Saint Seiya (Saint Seiya: Knights of the Zodiac)

In ancient times, a group of young men devoted their lives to protecting Athena, the Goddess of Wisdom and War. These men were capable of fighting without weapons—a swing of their fist alone was powerful enough to rip the very sky apart and shatter the earth beneath them. These brave heroes became known as Saints, as they could summon up the power of the Cosmos from within themselves.

Now, in present day, a new generation of Saints is about to come forth. The young and spirited Seiya is fighting a tough battle for the Sacred Armor of Pegasus, and he isn't about to let anyone get in the way of him and his prize. Six years of hard work and training pay off with his victory and new title as one of Athena's Saints.

But Seiya's endeavor doesn't end there. In fact, plenty of perils and dangerous enemies face him and the rest of the Saints throughout the series. What new quests await the heroes of the epic Saint Seiya saga?

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Background

The series won the 1987 Animage's Anime Grand Prix Award.

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Related Anime

Adaptation:	Saint Seiya
Side story:	Saint Seiya: Shinku no Shounen Densetsu, Saint Seiya: Jashin Eris, Saint Seiya: Kamigami no Atsuki Tatakai, Saint Seiya: Saishuu Seisen no Senshi-tachi, Saint Seiya: Soul of Gold
Sequel:	Saint Seiya: Meiou Hades Juuni Kyuu-hen
Summary:	Saint Seiya Recap
Prequel:	Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas - Meiou Shinwa
Alternative version:	Saint Seiya: Legend of Sanctuary, Saint Seiya: Knights of the Zodiac
Alternative setting:	Saint Seiya: Saintia Shou

More characters

Characters & Voice Actors

Phoenix, Ikki

Main

Hori, Hideyuki
Japanese

Dragon, Shiryuu

Main

Suzuoki, Hirotaka
Japanese

Pegasus, Seiya

Main

Furuya, Toru
Japanese

Andromeda, Shun

Main

Touma, Yumi
Japanese

Cygnus, Hyouga

Main

Touma, Yumi
Japanese

Kido, Saori

Main

Han, Keiko
Japanese

Virgo, Shaka

Supporting

Mitsuya, Yuuji
Japanese

Gemini, Saga

Supporting

Sogabe, Kazuyuki
Japanese

Aquarius, Camus

Supporting

Naya, Rokurou
Japanese

Aries, Muu

Supporting

Shiozawa, Kaneto
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Yokoyama, Kazuo

Producer

Kikuchi, Yasuhito

Director

Morishita, Kouzou

Director, Episode Director, Storyboard

Igarashi, Takuya

Episode Director, Production Manager

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Opening Theme

	1: "Pegasus Fantasy" by MAKE-UP (eps 1-73)
	2: "Soldier Dream" by Hironobu Kageyama & Broadway (eps 74-114)

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Ending Theme

	1: "Blue Forever" by MAKE-UP (eps 1-73)
	2: "Yume Tabibito: Blue Dream" by Hironobu Kageyama & Broadway (eps 74-114)

Reviews

Mar 9, 2024

aquarius_kraehe

Recommended

Oh Saint Seiya. My adored. My beloved.

What is there to say about Saint Seiya that hasn't already been said? That it was fumbled so hard by DiC that no one in America has ever heard of it? That it has more plot holes than plot threads? That most of the characters have stupid backstories that make no sense, and that it retreads character arcs like there's no tomorrow?

Sure. Fine. Fine! I will acknowledge that Saint Seiya is no Mob Psycho or [insert quality anime of the month here], but what it lacks in plot coherence (and at times, animation), it makes up for in charm. ...

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Sep 30, 2018

ChouEritto

Mixed Feelings

As someone who had an interest in Greek Mythology since childhood, Saint Seiya was a series that naturally appealed to me. Coupled with it's other aesthetic elements such as the intricate, inventive and cool Cloth designs, the great level of detail and style in it's art to make the male characters noble and the females beautiful or having one of the best opening songs in anime and a great soundtrack in general, the series seems top tier from a stylistic point of view, but what about substance?

When it comes to plot and characters, the series can be described as simple but fairly well executed. All ... of the major characters have pretty transparent motivations without too much subtlety, yet their personalities of it's major players are all very memorable and fairly consistent.
As for the plot, this is something that is pretty simple and unfortunately can suffer from a few poor Shonen tropes such as power of friendship, resolve power ups and general plot armour. However, this series manages to execute these poor plot devices far better than any modern Shonen. The nature of burning one's Cosmo excuses the power ups that can occur and many characters being plot armoured by Athena's intervention is actually fitting in it's ties to Greek Mythology, in which many heroes such as Heracles and Odysseus couldn't get through some impossible tasks without help from the Gods.

