Saint Seiya

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.

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 other Saint Seiya manga spin-offs, it would be better to have read the original manga (more to grasp the references, because the basics are reiterated).


STORY: 8

In the world there are supermen, called Saints, who fight for Athena and defend the Earth from evil forces. These Saints wear armor, called Cloths, associated with the constellations of the zodiac, and use the Cosmos, a power that allows them to overcome their limits and use special attacks.

The devolpment is generally simple, the protagonists will have to fight against a series of enemies (generally for their own goddess, sometimes for personal reasons), risking their lives several times, going up as they progress. The base of a battle shonen, thrown in those days.

The story is structured in 3 main arches (Sanctuary, Poseidon and Hades), in addition to the first ones, more for introduction (Galaxian Wars and Black Saints).

The clashes are the strong point of the series, in addition to the characters.

ART: 6

The designs are simple, especially with regards to the characters, and in an old and somewhat two-dimensional style, but they are not poor, and have a particular touch. The armor, but above all the special shots, are well done.

CHARACTERS: 10

Except for the protagonists, the secondary characters have a relative background, but stand out for their strong character, which made them immortal over time, and much loved by fans, especially the 12 golden knights, icon of the series.

ENJOYMENT: 8

Is a good manga, one of those that must be read or seen by force (it would be like never having seen Dragon Ball). However, as already mentioned, although it is more linear and coherent (in the "consistency" of Kurumada) of the anime, the latter is decidedly more impactful and immortal.



My advice is to watch the anime of Saint Seiya. If you liked this, the manga is to be read, especially if you want to get into the universe of Saint Seiya with other stories. Because, although they are now almost all "alternative stories", the basis for them are the events of the ORIGINAL MANGA, not of the anime (except for the anime spin-offs).

***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.

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 to construct a complete, properly told story, and good ideas are constantly mixed in with heinous fillers (evil twins, characters coming back from the dead, blacks saints, inconsequential silver saints etc ...). The manga also suffers from asinine power creep, probably to compensate from the fact the author fails to portay character development (or the escalation of the stakes) organically. All of that gets better as the story progresses - Hades is, I think, by far the best arc - but never truly attains greatness.

Saint Seiya's main saving grace is probably its aethestics, deeply rooted in the 80s, and relentlessly reaching out for a perfect teenage "cool" which Kurumada admirably tries to reconcile with sensitivity instead of going for edginess. Chara designs are excellent, attacks are visually creative and the use and reappropriation of (mostly greek) mythology is greatlly executed. While Kurumada drawing starts a little iffy, by the end of the manga his style has been refined and plates (especially double pages) have become a real pleasure to contemplate.

Aside from nostalgia I think one of the main reasons I managed to go through the whole series (while I had to stop Yu Yu Hakusho out of boredom) ironically comes from its repetitive and simplistic nature that allows the reader to blaze through the story while taking in only the good and leaving the bad behind. I find it fascinating how quick you can read this manga when you begin to understand how each fight will play out and what each character will say and when: you can almost skip entire parts of the story and stop only when you know there will be something interesting, either regarding the plot or aethetically... I've been strangely entranced by this deeply flawed manga, swallowing volumes after volumes in the blink of an eye.