Zeroin doesn't chase you. It sits you down with four men who have been walking west for decades and quietly asks if you still care, and if you're a Saiyuki lifer, you do. The animation is stiff, holds cut too long, moves like a slideshow next to anything airing beside it, and yet Minekura's designs come through intact, so Sanzo's scowl and Gojyo's smoke still read exactly like the page. What the production actually invests in is interiority: Goku, Hakkai, Gojyo and Sanzo getting the ugly, unhurried self-examination the earlier TV runs kept skating past. Hazel and Gat stroll back in with almost no reintroduction, which will strand anyone who never sat through Gunlock, and the show flatly does not care. Then the final arc tightens its grip and the tension finally has teeth. You forgive the frame rate because you're here for the four of them in the jeep, bickering about nothing.

Hundreds of years after the war god Nataku Taishi defeated the monstrous Gyumaoh and locked him in Houtou Castle, the peace of Togenkyo is breaking down. Those trying to revive Gyumaoh have spread a plague, and the negative energy from their attempts is pushing youkai toward madness. Kanzeon Bosatsu sends Son Goku, Genjou Sanzou, Sha Gojyo and Cho Hakkai west to keep him from rising. Demon ambushes are routine for the Sanzou party, so they are baffled when their newest attackers turn out to be human. Then they meet Hazel Grouse, a wandering priest from the far West, and his imposing bodyguard, Gaty Nene Hawk. Hazel uses powers of resurrection to help grieving villages, but the people he revives come back with golden eyes, the same trait as the humans who attacked the party, and his motives may not be as kind as they seem.