Saint Seiya

Just finished Saint Seiya: The Hades Chapter ~Sanctuary~. I doubted the show but it proved me wrong: Dragon Shiryu’s Master absolutely lived up the hype. He is the dumb shonen fighting manga BS I like to see.

This OVA is a mirror to the Sanctuary Arc and the run through the 12 temples, except this time it’s ostensibly about villains making the exact same run the heroes did so long ago. It’s a neat inversion and it made me reflect back on the old arc and appreciate how well this story handled the 12 Gold Saints.

Fighting manga/anime almost always have a power creep as the heroes get stronger to fight enemies who are getting stronger and stronger. But although Saint Seiya does follow this in a general sense, the heroes really only get a burst of power in brief moments when the plot needs it. Most of the time the power relationship between the cast has not changed- the 12 Gold Saints are still just as awe inspiringly powerful as they were when they were introduced. Their base fighting prowess is far beyond the Bronze Saints, as is their wisdom in battle.

And thinking back on, most of the victories in the Sanctuary Arc were by winning over a Gold Saint with the heroes’ endless determination, winning on a technicality, or winning by double K.O. By and large the Gold Saints as a whole were not bested by the Bronze Saints. So when the Gold Saints appear in the story it’s not like a “oh I remember that guy”, it’s “oh snap, Gold Saints are getting involved?” Their status isn’t really degraded in the same way side characters can be in fighting manga.

I also really liked how this OVA really was a story about the Gold Saints, their relationships with each other, and their relationship with Athena. With this arc I think Saint Seiya genuinely does a better job of respecting its side cast in many ways than lots of other fighting manga have. The Gold Saints are still individual characters with their own dynamic in the story, separate from the Bronze Saints the show mostly follows.

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The legend of Saint Seiya.

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The way this show animates its hair is distinctive and I’m glad this carried over into the OVAs despite them being made like 15 years later. Flowing hair (and cloth) usually move in one direction. It makes for some striking imagery too.

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bonus gif I am posting because it looked cool

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My mom unearthed my old 1994 Saint Seiya sketchbook a few years ago and it’s got an unusual amount of Death Queen Island related fan art.



“PHOENIX”

“DEATH QUEEN ISLAND” and what looks like a five legged Ikki walking away from a volcanic eruption

There’s a few more but they’re harder to decipher.

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i never really noticed the hair but i definitely noticed all the special effects and explosions which remain pretty fucking dope, especially when they resolve into what was in fact just a single punch or kick or whatever, implying that we’ve been watching raw and fancy metaphor rather than actual laserbeams

Haha, that’s oddly similar to how I would have drawn him. Ikki is definitely the green ranger type character whom I can see being a fan favorite, though I kind of wish he’d have his white ranger moment and just join the team permanently. As Seiya said during the Asgard or Poseiden arc, “Ikki is still doing his loner thing.” He just isn’t as involved in the proceedings as much as the others until he comes in half way to save Shun in every arc.

This is actually something I’ve been thinking about the entire show. They frame the special moves early on as Saints just punching and kicking super duper fast and all the special effects are just an artistic interpretation of the attack, which is absolutely bonkers. There are so many effects that are like lasers bouncing up and down and I’m just imagining someone constantly jumping as they run their way to the target in front of them. Or maybe they’re constantly punching up and down the path of the laser.

This is someone punching you a lot of times repeatedly.

This is someone punching you really hard.

This is someone punching you in such a way that you feel constricted afterwards.
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It’s very silly when you think about it but also very amusing in an action manga kind of way.

Did you all ever watch any of the Hades Chapter OVAs? I wonder how these were received way back when. They feel very true to the directing and pacing sensibilities of the original TV show, which I can see being both a positive and negative quality depending on what you want out of your nostalgia TV shows.

~Sanctuary~, which was directed by Yamauchi, was pretty well received back then. It really revived the show’s popularity for a while. ~Inferno~ and ~Elysium~ sucked so bad that no one ever really talked about it. I rewatched the whole thing last year and the drop in quality is absolutely insane

Oh dang, are they really that bad? I’m two episodes into Inferno and from a production standpoint it didn’t seem too different. But narratively it doesn’t have emotional setup and throughline of Sanctuary. It looks like the Bronze Saints are still going to get carried by other people but there aren’t any new personal stakes to make up for the lack of Gold saints. It more just feels like a simple continuation of events. I guess the plot never really gets better from here?

I guess at least Elysium is only 6 episodes. I’m almost free of this and can take a break, before jumping onto some of this new stuff at a more casual pace.

If someone doesn’t want to watch Saint Seiya but wants to know what it is, this is the one scene to watch.

https://streamable.com/0jyn5v

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Never liked that twist, personally. Felt like a late Naruto kind of ass pull. I never really watched late Naruto, but I have insomnia and one of the side effects is reading shonen wikis

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I get that. It’s somewhat out of character for the show, which really doesn’t utilize that kind of overly-explanatory deus ex machina. That’s part of why it stood out to me; because even divorced from context it is some top tier fighting manga absurdity. But what I do appreciate about it is that it finally something different. Most of the fights are won by the heroes suddenly believing in themselves even harder than before. There isn’t a lot of ingenuity or creativity to the fights in Saint Seiya and I think it really could use a bit more thought into the fight progression. And as ridiculous as the Dohko twist is, it was at least something. It was a lot more interesting of a solution to defeating an enemy than, say, Dragon Shiryu busting out a new dragon punch or the three traitor saints busting out a new laser beam (Athena Exclamation).

