YMMV / Monkey King: Quest for The Sutra

• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • The very last scene of the series, it can also be viewed as a Gainax Ending. Apparently in the future, a second Journey to the West is required to save the world again, so Wukong, Sanzang, Bajie, and Wujing had been reincarnated as Wujing, Wukong, Sanzang, and Bajie respectively (You read that order right) to tackle this mission.
• Questionable Casting: It's almost as if it is the casting director's intention to make the audience laugh with his/her casting choices in this show.
  • Its one thing to put Cantopop duo Twins Charlene Choi and Gillian Chung (who are singers first and actresses second) in acting roles. But... casting Charlene Choi as the older sister and lead fairy in heaven, when she lacks that "regal" look suitable for period dramas, while the slightly older Gillian Chung was cast as the younger sister and is required to act like a little brat?
  • Jimmy Lin as Nezha. Yes, face-wise he looks younger than his age, but he still had the obvious voice, stature and features of an adult man. Nezha is supposed to have the features of a young child, so it would have been more convincing if the appropriate actor/actress in their late teen/early twenties plays Nezha. Jimmy Lin was 28 when the show aired!
  • Sam Lee as Sha Wujing? He looked pretty unconvincing even in his initial appearance when he sported the character's traditional moustache and beard. Gets worse after he got rid of them, his regular Sha Wujing looked a bit more like a pretty boy instead.
  • One of the criticisms is that a lot of the show's budget is spent on hiring big names to play cameo roles, when these tiny roles can be fulfilled by cheaper and less popular actors. Examples such as getting Nicholas Tse to play Chung Kwai who appeared in just one scene and between two episodes, or getting Eric Tsang to play Subhuti in just one episode. These actors neither looked nor behave like their original characters are supposed to be - Nicholas Tse looks too handsome to play an ugly man (addressed in-universe, but still...) while Eric Tsang sounds and looks too goofy to play what's supposed to be a serious-sounding teacher.
  • Sammi Cheng as Guan Yin. Simply speechless for many tropers... Why, why her? And she didn't even dress like the part!
  • Finally, the show probably couldn't even afford to hire an actor for Buddha. A golden, unanimated idol of Buddha was put in his place throughout all the episodes.
• Tear Jerker:
  • The romance between Wukong and Zilan was one of regret and sadness when it ended abruptly with Zilan's death. Some time later, Wukong resigned from his post in heaven, and still unable to forget about Zilan, he planted a seed from her original flower form and transformed back into a stone to keep it company for eternity.
  • Li Jing's death. However much a Jerkass he is to his son Nezha, they are still after all father and son.
  • The fate of the princess in Women's Kingdom. The citizens in the Women's Kingdom were cursed to never be able to leave but the princess still sought to leave the kingdom to explore the world. Pitying her, Dragon Horse let her ride on him as a steed and out of the kingdom till the curse aged her rapidly.
    • The series made it look like she passed away in Dragon Horse's arms, but near the end of the series after the curse was broken it was revealed she survived and her youth restored.
• Vindicated by History: This series was seen as the worst adaptation of Journey to the West upon release, in part due to the decision to give Wukong and all of the Pilgrims a Love Interest and the extreme deviations it took from the original novel to the point of it being a In Name Only adaptation. However if Douban scores are any indication, in recent years the series has seen positive re-evaluation as those that grew up with it started to speak out in its favor, with a sizable number of reviewers finding the series' take on the story and its comedy endearing. In addition, the fact that some of the flaws that critics ripped apart this series for at first (namely giving every pilgrim a romantic subplot and replacing the pilgrimage to the west with a "save the world from a demon lord" plot) being repeated to varying degrees of success in other adaptations, and later adaptations of the novel that did try to be faithful to the source material such as the 2010 and 2011 mainland produced series being critiqued by Chinese netizens for their own deviations to the story and being ultimately perceived as not matching the quality of the original 1986 series helped with the positive reassessment of this series.