===Story Analysis - Part 1: Sanctuary Arc===

Moving on to talk about a few of the individual arcs, the first is the Sanctuary Arc. This arc had a pretty decent opening act with a tournament that had some actual stakes in the risk of the combatants dying and could have been one of the best tournaments in Shonen had it continued to the end, though it's understandable to abandon it when tournaments were a saturated plot line even during the mid 80s. While the later events with the Black Saints, filler villains such as Docrates and then the Silver Saints could feel quite repetitive in their structure, they did have quite a few highlights for the main cast to help emphasise their differences such as Shiryu's tendency of self-sacrifice and Ikki's merciless nature.
Things start to truly rise in quality when the events of the 12 Zodiac Palaces occur, which is the most popular part of the series and indeed it's peak. The tension was great as the race against time with a clear limit to reach, with the Gold Saints all having clearly distinct personalities and most of them being interesting characters. Gemini Saga is a particular highlight, with the conflict of his personalities being at constant odds with each other and being the best execution of a split-personality character in Shonen (better than the highly overrated Sensui from YYH). The arc can seem somewhat disappointing in the lack of major deaths in the main cast despite the severity of their injuries, though this is somewhat excusable when one major theme of the arc was the Bronze Saints proving themselves as worthy successors to the Gold Saints. Overall, it was a fairly solid action/adventure that I'd rate a 6.5/10.

===Part 2: Asgard Arc===

This anime exclusive arc is far more than just a filler arc; it's the best filler arc in anime as it actually bothers to make it's anime exclusive characters, the God Warriors, very memorable both in design and personality to the point their characters are even better written than most of the far more iconic Gold Saints for the most part. It was also very well done in how this arc transitions back into manga canon territory and ushers in the next arc in a far more exciting way than the original manga.
However, the arc wasn't as good as Sanctuary. For one, Hilda wasn't an interesting villain due to her actions being purely due to mind control. The sense of tension was nowhere near as great as the previous arc either. The amount of time the Bronze Saints had to accomplish their task within was nowhere near as well shown as in Sanctuary and aside from Siegfried, the God Warriors had power nowhere near as great or consistent a strength or grouping as the Gold Saints, with their 2nd strongest member still being only equal to Taurus Aldebaran. The general structure is also a copy-paste of Sanctuary as most of the series was from then on, showing how the series lost a lot of steam after it's first 73 episodes and went with rehashing it's most popular plot line in new ways. Despite that, it was still a decent arc and a masterpiece by filler standards. 6/10.

===Part 3: Poseidon Arc===

The final arc of the original anime was the Poseidon Arc, which was a definite step down from the previous two. It did at least try to be less formulaic by not having it's standard opponents be in such a linear road, but that means little when the execution is still repetitive and, unlike with the two previous arcs main group of villains, the Marina Generals are for the most part a major disappointment. Kanon was good due to his role as a manipulator and Isaac was decent due to his ties to Hyoga (though mainly only to serve as character development for Hyoga), yet the rest were completely bland beyond a gimmick or two. It doesn't help that power-wise, only Kanon, Krishna, Isaac and maybe Sorrento felt that impressive, with the rest getting steamrolled pretty quickly once the Bronze Saints got serious.
It was good that the battles required more than just beating the opponent, but it didn't really matter after the first battle since the destruction of the Sea Pillars was no longer a big deal with the Libra Cloth. Having a god as the main antagonist did increase the scale and Poseidon's desire to reshape the world wasn't too hyperbolic from his perspective, though he felt very underwhelming for such a powerful god when he was overpowered twice by the combined power of the main cast (the second time in which he'd gone through a gigantic power up of his own) and coming close to his full power didn't change much overall. It also doesn't help that the sense of tension, like the previous arc's, is nowhere near as great as Sanctuary due to having no solid grasp of how much time Athena had left. If anything, it was worse due to not even being told a solid time limit or constantly shown her physical condition prior to the end of the battle, which in both anime and manga lacked any sort of build up for the next arc (though this is expected with the anime concluding on this arc until adapting the Hades Arc over a decade later). 4/10.

