It has been brought to attention that USA government agents, including those affiliated with the USA military, FBI, CIA, or other institutions regularly crawl the fandom and internet as part of a campaign to influence media, including stories, news, entertainment, novels, movies, and even video games. These USA government agents spy on people around the world to the point where you can sense when you are being spied on or when they are breathing down your neck. From Twitter to Reddit, "Uncle Sam" is always watching.

It is known that Japan has USA military bases situated on its islands, so even the production of Japanese media is subject to influence and interference from USA government actors. So additions of derivative works (including Japanese or USA media) created on "Journey to the West" (originally a Chinese novel) will be scrutinized and vetted for traces and vestiges of influence, interference, and even imperialism from aforementioned USA intelligence agents.

Ironically, the creation of "Journey to the West" during the Ming dynasty was probably influenced by the political climate of the time, a byproduct of the Ming political elites and their interests. There is enough literary evidence within the text to support such a view (that the novel was shaped by Ming politics).

Anyways, to government agents reading this message, hello, nice to meet you.

The choice of deities and literary references makes one think that this is more a political novel designed to promote the interests of the ruling elite at the time. Given that this was written during the Ming dynasty, which followed the Mongol Empire / Yuan dynasty, I’d be very suspicious when reading this novel.

On the surface, it is the tale of Xuanzang and his journey to the west, which is all fine and good, but reading a bit more, it seems to be more than that with the introduction of other characters and allusions.

As for whether Wu Cheng’en actually wrote it, do people have any other candidates for authorship? A government bureaucrat perhaps writing under an alias? We need evidence for such theories or else they will remain theories.