Saint Seiya
Knights of the Zodiac

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A great story with imo shitty art(very dated) but that's to be expected from such an old manga. The Story score and Character scores are so high because the story is one of a kind and told very well, the characters are real cool being based off constellations, which ties in with the story. I can't really break down the story that well as there are 109 chapters which may not seem like a lot but considering there are about 100-150+ pages per chapter, which is above the current norm of 20-~40 pages, that would be a little difficult. For those yet to read the ... first 7 pages of each chapter do not need to be read.

Just the simple fact of 1 god fighting another is very cool while having each others minions fight one another is very awesome. The real reason for a 8.5 instead of 9.5 for the character score is for "princess" Sienna(Saori Kido) is really a spoiled bitch the entire series so far. So what if she is the reincarnation of Athena, she has brothers fight one another, this is unknown till later, to "serve" her. Then they have to constantly defend her and her "sanctuary" from being disturbed which doesn't really help anyone but her and her alone. They have to watch their brothers and mentors sacrifice themselves in the hope that the rest of them may move on to the next enemy. I just don't like her. But this is a multi-read story took me about 4 months of reading for about 2-3 hrs a day and 4 days a week. A straight read will probably take 2-3 weeks.

***This is a spoiler free review***

Saint Seiya is a shounen manga that has many good starting ideas and lots of potential. However, it has numerous problems that prevent it from realizing that potential to become something great.


-- THE PROS --

The Cloth armors that the Saints wear (especially the Gold Cloths and Divine Cloths), by and large, are pretty cool looking. You may find yourself wishing you had a badass looking armor to wear every time you fight someone. In addition, this manga features a wide variety of nifty superpowers and abilities including: destruction of atoms, absolute zero attacks, illusions, telekinesis, barriers, energy ... blasts, mental assaults, hand to hand combat, fighting at the speed of light, and much more. Of all the special attacks that the Gold Saints wield, Galaxian Explosion and Lightning Plasma are my two favorite finishing moves.

There are lots of characters in this manga: The Olympian Gods, the Saints, the Mariners, and the Specters. For myself, I am partial to Ikki, Hyoga, and Aiolia simply because they each have their moments of badassery as they show off their skills to wipe the floor with their opponents.


-- THE CONS --

First off, there are very few female characters in this manga. The ones that are present are relatively weak and largely irrelevant in every arc of the manga. So don't count on any of the twelve Gold Saints to be female. They are all men, a few of which are pretty boys, which makes for a yaoi baiting sausage fest of sorts. Athena, being an Olympian Goddess, is supposed to be extremely powerful given her tremendous Cosmos, yet the manga makes her out to be mostly helpless and pathetic. She always needs her Saints to rescue her. I have no idea why this manga insists on not having any competent and relevant female characters.

Second, without spoiling anything, it should still be noted that many of the battles in Saint Seiya are full of asspull victories. The characters will be in fights that they have no reasonable chances of winning, given the difference in raw combat stats between them and their opponents. So do they use clever tactics, strategy, and deceit to win? Well, no, they never do that. Do they get their asses handed to them, leave, train, and then return once they can hold their own? Well, no, they don't do that either. So what do they do, you ask? It's simple: They burn their Cosmos to match or exceed the power of their foe to defeat them. Seriously, almost all the fights follow this format: the enemy is too strong and is kicking the hero's ass, time for him to just burn his Cosmos and somehow overcome this challenge due to sheer love of friends/justice/duty. This is ludicrous because it allows the characters to be as strong or weak as the plot demands at that point and time, coherency be damned. This creates a sense of faux-drama and fake hype for enemies that we know are too strong, but in reality are going to lose not to superior wit and intelligence, but due to the mangaka's incredibly lazy writing.


-- CONCLUSION --

Saint Seiya is something that is good in theory, but is poorly executed, resulting in a mediocre reading experience. The manga is creative with Greek mythology, has a few characters with moments of badassery, and some nice superpowered attacks. But it is full of tropes and cliches that anyone not new to anime and manga has seen in shounen series billions of times already. The manga's cast of characters are relatively shallow and lack any interesting quirks, and it doesn't help that almost all of them are male to the exclusion of females. Though perhaps most damning of all: the fights are constantly full of asspulls/inconsistencies, which is extremely anticlimactic and is just a slap in the face of the reader who is expecting something at least somewhat credible.

Overall, I wouldn't say that Saint Seiya is a terrible series (I've seen FAR worse), but if you are looking for a quality shounen series to read, I strongly suggest looking elsewhere.

Brilliant idea, awful execution.

This is the best example of what not to do regarding "Power Levels".
The manga states clearly that there are 3 kinds of cloths: the weakest ones, bronze, the median silver, and the almighty golden cloths.
However, that makes absolutely no difference throughout the series. A bronze can easily kill a silver/gold and vice versa.
Besides, somewhat early on the manga you already see "speed of light" moves, and latter it gets tricky to make something stronger/faster than that. Imo, the series had almost no planning and definitely wasn't prepared for the success it achieved.

The battles are lame, to say the least.
You will be seeing ... the phrase "The same attack never works on a knight twice" A LOT. More than half of the battles come down to this idea, making them absolutely boring.

On the other hand, the idea of using Greek mythology and constellations was absolutely brilliant and had a lot of potential, unfortunately, potential that was wasted.