Anime fans might not know this but both One Piece and Naruto were inspired by Journey to the West and they paid tribute in their own ways.

SUMMARY

Naruto and One Piece are two of the biggest series in the world.
Both of them have been inspired from the Chinese 16th Century novel, Journey to the West.
However, they way of tributing to the novel and to its main character is quite different.

The two biggest anime series in the world, One Piece, and Naruto, have been in tough competition with each other since the early 2000s. Both of them have a vast fan following that helped them acquire legendary status and inspire many other prominent stories. However, fans might not know this, but both Naruto and One Piece have been inspired by the 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West.

Naruto and Luffy | Credit: Weekly Shonen Jump

Journey to the West was written by Wu Cheng’en, and it follows the story of Sun Wukong, who was born from a stone and somehow acquired supernatural powers through Taoist practices. Sun Wukong had many names, but the most prominent one that is used even today is the Monkey King, and he has inspired a lot of popular stories that made a name for themselves, including Dragon Ball.

Both Eiichiro Oda and Masashi Kishimoto have paid tribute to the Monkey King in their own ways. They have used their protagonists, Naruto and Luffy, to hint at the inspiration they got from Sun Wukong, but Kishimoto’s tribute to the character is much more subtle than Oda’s tribute.

Eiichiro Oda’s Tribute To The Monkey King

Eiichiro Oda has been quite vocal about taking inspiration from Journey to the West and using it in his own ways. While the adventure and travel part of One Piece perfectly parallels the Journey to the West storyline, Oda decided to pay tribute to the series with his protagonist, Monkey D. Luffy.

From Luffy’s name to his goal in One Piece, everything shares a connection with Sun Wukong. Oda named him Monkey to emphasize his connection with the Monkey King and then gave him the goal of becoming Pirate King, which would also connect him to the Journey to the West protagonist who served as his inspiration.

However, the One Piece mangaka didn’t stop there, as he used Luffy’s Gear 5 transformation to create another parallel with Sun Wukong. Luffy’s personality change during the Nika transformation feels exactly like the Monkey King, and the curl on his eyebrows exactly matches the one on Sun Wukong’s bracelet.

Masashi Kishimoto’s Sun Wukong Tribute is Much Subtler

While Oda went out of his way to pay tribute to the Monkey King through Luffy, Masashi Kishimoto used a much more discreet and subtle approach.

While the mangaka has made sure that fans find the essence of Sun Wukong in the overall narrative of Naruto as a series, in the case of his protagonist, he went with a much simpler approach.

Naruto and his Shadow Clone | Credits: Studio Pierrot

He developed a connection between the Monkey King and Naruto through their abilities to make their clones. In his own story, Sun Wukong is able to make thousands of clones of himself, and each of them has an equal amount of power and even the same weapons. The same is the case with Naruto’s Shadow Clone Jutsu, which is a major part of his character.

Naruto is known for his Shadow Clone techniques and the variation he brings to it. This way, Kishimoto made sure that while Naruto gets a storyline of his own, he still managed to explore the essence of the character that inspired him and led to his creation.