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.

Episode Videos

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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

Sep 3, 2008

j1n

Recommended

Saint Seiya was one of the very first anime series I watched as a young kid. Being that I might've had a bias towards this anime, I decided to watch it again not very long ago. While I admit this series is not as good as I remembered it, I belive it is still worth watching.

Saint Seiya had a brief run on Cartoon Network, but due to its violent content, it was moved to a very poor time and gradually lost any attention it received. If you followed it while they aired it or if you are just curious, I encourage you ...

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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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Jul 12, 2020

Zaethiel

Not Recommended

Maybe a good anime for children, but overall it isn't very well written. The stories and plots are all the same; even the characters and bad guys outside of a few are all the same. Same powers with different names.

Every battle has the same flashbacks of being twin brothers and best friends but now enemies.
Sometimes the flashbacks are the same exact production clipped from previous episodes redone over and over.

The first arc with Ikki was better than the rest of the 114 episodes. I'd be happy to give the first season a better score if it wasn't bundled together with the other ...

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Dragon, Shiryuu

Pegasus, Seiya

Andromeda, Shun

Cygnus, Hyouga

Kido, Saori

Virgo, Shaka

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Aquarius, Camus

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