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聖闘士星矢
110
28
Finished
Dec 3, 1985 to Nov 6, 1990
7.7/10
Average Review Score
60%
Recommend It
10
Reviews Worldwide
***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, energyblasts, 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.
Ages ago, the goddess Athena was served by fighters called Saints who channeled the power of the Cosmos within them. Now a youth named Seiya has trained to become a Saint himself by earning the mystical Cloth of Pegasus. He is joined by other Saints with Cloths of their own to fight for Athena. (Source: ANN)
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 thegoddess of war Athena and her knights, referred as saints, who fight for love and justice of the earth. Enemies ranging from saints that abused their powers for evil or enemies that work for gods who want to take over the earth. As Athena is always reborn in a body of a human, she has to earn her trust of the saints that suppose to fight for her. These include the character who is the namesake of the manga, Seiya, who was forced to become a saint in order to be able to see his sister again. Over the course of the story, the people who became saints by circumstances learn to put their selfish desires behind and get new reasons to fight. The story also plays with the concept of faith and how those who are saints have to fight against it. Fighting against their believes. Fighting against the loved ones. Earning the respect of others. One example being that a character who fights as an enemy, believes the person for whom he is fighting is just, as he can tell his true intention. Tho over the course of the story, he would learn that even through the power he has, there was more he could not uncover about that person originally and his eyes opened after seeing the dedication of his opponent. Like in many fighting shonen, Saint Seiya has a power system. In this case it is called Cosmo. The power to manipulate atoms. With that they are able to destroy, gain abilities such as manipulating elements etc. The stronger the Cosmo, the stronger the character and their ability to change their own faith. There are several ways to increase ones Cosmo. Concepts like spiritualism play a major role, but the most simple way is wearing a certain kind of armor. The armor the saints are wearing are called cloth, which are based on the 88 constellations, and they come in 3 major categories: - Bronze: The weakest kind of armor, allowing their user to move at mach 1 speed at minimum - Silver: A rank higher than Bronze, depending on the cloth can move from mach 2 to 8 - Gold: The highest ranked, allowing users to move at the speed of light. Just wearing a cloth can boost the power of its user to the minimum level they need to be, but like the Zanpakuto in Bleach, the cloth are living and can choose who they think is worthy to be worn by them. In certain situation, the cloth of another character would come to the aid of another. For example, Seiya who is the Pegasus Saint and thus wears Bronze Armor would receive help from the Gold Cloth of Sagittarius allowing him a chance to fight someone above his league. But saints cannot always rely on their armor and thus have to raise their Cosmo through other ways. Sometimes fighting Gold Saint tier opponent's without being able to wear armor where concepts like the seventh sense and spiritualism comes into play. There can be situations where they cannot use their armor as the series continues, there are foes who can pierce them leaving them without protection. What about the fights? With 88 constellations and thus each being able to use abilities and moves based on that constellation, there are many characters that offer a different potential fights. Tho there are enemies that have similar abilities to our heroes or techniques, the fights bring other things like personal stakes. Examples as showing an enemy the value of friendship and how far people would go or clashing of ideals where neither side is technically wrong. Besides the stakes, fight can range from martial arts hand to hand combat, using abilities to their advantage, exploiting weaknesses of the enemy or teamwork. A scene I liked personally, without spoiling the details, is when a character remembers a tale on how someone else defeated an enemy he is fighting. What that character did, is replicate the trick only for it to fail as the enemy was prepared for such a tactic. Thus the story would play with expectations making the fights even more engaging. As for characters, this is when Saint Seiya shines the most. The character while all starting selfish and somewhat relatable, as the story goes, they would become more and more of people one would look up to. As they fight for the peace of the world and with honor. Some characters would inspire each other especially after seeing someone risked his life to safe theirs, they would risk their life in a similar fashion to repay them. Seiya who appeared playful and disrespectful would risk his life several times for the other saints and Athena. Fitting his constellation the