Sappy Ox says: "helping others is it's own reward"

I really like the idea that the Ox is sympathetic to the people... I was thinking we could do the Ox and his tail something like having the Ox be really compassionate and the tail kind of a callous prick.

We could have the Ox being the one to convince the Emperor to feed the people. The Emperor could be getting really annoyed with him and eventually gets all like " fine, whatever, feed them once every three days", and sends the Ox all the way down the stairway to Earth to deliver the message because he thinks that the task is tedious enough that it will dissuade him from protesting anymore. The Ox won't let the long trip get him down and not only makes the journey, but promises the people more than he was supposed to even though he knows that he'll have to face the Emperor's wrath for it.

The tail can be a real suck-up to the Emperor, slapping the Ox around and fighting whenever he acts out-of-line and acting as smug as we can make a tail look whenever the Emperor tells off the Ox or tries to put him in his place.

At the end the Ox can be happy working in the fields, because all he really wanted to do was help the people all along. We could also have him motioning for the tail to cheer up after having ultimately been defeated.