Going back to the aesthetic qualities and expanding on them, it's truly where the series stands out as rule of cool. Along with the creativity within the armour of each character, the change of Kurumada's art style to this equally as iconic style of Shingo Araki's lead to it's art possibly being the best of Toei's TV Anime. The soundtrack has an excellent range from triumphant or emotional orchestras to cool rock in order to really fit the tone of each scene. Voice acting is also great with some very well revered seiyuu establishing their performances as iconic with the characters such as Toru Furuya's performance as Seiya, Hirotaka Suzuoka as Shiryu or Hideyuki Tanaka as both Aiolia and the narrator.

Overall, Saint Seiya is a fairly enjoyable series, even if fairly flawed. It's far from the peak of Shonen as even during it's era, there were quite a few Shonen of overall better quality such as Hokuto no Ken or the original series of Dragon Ball. However, what tropes of Shonen it established and utilised, it at least performed them better than most, if not all, Shonen to copy it's formula thereafter such as Yu Yu Hakusho and Bleach. Along with having some pretty likeable and unique characters, it deserves a place amongst the good Shonen titles.

Overall ranking - 6/10

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Dec 10, 2020

lethargilistic

Not Recommended

This is a hard one for me to write about because I started watching it about 6 months ago and my memories of the earlier episodes I enjoyed have faded. I remember thinking the Galaxian Wars arc was fun and a nice introduction to the characters. There was just enough there that was a different, cool twist on this sort of show's formula to keep me interested. I started using this show as kind of a "start the day with an easy episode of X" thing.

Then the arc with Phoenix Ikki as the Big Bad started up and I remember thinking that was hype. It ... was a cool brother against brother story with simple, significant stakes. The later stories about the silver saints and the various battles over the Saggitarius Cloth were also quite good. It was sad that the Saints present for the Galaxian Wars who weren't slated as main cast members disappeared during this period, but I overlooked that. Y'know what really worked, in spite of the show not having many ideas for it? Shaina. Easily the best character in the whole show. Never had anything going on that didn't involve a man in some way, but she was a great concept for a better story.

And then it started to transition into the Sanctuary Arc by introducing a shitton of retroactive continuity. I was fine with that because it seemed to be leading somewhere cool. "Oh, shit, there's actually a whole army of saints who are in a completely different league than even the silver saints!" With my monkey brain, I know this is just an incremental threat increase from silver to gold. But with my reptile brain, I was enticed and willing to follow it. I was into it.

The Sanctuary Arc is a god damn Fyre Festival. Every fight against a Gold Knight is essentially interchangeable with any other one, especially towards the end. Most of them have a tiny gimmick to try to make the fight unique, but there's only so much they could do to change things up if they were going to run through ALL TWELVE ZODIAC SIGNS with NO BREAKS AT ALL with THE SAME RESOLUTION EVERY TIME. They push their cosmo to its peak, the Gold Saint beats them anyway and deprives them of their senses, the bronze saint masters the seventh sense and raises their cosmo to a new peak, and the bronze saint wins. Every time. For fuck's sake, when they were fighting the silver saints, the bronze saints had a command center and they had a tiny semblance of a home life. Suddenly, it's just a constant, samey gauntlet for 32 EPISODES. Saori was a near-constant presence before and now she's knocked unconscious for almost this entire run, so it's also just a huge sausage fest as far as the main cast is concerned. Shaina's arc was a small blessing in this bland sea. I grew to dislike the show over this time, but I trusted there had to be something on the other side that would make up for this. After all, there WERE some variations and they threw together a bunch of background details. Things were still advancing and the conflict made sense, however protracted. And the visual direction of the show up through this point was quite good at times. Despite the story problems, "Saint Seiya" had a lot going for it.

But then Sancuary mercifully concludes. They must have caught up to the manga because they immediately began anime-original material. I think anime-original arcs are cool opportunities to explore the characters more and take a different tack on the series. What the show desperately needed at this point was a reprieve from constant fighting. Maybe Seiya could have spent some time with any of the three women the show was shipping him with on-and-off, much to my chagrin. Maybe Hyoga could have spent time mourning his mother. Maybe Shiryu could have gone to the Wulau Peaks to have nice scenes with Shunrei. No. What we got was the Asgard Arc, which is one of the absolute worst shonen battle manga stories I have ever encountered. A legitimately 1/10 storyline with nothing going for it that runs for ANOTHER 25 EPISODES.

