Jin's self-esteem. In one episode Jin chooses to smooth things over rather than call out the person who made him a laughingstock online, disappointing Wei-Chen and other friends who stand up for him. The situation is complex, and while Jin can be seen as taking the easy way out, he's not wrong to want to defuse the messy situation either.
Eight episodes doesn't feel like enough time to cover everything going on in the show, and the fantasy material feels especially shortchanged. Unless you're already familiar with "Journey to the West" and other Chinese mythology, you'll almost certainly run into some confusion over who all these strange characters are, and how they relate to each other. Then again, the show's target audience likely knows exactly who everyone is already.
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