Anime 1254 Saint Seiya Reviews Filter Check 3

I have HUGE problems with this anime :

1 : the fights
Unlike a lot of people apparently, I don't like the fights in this anime. Why ? because almost every single one of them are resolve with a deus ex machina, creating little to no tension, despite the fact that the hero always come close to defeat at some point.
As this deus ex machina always comes after the hero looses his armor, it makes it as useless as some kind of super heavy insignia (except for those who literally have a weapon in it like Shun).

2 : the heros's immortality
For some reason, the main characters keep ... "dying" over and over again sacrificing themselves for a reason or another. It wouldn't be a problem if they would actually stay dead (or at least use a valid method to bring them back like in Dragon Ball), for example, when trying to revive Seya's and his own armor, Shiryu survived reviving the two armors with his blood, despite Mu clearly stating it would be fatal if he did. And then winning and surviving a fight where he lost more blood than his body should have contained.
The only character that really dies is Ikki, which is conveniently the only one that can resurrect (as he is the saint of the phoenix constellation), rendering this op ability completely useless.

The main cast is not really interesting in terms of personality and objectives but that's just a detail compared to the other 2 major problems I mentioned.

On a more positive note, the art is appealing, the character design is not bad (especially the armors that are really cool), the music is nice, the opening is fucking awesome (the first one at least), and the animation is not bad either. Considering how old it is, it's actually pretty impressive how good the production is, but unfortunately, that is not enough to make a good story.

It was presented to me as a masterpiece of the level of Hokuto no Ken and Dragon Ball, that's why I'm so disappointed (I guess discovering Jojo's Bizarre Adventure just before might have helped).

To sum it up, if you're not nostalgic about it, I don't recommend watching it, it certainly does not live up to its reputation.

ps : if you disagree with me, please be an adult and don't hate me for it.

pss : English is not my mother tongue so if my writing is awkward or incorrect, I apologize.

Maybe a good anime for children, but overall it isn't very well written. The stories and plots are all the same; even the characters and bad guys outside of a few are all the same. Same powers with different names.

Every battle has the same flashbacks of being twin brothers and best friends but now enemies.
Sometimes the flashbacks are the same exact production clipped from previous episodes redone over and over.

The first arc with Ikki was better than the rest of the 114 episodes. I'd be happy to give the first season a better score if it wasn't bundled together with the other ... 114 episodes.

The highlight of everything is yelling Nebula Chain everytime Shun fights then finding the episode with the Nebula Chain song. This is despite Shun losing 99% of every fight accross all 114 episodes to have his brother help and save him.

In the Japanese version, the mermaid armor is worn by a woman named Thities (literally pronounced Titties). Mermaid Titties. wtf

This is a hard one for me to write about because I started watching it about 6 months ago and my memories of the earlier episodes I enjoyed have faded. I remember thinking the Galaxian Wars arc was fun and a nice introduction to the characters. There was just enough there that was a different, cool twist on this sort of show's formula to keep me interested. I started using this show as kind of a "start the day with an easy episode of X" thing.

Then the arc with Phoenix Ikki as the Big Bad started up and I remember thinking that was hype. It ... was a cool brother against brother story with simple, significant stakes. The later stories about the silver saints and the various battles over the Saggitarius Cloth were also quite good. It was sad that the Saints present for the Galaxian Wars who weren't slated as main cast members disappeared during this period, but I overlooked that. Y'know what really worked, in spite of the show not having many ideas for it? Shaina. Easily the best character in the whole show. Never had anything going on that didn't involve a man in some way, but she was a great concept for a better story.

And then it started to transition into the Sanctuary Arc by introducing a shitton of retroactive continuity. I was fine with that because it seemed to be leading somewhere cool. "Oh, shit, there's actually a whole army of saints who are in a completely different league than even the silver saints!" With my monkey brain, I know this is just an incremental threat increase from silver to gold. But with my reptile brain, I was enticed and willing to follow it. I was into it.

The Sanctuary Arc is a god damn Fyre Festival. Every fight against a Gold Knight is essentially interchangeable with any other one, especially towards the end. Most of them have a tiny gimmick to try to make the fight unique, but there's only so much they could do to change things up if they were going to run through ALL TWELVE ZODIAC SIGNS with NO BREAKS AT ALL with THE SAME RESOLUTION EVERY TIME. They push their cosmo to its peak, the Gold Saint beats them anyway and deprives them of their senses, the bronze saint masters the seventh sense and raises their cosmo to a new peak, and the bronze saint wins. Every time. For fuck's sake, when they were fighting the silver saints, the bronze saints had a command center and they had a tiny semblance of a home life. Suddenly, it's just a constant, samey gauntlet for 32 EPISODES. Saori was a near-constant presence before and now she's knocked unconscious for almost this entire run, so it's also just a huge sausage fest as far as the main cast is concerned. Shaina's arc was a small blessing in this bland sea. I grew to dislike the show over this time, but I trusted there had to be something on the other side that would make up for this. After all, there WERE some variations and they threw together a bunch of background details. Things were still advancing and the conflict made sense, however protracted. And the visual direction of the show up through this point was quite good at times. Despite the story problems, "Saint Seiya" had a lot going for it.