A God Warrior from the icy region of Asgard, heretofore unmentioned, shows up and beats up a Gold Knight offscreen so we know he's a Bad Dude. OK. Sure. I hate this already, but I understand the storytelling technique of having them take down someone we know is strong to prove that they are stronger and a threat to the main cast. Fine. In the second episode of this arc, the bronze saints are already in Asgard fighting the God Warriors in what is basically Another Sanctuary Arc. Insultingly, they show some of the infiltration we were just to assume the bronze knight had done in flashbacks later. They fight each of the God Warriors individually, exposit backstory details that mean absolutely nothing outside of these fights we will never think of again, and they make progress towards saving Athena, who has been essentially removed yet again. On paper, this is so similar to the Sanctuary arc that you could be forgiven for thinking that I'm overreacting when I say it is a 1/10. But it's literally just the worst parts of it with nothing else. It's so aggressively formulaic and badly structured that it comes off as a story written by someone who hates shonen battle manga and wants this story to convince other people to hate it. Every single fight has exactly the same structure as a fight against a Gold Saint, but they cannot actually give whatever "new peak" the bronze saints' cosmo reaches a new name, so there's no progression at all even though it's telling us there is. And then there's the fact that the God Warriors, like the Gold Knights before them, are literally working against their own interests. With the Gold Knights, I was willing to overlook that because they were sworn to serve Pope Aries and they believed Athena was in Sanctuary even though she wasn't. They had no reason to disbelieve the bronze saints, but they had little reason to believe them either. In Asgard, their version of Athena is Hilda and she has suddenly become openly evil. Her plan will destroy the world. Her sister, Freya, joins up with the bronze knights to stop her. And the God Warriors fight to defend her because they just assume she's right and that Freya has been brainwashed or something. At one point, Hyoga says "helping us would be directly helping Freya" to the God Warrior who was in love with her. The God Warrior's response was "I have had enough of your bullshit." That level of idiot ball shenanigans is, again, not even backed up by good fights. By the end of the arc, I was literally watching it 1.5x speed for a few minutes at the beginning of the episode, skipping to the 15 minute mark to see that the villain had turned the tables, and then skipped to the end to see the bronze knight come out on top. Over and over again. Over and over again. Over and over again. No setups. No payoffs. Only punching and yelling. And not even good punching and yelling. A new director had come on at the beginning of this arc and the difference in their ability to keep the wrestling-style storyline interesting absolutely shows.

And then there is just the tiniest bit of fresh air, which is the show gracefully rerailing itself onto the manga plot by introducing one of Poseidon's warriors. As I understand it, this is essentially putting on-screen the manga fight between this Mariner and the Gold Knight who was defeated off-screen at the beginning of Asgard, but with a God Warrior instead of that Gold Knight. And it's fine. It's definitely a step up from everything else that happened in Asgard. The first episode of the Poseidon Arc that follows this actually takes a step back to introduce Poseidon's civilian form and create a connection between Saori and him for us to build some tension around. Oh, sorry. Just kidding. Saori gets knocked out again and we basically do the Sanctuary Arc again, only with pillars instead of temples (as in Sanctuary) or gems (as in Asgard). These fights have slightly more roots in the saints' characterizations than the Asgard fights, so there's more here for fans, but it's still so boring and bad. By the end, I was watching complete episodes, but I couldn't do it at less than 3x speed. I just couldn't.

Any shonen battle manga story can survive one or even two lackluster arcs. "Saint Seiya" has three which span a total of 67 EPISODES and includes, again, some of the worst storytelling in this genre I have ever seen. It's really mind-numbing for me to think that I had spent so long savoring those first two major arcs and the intro to Sanctuary for so long, considering it was only 41 episodes. Honestly, just watch Galaxian Wars and the fights with the silver saints and you have the point of "Saint Seiya". It only gets worse from there. And when it jumps off the cliff into horrible storytelling, it just jumps off that same cliff three more times.

The best thing about "Saint Seiya" is "Pegasus Fantasy", which is an immortal jam that has slapped for 40 years straight. I also liked the second ED.

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Phoenix, Ikki

Dragon, Shiryuu

Pegasus, Seiya

Andromeda, Shun

Cygnus, Hyouga

Kido, Saori

Virgo, Shaka

Gemini, Saga

Aquarius, Camus

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Saint Seiya

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