Saint Seiya

Dec 22, 2013

Exaccus

Mixed Feelings

***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.

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Feb 6, 2018

PharuanUndearth

Recommended

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 ...

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Feb 14, 2023

DionisiusMayr

Not Recommended

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 ...

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Jun 27, 2020

Draly

Mixed Feelings

Saint Seiya is an interesting case and I'm not sure me liking it is entirely rational. The least I can say is that it left me filled with conflicting feelings.

For example, it's a combat focused nekketsu but has some of the worst fight choreography I have ever seen. Characters are numerous but childish and lack in personality. It carries nice messages of love, firendship and tolerance - especially (and surprisingly considering when it was written) towards LGBTQ - that are vehiculated by poor and overly simplistic dialogues. Narration and storytelling are stupidly repetitive, transitions are botched and most arcs lack closure. Kurumada seems to struggle ...

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Apr 27, 2019

SieghartTheMage

Recommended

An iconic manga from the 80s, which created a universe and inspired many mangakas later. A milestone of this kind, like Dragon Ball and JoJo.

Although the anime is more famous and more engaging, the manga boasts the advantage of a better linearity, and is more coherent (absurdly). Kurumada was not a master of details, he left many gaps in the plot, but we say that the anime, having changed certain parts, created additional ones.

So, if you read the Saint Seiya manga, you will find some parentheses, scenes, characters, etc... differents from the anime, and maybe a little clearer.

And if you want to read the ...

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Oct 13, 2021

foxhunt99

Recommended

I gave this manga a 10/10, because this was the first manga I have ever read. I was in elementary school back then, and the story, characters, and super moves looked amazing. I had to read them during classes. Of course, if I read this now, I might have different opinions. My rating is fully based on my nostalgic feelings. The enjoyment of reading manga as a kid is very hard to reproduce as an adult.

I recently reread some volumes of the manga, I can tell the art of the characters are pretty poor by today's standard. Although the armors of the ...

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Dec 15, 2023

RealYRC

Recommended

The most underrated Jump Manga from the 80'S , its a battle shonen Saint Seiya ! Or Knights of the Zodiac , the plot is very much the same in almost all arcs , that being Saori being kidnapped, so her Saints have to go on a quest to save her , the series is full of Super Powers , and jaw dropping art too , the series is kinda like Dragonball with Characters getting to burn their cosmos to beat their opponents , a lot too , so is the manga fun to read ? Hell yeah dudes , the series is also ...

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Mar 21, 2024

WhatAGoodShow

Recommended

As one of the earliest fighting shonen, Saint Seiya inspired many authors that would produce some of the most popular manga in the industry. In terms of story structure, it resembles Bleach. It has a golden power up that might have inspired many other ones in series such as Dragon Ball or Gundam. It created side characters with depth enough to challenge the popularity of the very main character who suppose to bring the victory home.

As the name suggest, the lead character is a saint called Seiya. Tho he is the main character, he isn't the sole focus of the series. It is about the ...

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Sep 1, 2022

rodmanii

Mixed Feelings

CONS
1 there is no tension because you know, from the begining, that the "ultimate attack" of the enemy isnt going to do shit
no one ever is defeated, or lose a limb, they just get covered in blood and continue like nothing despite being supposedly without their senses or with broken bones
this becomes evident by the end of the 12 houses arc and remains true till the end of the of manga

2 they explain a lot of their moves, everytime a bronze knight made a question to an enemy regarding his abilities this one
will always answer in detail about his technique, which i found to ... be really absurd

3 A lot of characters look alike, almost identical to the point that the only thing that helps to make them apart is their hair and armor

4 the fact that each and every opponent understimates the heroes, always, they never capitalize in their initial success they always let the fights drag, never attack the oponent when is vulnerable, or when they actually do it, in the few cases such thing ever happens, they are promptly interrupted for the convenience of the heroes

5 the enemy that thought himself far superior to the bronze knights happens to be shocked when, unexpectedly, the bronze knight actually manages to hurt him, this happens with every major enemy

6 a regular character acts like a walking deus ex machina, that will ALWAYS appear when the bronze knights are in danger or at disadvantage. The way the chracters are often saved due to a "pressure point" or the fact that "an attack wont work twice on a knight" feels cheap, like an artificial way to shield them from death. In general, every convenience that can happen in favor of the heroes happens, and every mistake the enemies can make they end up making

7 the characters are all flat, they are all good, pure, incapable of doing any kind of wrong they are at the end the same way they were at the start in regards to their personality

8 the manga never miss a chance to remind you how strong the main villian of the arc is and how there is no way for them to defeat him but they still survives all attacks without any major injury

9 the fights are usually just a panel of the character standing yelling his attack name with the enemies flying around him, this to illustrate that the foe has been hit with force, an actual drawing of a character throwing a punch or a kick and such move landing of the adversary is something that doesnt happen in this manga

PROS
1 i believe the designs of the armors are really well done, they look pretty good and an actual effort went on think how the armors transition between their folded (when in storage) and extended (when in use) states
2 the general theme of greek mythology is interesting, unique even, i dont recall ever reading any other manga with such themes
3 there are some points in the history that are interesting like: what happened to this characters sister? or how did this character end up being the vessel of such entity?

in short, i dont really recommend this work, the first two arcs (galaxian war and the 12 houses) are enjoyable but after that it repeats the same formula again and again till the end

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