Story (6/10) Fine
I'm not going to sit here and give you a synopsis for the story that's not what I'm hear for just know that the story takes place during the time of the Eyslion Part in the cannon story and that the Gold Saints have been revived after sacrificing all their cosmo to destroy the wall of grief. This entire little non-cannon anime takes place and ends before they Gold Clothes make their way to Eylsion by Poseidon just to get destroyed by Thanatos. Now it was a 12 episode anime that is not created by Masami Kurumada and was coming out bi-weekly. I did not really have an issue with the story, I did have an issue on where it took place which was back in Asgard. Sorry I was never a fan of any of the Asgard related stuff in the OG Toei 80s anime when they came out except for Odin Seiya which was cool but didn't really do anything himself anyway. I just want to throw this out there that time HAS TO be moving at a slower pace while in Elysion because even though you can use the excuse THIS IS NOT CANNON to get out of answering this question of "How does all of this occur and end while Seiya and his crew are in Elysion?" Because if you wanted all of the Hades Arc you know that as soon as that arrived they were fighting Thanatos and as far as we know that fight was not drawn out for take very long, honestly the entire fight all the way up to the time it took for the Golds Cloths to be announced that they were making their way to Elysion assist the MCs probably took about 15-30 minutes tops and when you take that into consideration this entire Soul of Gold shit happened in 30 minutes when we literally see them living their daily lives in Asgard thru the beginning episodes?! Like i said the only 2 possible excuse you can use the easy answer "It's not cannon so don't think about it too much" or the hard answer aka my answer I'm going with which is "When you travel thru the Hyperdemision tunnel to get to Elysion there time speeds obviously move at a different pace kind of like the Hyperbolic Time Chamber in DBZ" and it sort of makes in moving thru a hyperdimension could have that effect but even if that was the case they should have said something hear in the at the end of this anime because I can't believe the script board couldn't have seen this inconsistency. But that's really the only this that urked me by the time I finished the anime it wasn't good but, it wasn't average but it wasn't bad it was fine let's move on.
Art/Animation (6/10) Fine
This is Toei people.. what can you say. You know what you can say? That the budget for this anime was uhh weird? Obviously this isn't the animation section and hell if it's not a SS Movie of any sort don't expect good animation treatment for SS from Toei you have to know this but damn you would think for a 12 episode bi-weekly anime they would have enough time to make everything look crisp you know? Not the case now like I said this is Toei and when Toei REALLY wants to try we know they can to amazing things in both artsyle and animation. When the God Gold Cloths were introduced would can obviously tell that Toei pushed budget into making them look beyond gorgeous but majority of everything else was decent and there was indeed scenes that looked hideous at some points but like i said it's Toei now these days if it's not a movie and you hear that Toei is making it you just have to hope for the best but DEFINITELY expect the worse so my expectations for this was quite confused since I think "THERE'S NO WAY TOEI CAN MAKE A 12 EPISODE BI-WEEKLY SHOW NOT LOOK AMAZING IN THE ARTSYLE AND ANIMATION DEPARTMENT 100% OF THE TIME!" I stand corrected. The only reason the isn't rated lower is because the things that they did make looks amazing like the God Gold Cloths are probably the best looking thing I've seen drawn this entire anime season and probably this anime year of 2015.
Sound (9/10) Great
Now like I usually say in my reviews in the category you can fuck everything up but you really can't fuck up the sound category. Soul of Gold had a great little remix version of the second opening of the OG SS anime which I love and the sound effects, and voice actors all sound authentic and consistent to the original which I guess can be considered more of a good thing than bad. I'm not giving this a 10 because nothing was outstanding but it definitely lived up to what I was expecting. It was acceptable and since I'm a big Saint Seiya fan I enjoyed the BGM, Voice Actors, Signature moves being shouted out and sound effects.
Character (9/10) Great
Since these are existing characters from Saint Seiya I've always like majority of them and their personality stayed consistent to the original and the dialogue between characters that haven't seen each other in a while was enjoyable also like Aiolos and Saga. It's not a 10 because the actually new filler characters where not good enough to give it that extra point they were all just average (not bad because if they were it would have reduced the overall score they are just average aka neutral they didn't help increase it nor decrease it). I could give them points for Loki's bad ass character design and maybe the character designs on the Gold God Cloth but this is more of a character personality section vs appearance. Appearance I guess would be under art.
Enjoyment (7/10)
My enjoyment is siting at a solid 7, do I wish it were more? FUCK YES? But it's Toei and this is the best I'm going to get unfortunately. Honestly the only time I found myself smiling and actually/genuinely enjoying myself during the time I press play during episodes of Soul of Gold is
1) During the opening when I'm singing along
2) During signature attacks when and shouting along
3) During dialogue of Gold Saints talking with each other about laid back things
4) And during the outro music
Even though during a regular anime your enjoyment mostly should be on the story or the fight scenes (especially if it's a shonen anime you are watching) As you can tell mine were else where and we already know Toei knows how to make good Opening, Endings and BGMs (I even enjoyed it in Omega) so I know I was going to enjoy that and they would have had to completely change the Gold Saints' personality in order for me not to enjoy them either so they didn't have to do much. BUT if there fight scenes, animation and story were actually above average which they weren't it the score could have been higher but since they weren't I'm sitting at a 7 with it.
Overall (7/10) Good
More Specifically (7.40/10)
Honestly (and I say this almost every time I remember Toei owns the animation rights to SS) I wish Toei was just release the license of Saint Seiya already. We know that the only reason the anime exist is because it's required by Toei to create something Saint Seiya animation related in order to maintain the animation rights (and if you didn't know that now you know). So you can expect another non-cannon anime related Saint Seiya thing from Toei in the next year in a half unfortunately. If this anime went on any longer it probably most likely would have been a lot worse. (We saw would happen to the second half of SS Omega if you want an example). I'm not going to rant about how Toei needs to loose the license for Saint Seiya because all SS fans do it and I'm literally tired of ranting about and now instead of sitting here waiting I'm just enjoying other manga/anime. I'll stop by and see what they are doing with Saint Seiya because I'm a fan of the franchise at the end of the day but this Franchise could be SO MUCH MORE if it wasn't in the hands of Toei.. it's the Toriko effect people just get over it and move on with your life maybe one day they'll release the license. Anyway even though we now know why Soul of Gold existence at least it wasn't terrible (at least not to me that is but like I said this franchise deserves a HxH2011/FMAB treatment by a Madhouse, Trigger or Production IG.)
