Cho Hakkai
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Cho Hakkai (豬八戒 Cho Hakkai) is the Japanese name for Zhu Bajie, a character in Journey to the West.
Cho Hakkai (豬八戒 Cho Hakkai) is a fictional character in the manga and anime Saiyuki. Cho Hakkai is the mild, polite and level-headed member of the group who always looks out for their day to day wellbeing. He takes on the more feminine roles: cooking, cleaning up after everyone, making sure their supplies are in order, and solving (or at least calming down) the arguments and yelling matches that happen frequently. He is also their healer, his kikou jutsu (chi manipulation) coming in handy in battle in the form of kai blasts and protective barriers.
Hakkai is very fond of sake, but never gets drunk no matter how much he consumes. His pet dragon, named Hakuryu, turns into a green jeep and serves as their mode of transportation. Hakkai usually drives with Genjyo Sanzo in the passenger seat, and Son Goku and Sha Gojyo in the back. He wears a monocle over his nearly blind right eye, and on his left ear he wears three metal clips which are youkai (yōkai) limiters, keeping his power and form in check. Unlike Goku, Hakkai has more control over his transformation, and has been able to remove and replace his limiters under his own power on two separate occasions.
Hakkai was born human as Cho Gonou. He was an orphan and was raised by Catholic nuns through his childhood. He fell in love with his older sister, Kanan (though in the anime they don't mention that she is his sister) and lived with her in a town where he had a job as a school teacher. One day he came home to find that the villages had given her over to the centipede youkai Hyakuganmaou (who loved to devour beautiful women). Gonou then went on a killing rampage to get her back. Gonou slaughtered the entire clan of youkai only to discover that Kanan had been raped and was carrying Hyakuganmaou’s child. Because she was unwilling to give birth to a monster, Kanan killed herself with Gonou’s knife, rendering Gonou's promise to save her a failure in his eyes. At this point Gonou became victim to a legend that states that a human who “bathes in the blood of a thousand youkai” will become a youkai himself. In short, Gonou ceased to be human, and became a youkai.
Severely injured and near death, Gonou stumbled about in the rain before falling across Gojyo’s path, who took him in and got him a doctor, saving his life. Upon waking, Gonou was haunted by his sin, and the blood red color of Gojyo’s hair served to remind him of his inability to escape. Genjyo Sanzo and his companion Son Goku came looking for Gonou, intending to take him back to the temple to stand trial for his crimes, but he escaped with Gojyo’s help. Gonou wanted to retrieve Kanan’s body, but ran into a survivor of the youkai clan. As atonement for ripping out the eyes of the youkai’s brother, Gonou forfeited his own right eye. In the manga, Gonou actually riped his eye out of its socket and threw it at the demon, Goku tackling him to prevent him from removing his other eye. In the anime, Goku stopped him before he could finish removing his eye. Gonou killed the youkai with Sanzo’s banishing gun, and together the four of them continued on to Hyakuganmaou’s castle only to find it burnt to the ground, Kanan’s corpse lost forever.
Sanzo and Goku took Gonou back to the temple where he stood trial for murder, Sanzo intervening on his behalf. With a second chance at life and a new name, Cho Hakkai moved in with Gojyo and eventually joined Sanzo in his quest to travel west as a member of the Sanzo-ikkou.
He carries his ever smiling face to hide his sadness and guilt over his past. It usually scares his colleagues because they never can guess what's in his mind, or even if he’s being serious or laughing at the rest of his companions. Hakkai is the only one of the Sanzo-ikkou that can talk to Sanzo without his life being threatened.
However for all his smiles and his politeness, there are moments when his mild mannered nature is scraped away to reveal his darker side. Hakkai can be very sadistic at these points in time. He is very protective of the group, and more obvious about it than the others, eagerly preferring to put himself in the way of danger. It seems that his failure at saving Kanan fuels this habit of driving himself to collapse.
In his past life, Hakkai was Field Marshal Tenpou who outranked General Kenren (Sha Gojyo's past life), and who was old friends with Konzen Douji (Genjyo Sanzo's past life). He owned a huge library and had a habit of keeping it messy and disappearing inside it for long periods of time.
The character Cho Hakkai has nothing in common with Zhu Bajie, his counterpart in the original Chinese story Journey to the West; however, a con artist who tries to impersonate him partway through the series has more in common with Zhu, a pig being.
In the English dub, he is voiced by Braden Hunt. In the Japanese version his voice is that of Akira Ishida.