Saint Seiya: Saintia Shou

***NO SPOILER REVIEW****
When I first came across Saintia Shou and skimmed over the reviews, it gave me the impression of a half-baked show which people hated. However, as has unfortunately regularly been the case for many of the Saint Seiya shows after the original, the negative general trend of nostalgic reviewers have nothing to do with the actual quality of the show when seen with fresh eyes.

Saintia Shou is full bore Saint Seiya, with strong saints, key Saint Seiya elements and over-the-top melodrama wrapped in a classic feel. Sure, it has several shoujo elements such as petals flying around sometimes and magical girl elements but ... that's just a stylistic choice for this genre, the actual story is great and feels like Saint Seiya, only with a focus on female protagonists while much of the original show is happening in parallel.

Saint Seiya exists in a multiverse and this show's story is an alternate universe where much of the original show's events happen in parallel to the adventures of the Saintias however the new elements are where the main attraction lies. The show brings back Eris, a character from the first anime movie, expands her mythology and creates several interesting relations to follow as well as interesting world developments. The Gold Saints have a key role to play as well with the Bronze and Silver Saints crossing paths with the Saintias occasionally. Surprisingly, the Saint Seiya feel is preserved while working well with these characters as the female warriors are imbued with several of the characteristics usually associated with their male counterparts without taking away from their uniqueness.

Technically, the show is competently animated, the music is classic and great and the visuals are solid. Apparently the manga is much better (some of the negative reviews point that out) but without that baggage the anime is enjoyable and definitely got me interested in checking out the manga. The story also wraps up well and considering the manga is still ongoing changes to the scenario to achieve that are understandable (again, didn't read the manga when watching and enjoyed the anime).

TL;DR: This is a great and underrated show, watch it with an open mind and you'll have a lot of fun seeing what new things this story brings to the mythos while having strong female characters. It's a Saint Seiya show deserving of the name.

When I was a child, I used to enjoy this kind of anime very much. I didn't care if the character's background stories were lame or the anime plot itself was awful, I simply lied in front of the TV for the whole episodes and anxiously waited 'til next week to see what would happen after.

It's a pity I'm not a kid anymore.

When Saintia Sho was annouced, I jumped with joy. Finally I would see a kind of "what if the saints were girls?". Then I waited for it, watched the episodes... And got upset. I would say that at least the manga is truly ... a work of art, but I'm trying to focus on the anime - in which the art is the worst. Not in a Nanatsu no Taizai level but still awful. Sometimes the shadows are just wrong, sometimes the characters' bodies are terrible, sometimes the art guys don't even try to make their work well. You can just feel that they are doing that whitout giving a fuck about what you, spectator, will think about later. They don't even draw some faces correctly.

I cannot complain very much about the plot as it is set just for a Saint Seiya spin-off but it could be better. I know I'm reviewing an anime made for kiddos but Sailor Moon aims the same (and both of them are made by Toei) AND it still impresses me. The battle scenes are way better (I'm talking about the Crystal remake) & the villains too. I'm disapointed with the Saintia Sho anime & I hope Toei stops thinking that children anime have to be made in a careless way.

this anime .... sigh

so saintia shou is like none other of the saint seiya anime series why you may ask?

simple, saintia shou feels like a bad fanfiction created by a girl.any type of manly bravery is gone, reduced to atoms, instead we have beautiful men with luscious hair and in sparkling armor coming to save young ladies in trouble, from athena to shoko.

most of the saint seiya entries never had amazing plot, but this one is just histerically bad, the villains never felt good , not enough development on their side and eris is just a joke, the worst she ever did in ... the entire series is that she made some saints fight and some already dead souls come back to life. noone died, noone got injured, nothing, absolutely nothing.

The worst though is probably the saints, these "saintias" almost never work as "athena's shadow" as the story wants to believe, and they are saints they are not something else since they were a saint's cloth they don't wear a special saintia cloth,yet almost none of them wear masks, the only new character we saw that is a female and wears a mask is the peacock saint. and probably the most reasonable character in the entire series. these santias never really feel like a normal saint wood that would trade their life at any point if it meant to save athena, they are all very soft and without much reason to fight. for some reason they were stronger than silver saints although seiya and the others were getting absolutely destroyed by silver back in the original. and this anime makes you want to believe that the events happen simultaneously but there are so many issues in terms of the timeline it really makes no sense.

This version of Athena is the worst it has ever been, really week, really vulnerable but dumb and trying to go alone in the place of the main enemy. enough about the characters that both lack the depth and the motivation to even be there, especially that more than 80% through the anime, it sends in a saint we have never seen on the screen before and wants to care for her, and feel like "they have come so far to get here" where besides 3 which we saw relatively early we really don't know anything about them, i would say we barely know anything about any of the characters. And enough about the females the males were not that great either, they do their job well enough as golden saints at being strong and stuff but almost all of them lack any of the complex and more serious nature.

Now to talk about the art, this is by far the worst looking saint seiya entry, and what is really sad is that during the pauses at the middle of the episode we see the manga art of the girls, and it looks, so so so much better than the anime, Athena in the 1988 anime looked leagues better than this Athena in the anime, the special effects for stuff like the attacks are also very lazy and boring, only in episode 9 i saw just something a bit better in the punching move of the MC, but it's still worse than any of the other ryu sei ken's i ever saw. the animation overall of the anime is also pretty boring and bland, the character designs all look really weird. it feels like a 1 girl team made everything in this anime. the fact that i think at parts the 1988 anime looks better than this says a lot.

probably the best thing about this anime is the mediocre soundtrack, worse than most of othe saint seiya entries from the past,but still good enough that you don't mind watching the anime with sounds on.

enjoyment: the worst thing about this anime is that it doesn't even carry on the feeling of the original saint seiya in anyway, you could maybe argue that the golden saints are not that far away in terms of character, and that still mostly carries on to saga, milo and aiolia, besides 1 of the saintias none of them really care for athena and/or following her around as a shadow. i have heard that the manga is better but i review the anime a 4/10 since it lacks almost everything the original had and it is no doubt the worst entry in the saint seiya animated series.