Story
Saint Seiya is a shounen anime that features several elements of mythology (mostly Greek mythology) where the characters represent and are too protected by one of the 88 constellations.
The main characters, the Bronze Saints (or "Knights" in the Western version), are the ones responsible to protect the goddess Athena and the humanity against the 'evil' Greek gods.
The fighting is generally interesting to watch, since (almost) every character has an unique gimmick or superpower.
On the other hand, due to 'low budget' issues and a more old school approach (it's 80's, fellas), the character won't move much while fighting ... so this may not seem fit for a younger audience, used to a more fast paced animation.
Meanwhile, the plot itself is quite simple for the most part, and goes in a very monodimensional way, but not tedious, since all the gimmicks keep you coming for more.
The biggest mistake through the start of this series is the fillers. The fillers not only alters some events from the original manga, but also creates some new characters that appear and disappear for the sake of the convenience of the plot and, after all, for the sake of the expensive licensed toys (figures, if you like it better).
Although Saint Seiya was not meant to be a cheap excuse for Bandai earn some good money on licensed toys, the beautiful and very well done adaptation of the ugly and lifeless armors from the manga into the shining armor designs of the anime (courtesy of master Shingo Araki) would inevitable create a paramount market for high quality toys for boys and grown men alike.
Yes, I said the fillers messed up a lot of the series in the beggining, and some filler characters were obviously created for the solo porpouse of selling new figures.
But the anime production seemed to have learned from their own mistakes and later on, they developed an entire filler arc that not only gave Bandai some nice looking figures for selling but also created some good content and good filler characters that match the ones from the original source material, in the Asgard arc.
Talking about the arcs, if you ask a Saint Seiya fan, probably one will point the Twelve Zodiac Temples arc as the highlight memory of the anime.
The 'enemy of the week' formula applied here alongside with the (let's call) 'tower of combat' (like in the infamous 'Game of Death' of the late Bruce Lee) were a very clever concept put on by Masami Kurumada on his manga, and that was for sure perfected in the anime series.
Nevertheless, Kurumada has became so found of this formula that he shameless repeats it on later arcs, until there was nothing much left for the anime to going on.
As some of you may know, this 'Saint Seiya' anime is an incomplete adaptation, ending in the Poseidon arc, and having its sequel in Hades Chapter OVAs decades later - mostly for the avid Western (Latin) audience.
Animation and sound
Saint Seiya's overall OST is very, very good. From the chatchy 80's heavy metal-ish opening theme 'Pegasus Fantasy' by the now legendary Nubou Yamada to the sad instrumentals of the likes of 'Hyouga visits his mother's grave on the deep of the ocean', SS is remarkable for its music.
The quality of the animation, though, decreases a lot in some episodes and its more static and low budget than Dragon Ball, for example. On the other hand, the beatiful character design by Shingo Araki makes Saint Seiya a bliss to the eyes, with all those cool and colourful armors.
Characters
Though some people may criticize their lack of free will in them following Athena, I think the main characters of Saint Seiya stand out in their own merits and distinct traits.
Each one of them helped to create the stereotypes of the 'boy band' shounen team that would later influence the very conception of Gundam Wing's main cast.
The impulsive protagonist (Seiya), the prime rival with a cool mind (Shiryu), the 'ice guy' with a hidden melting heart (Hyouga), the sensitive anti-violence femboy (Shun) and the badass avenger (Ikki), they all seem fit and are nicely portraited through the series.
But other characters I must highlight here are the Gold Saints. Each Gold Saint represents one of the signs of the Zodiac, sometimes even in powers and personalities, which adds some very cool gimmicks for most of them. Special compliments for Aries, Gemini, Leo, Virgo, Aquarius, Capricorn (won't say much to not spoil anything).
Veredict
I am suspicious for praising Saint Seiya qualities, since it was my first anime, so it was very important to my childhood, and as Saint-Exupery once said, 'childhood is like my country'.
Still, I can highly recommend Saint Seiya to those into old-school anime, since it may be dated to younger viewers (probably if you are a Naruto ou Boku no Hero fan, Saint Seiya will not be your thing).
If you have time and want to further understand the story, I also recommend to read the manga. The art is worse for sure, but the plot works in a better (and even more consistent) way.