But then Sancuary mercifully concludes. They must have caught up to the manga because they immediately began anime-original material. I think anime-original arcs are cool opportunities to explore the characters more and take a different tack on the series. What the show desperately needed at this point was a reprieve from constant fighting. Maybe Seiya could have spent some time with any of the three women the show was shipping him with on-and-off, much to my chagrin. Maybe Hyoga could have spent time mourning his mother. Maybe Shiryu could have gone to the Wulau Peaks to have nice scenes with Shunrei. No. What we got was the Asgard Arc, which is one of the absolute worst shonen battle manga stories I have ever encountered. A legitimately 1/10 storyline with nothing going for it that runs for ANOTHER 25 EPISODES.

A God Warrior from the icy region of Asgard, heretofore unmentioned, shows up and beats up a Gold Knight offscreen so we know he's a Bad Dude. OK. Sure. I hate this already, but I understand the storytelling technique of having them take down someone we know is strong to prove that they are stronger and a threat to the main cast. Fine. In the second episode of this arc, the bronze saints are already in Asgard fighting the God Warriors in what is basically Another Sanctuary Arc. Insultingly, they show some of the infiltration we were just to assume the bronze knight had done in flashbacks later. They fight each of the God Warriors individually, exposit backstory details that mean absolutely nothing outside of these fights we will never think of again, and they make progress towards saving Athena, who has been essentially removed yet again. On paper, this is so similar to the Sanctuary arc that you could be forgiven for thinking that I'm overreacting when I say it is a 1/10. But it's literally just the worst parts of it with nothing else. It's so aggressively formulaic and badly structured that it comes off as a story written by someone who hates shonen battle manga and wants this story to convince other people to hate it. Every single fight has exactly the same structure as a fight against a Gold Saint, but they cannot actually give whatever "new peak" the bronze saints' cosmo reaches a new name, so there's no progression at all even though it's telling us there is. And then there's the fact that the God Warriors, like the Gold Knights before them, are literally working against their own interests. With the Gold Knights, I was willing to overlook that because they were sworn to serve Pope Aries and they believed Athena was in Sanctuary even though she wasn't. They had no reason to disbelieve the bronze saints, but they had little reason to believe them either. In Asgard, their version of Athena is Hilda and she has suddenly become openly evil. Her plan will destroy the world. Her sister, Freya, joins up with the bronze knights to stop her. And the God Warriors fight to defend her because they just assume she's right and that Freya has been brainwashed or something. At one point, Hyoga says "helping us would be directly helping Freya" to the God Warrior who was in love with her. The God Warrior's response was "I have had enough of your bullshit." That level of idiot ball shenanigans is, again, not even backed up by good fights. By the end of the arc, I was literally watching it 1.5x speed for a few minutes at the beginning of the episode, skipping to the 15 minute mark to see that the villain had turned the tables, and then skipped to the end to see the bronze knight come out on top. Over and over again. Over and over again. Over and over again. No setups. No payoffs. Only punching and yelling. And not even good punching and yelling. A new director had come on at the beginning of this arc and the difference in their ability to keep the wrestling-style storyline interesting absolutely shows.

And then there is just the tiniest bit of fresh air, which is the show gracefully rerailing itself onto the manga plot by introducing one of Poseidon's warriors. As I understand it, this is essentially putting on-screen the manga fight between this Mariner and the Gold Knight who was defeated off-screen at the beginning of Asgard, but with a God Warrior instead of that Gold Knight. And it's fine. It's definitely a step up from everything else that happened in Asgard. The first episode of the Poseidon Arc that follows this actually takes a step back to introduce Poseidon's civilian form and create a connection between Saori and him for us to build some tension around. Oh, sorry. Just kidding. Saori gets knocked out again and we basically do the Sanctuary Arc again, only with pillars instead of temples (as in Sanctuary) or gems (as in Asgard). These fights have slightly more roots in the saints' characterizations than the Asgard fights, so there's more here for fans, but it's still so boring and bad. By the end, I was watching complete episodes, but I couldn't do it at less than 3x speed. I just couldn't.

Any shonen battle manga story can survive one or even two lackluster arcs. "Saint Seiya" has three which span a total of 67 EPISODES and includes, again, some of the worst storytelling in this genre I have ever seen. It's really mind-numbing for me to think that I had spent so long savoring those first two major arcs and the intro to Sanctuary for so long, considering it was only 41 episodes. Honestly, just watch Galaxian Wars and the fights with the silver saints and you have the point of "Saint Seiya". It only gets worse from there. And when it jumps off the cliff into horrible storytelling, it just jumps off that same cliff three more times.

The best thing about "Saint Seiya" is "Pegasus Fantasy", which is an immortal jam that has slapped for 40 years straight. I also liked the second ED.