My favorite moment is still when Shun was fighting Gemini and used the Andromeda Wave for the first time, making his chain travel through space to attack the pope. It’s another example of the hero suddenly winning because they had finally had enough determination, but it was the first (only outside of Dohko?) time I felt like one of the heroes did something new and unexpected (attacking the true enemy from a long distance) rather than just a stronger attack.

Now that I think about it there are a handful of other moments that aren’t just the hero suddenly believing hard enough (parts of Ikki vs Shaka fight, where Ikki purposely lost his senses) but by and large I just didn’t feel like the fights are solved in as interesting ways as a lot of fighting manga that came afterward.

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Oh yeah, I watched the first season of the Netflix CG Knights of the Zodiac remake. It’s real bad. It follows the existing plot is very broad strokes while being fairly different in the details, which is fine, but it doesn’t know how to build investment in the characters and it has no idea how to adjust the show’s tone. Every scene has a single BGM that plays constantly with no regard for the progression of the plotting. The music drones on and on whether the heroes are losing, winning, or people are having sudden revelations. It’s like a video game stage BGM.

There’s also this incredibly odd one scene gag that had no lead up to it’s start and has no consequence after its conclusion. Someone decided this would just be a funny standalone scene to write. For context, Athena’s Galaxian Wars tournament is now a secret underground tournament where she invites a few Knights to the middle of the desert to fight underground to win the Gold armor. This is against the Knight’s code because they aren’t supposed to fight for personal gain. Also all of the armors can transform into small pendants you wear around your neck and can be easily turned into merchandise for the show.

https://streamable.com/8t388t

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I always thought turning Shun into a woman was a very small-brained weak cowardly move. I get it, the original show had ladies only as support, sidelined roles, but an actual powerful move that I would respect the hell out of would be to turn Ikki or Seiya into a lady. Removing the only character that wasn’t entirely gender-conforming sucks!

I would 100% remove this criticism if the show actually textually made it clear that she’s Shun but transitioned

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Oh man, that would have been awesome. But somehow they instead ended up disappointing everyone, apparently.


Meanwhile, in Inferno:

Maybe it’s because you’re all staring at a solar eclipse.

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Wow, how could no one ever warn me that Inferno and Elysium sucked so bad.

I think it first really hit me what I was in for in the Orphee vs Pharaoh fight, where the two musicians’ battle is them just standing in place strumming. There was no creativity in portraying whatever sort of magical battle they were doing. The show just played two songs at the same time until someone fell to their knees. And in general most of the fighters were boring.

Inferno never develops a solid narrative to follow outside of “now beat up the next guy”. There was potential there for Shun and Ikki to become the center of Inferno, what with Shun turning into the bad guy, but that only lasts for two episodes in the middle and isn’t important anymore after that. Hyoga and Shiryu literally only ever have joke battles against peons. And the pacing was all over the place. I like how the last 5 minutes of episode 11 were re-used as the first five minutes of episode 12.

Elysium had all of the same problems, just truncated to a merciful 6 episodes. But it was funnier, then, how it kept introducing new elements that there was no time to explain or develop before moving on to some sort of new reveal. Between Inferno and Elysium I cannot remember the number of times someone suddenly remembers something important out of nowhere because the show needed a new plot point.

But I’ve finally vanquished this beast of a series. Or at least the manga storyline in TV form. For all of its faults I see in it now, perhaps it was more novel back in the 1980s. Despite how simple their character development is, I do find the character designs endearing. Between the Gold Saints and the 108 Spectres so many of the characters in this show have similarly colored armor but their personalities are so clearly defined that most characters are still recognizable individually. I think the show did surprisingly well on that front.

I’ll check out some of the spin-offs at a more casual pace, as I’ve particularly been interested in Saintia Sho and Lost Canvas. I don’t know if any of the movies are worth watching but I’ll definitely make sure to check out the CG one.

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Some random clips I don’t think I’ve posted here before:

I saved this clip of Marin captured on the beach in episode 24 of the TV show because it was funny how the dub completely missed some vital, plot important lines at the end. But now, considering how this plot point that’s carried through the entire show is suddenly reversed in the last 6 episodes, maybe the localizers left out those lines because they knew how it ends up

I like how Gemini’s alternate dimension was portrayed like the CG effects of 80’s informational VHSes.

An instance of Seiya’s incredible deductive skills.

I am glad the show considers the status of your hair to be as great of importance as viewers do.

A couple of “dramatic” moments I found funny. 1 and 2.

Before there was running like Naruto there was running like Saint Seiya.

Virgo Shaka is the best and I’m glad it’s Shun who got to wear his armor, even if it was only for like 60 seconds. This is probably the best fight scene of the OVAs.

I gave the Lost Canvas thing a go and it’s at least pretty snappy of pacing?

From what I’ve read it sounds like the most well received Saint Seiya spin-off, although the anime never finishes the story and you have to read the manga afterwards.

It’s real. It actually got filmed this year.