In order to stop Azure before he loses control of the Jade Emperor’s power, MK and Macaque join together to traverse the broken memory scroll piece and rescue Monkey King.
Tropes:
- Central Theme: Sometimes you will make mistakes that you can’t go back and fix, but you can learn from them and do better in the future. It’s never too late to make up for your past.
- Gaia's Lament: MK and Macaque’s trip through the broken scroll pieces reveal that Camel Ridge didn’t just come from the combined power of Azure and his sworn brothers — he took the life from everything around them to create it, leaving behind a lifeless, skeleton-ridden desert. This is what helps MK realize that for all of Monkey King’s mistakes, Azure is way more dangerous.
- Idiot Ball: MK, despite being a massive Monkey King fan who has both named and recognized several events from Journey to The West in the past, apparently hasn’t even really read the book and is thus completely clueless about some of the most basic major events from Monkey King’s recorded past (such as how he even became the Monkey King), which prompts Macaque needing to explain things to him.
- Jerkass Realization:
- Monkey King fully recognizes and deeply regrets his reckless and selfish past obsession with immortality that led to his failed conquest against the Celestial Realm and his first friendships crumbling (particularly his and Macaque’s), admitting how he lost sight of what it was all for in the first place.
- Macaque also seems to have had his own one of these in regards to his long-standing animosity with Monkey King, and has realized he was wrong to ever view Monkey King as a bad person. When watching the memory of the argument that broke their friendship, he visibly shows regret over his past accusations towards his former friend.
- Literal Metaphor: Macaque claims that he can “smell [Monkey King] from a mile away” while talking to MK about distinguishing between memories of Monkey King and the real him. Later, before entering the memory he’s in, Macaque sniffs the air and confirms to MK that it’s really him.
- Mundane Solution: Tang and Sandy manage to make Monkey King’s broken scroll piece workable through simply taping it back together. With normal duck tape, not magic tape, though Ne Zha didn’t need to know that.
- Once More, with Clarity: Earlier in the season, Azure Lion showed MK the memories of Monkey King “betraying” his brothers to serve Tang Sanzang and the brotherhood creating Camel Ridge as a glorious utopia outside of the Celestial Realm’s influence, claiming that Monkey King and his companions were sent to eliminate them as competition. When Macaque and MK happen upon those same memories, the former reveals that Monkey King wasn’t given a choice in joining Tang Sanzang’s journey, and that Azure Lion had left a lifeless wasteland in his wake by stealing energy from the land around him to build Camel Ridge.
- Took a Level in Jerkass: The episode reveals that even though Monkey King was hot headed to a fault, he was never an outright jerk in his youth — until his failed conquest of the Celestial Realm and his mountain imprisonment made him incredibly bitter and resentful, namely shown by how he mockingly rebuffed Young Macaque’s attempts to cheer him up and lashed out at him over his situation. Even MK is left wondering if Monkey King really was a bad person upon witnessing this behaviour.