Pegasus. The author made him focus mainly fight on hand to hand combat with energy based attacks. Thus making the other lead characters stand out which is a clever way to make them intriguing for the audience. Shiryu is the Dragon Saint. He has a technique that fills his fist with Cosmo allowing him to hit with a blade-like punch that takes the shape of a dragon which is strong enough to reverse waterfalls. He also has a great defense with his dragon shield which gives him the highest defense of all Bronze Saints. A perfect balance between attack and defense. However, often he would shed away his armor in fights showing that his strength comes from himself and not just from his cloth. As the saying would go, the man makes the armor and not the armor makes the man. Shiryu is the type of character who would put his life on the line to protect what is dear to him often leading him gaining the respect of those he fought. Shun is the Andromeda Saint. He has two chains that serve as means to attack, defend and trap enemies. While the defense is not as high as Shiryu's shield or lacks the attack potency, he can protect him from enemies from any range and even reach enemies who are several light-years away. He is the only of the main characters who doesn't engage in hand to hand combat but instead fights with chains and flow like Cosmo, thus providing fight scenes with less aggression which fits his character. Shun is a pacifist and doesn't like to hurt others, even going as far as warning his enemies, only killing them when he has no choice. Hyoga is the Swan Saint and focuses on freezing techniques, thus instead of focusing on destroying atoms by moving them, he focuses on halting their movement aka. slowing them down. He focuses on fighting up on personal or from the distance. His ice abilities come into play in several ways such as halting the movement of his enemies, shielding him from attacks or as projectile attacks. As a character, Hyoga became a saint for his selfish desire and also came as a kind of antagonist on the story, but over the course of the story, he would turn a new leaf. He would become a true saint who learns to learn to cherries the people around him and gets challenged the most for his ideals forcing him to fight those he respects for the name of Athena. Lastly, Ikki, the older brother of Shun who wears the Phoenix Cloth. The Phoenix Cloth is the only cloth that can repair its name as the name suggest and is the mightiest of the Bronze Cloth. Aside of that, Ikki has a wide range of abilities. He possesses immense physical strength and some level of fire manipulation leading him to have some of the most aggressive fighting scenes. He has other abilities such as shooting the tail-feathers of the Phoenix Cloth like projectiles allowing him to finish off or protect nearby allies from enemies. However, besides physical harming enemies, he has strong illusion based attack allowing him to harm opponents psychologically as well. Thus providing fights that are not limited to simple beat downs but also battles of the mind. As the eldest in the group, he would often be the one who lectures the other bronze warriors. Despite being more of a loner, he can be seen as the closest of an older brother for all of them. Many anime and manga fail in the regard, despite having on paper unique abilities like manipulating fire or lighting, in many series they serve the same purpose, but as I described these characters fighting styles, one can see that they operate completely different. On the topic of brotherhood, the other elderly brother figures would be the Gold Saints. Besides serving as mentors and role models, they would often pass on the baton sacrificing themselves to protect the younger generation as one day these Bronze Saints could become their successor as newer Gold Saints and do the same for those that come after them. Being a manga from the 80th, the artstyle starts of rather underwhelming by today's standards. However, as it goes, it not only improves but even challenges many manga in terms of quality from today. The amount of detail on the characters and their armor is impressive and usually I do not credit art in my review. Each volume ends with a full design of the armors in their unworn state that takes the form of what it symbolizes, like the Pegasus Cloth looking like a pegasus, and how it looks like when someone wears them with detailed explanation which parts of the armor is on what part of the body. For people who care about these details, it gives a great satisfaction and makes these armors realism. As if they were to exist in real life, they could function like that. A criticism I have is that the manga concluded but like Bleach it did left a lot of questions open. There were a few continuity as well as one character is claimed to have died and later explained that he survived in a weird way which is hard to explain here without spoiling. And one of the most hyped up fights concluding in a not very satisfactory way. However, even with these criticisms, doesn't take away the fact all the great things that happened to that point. Not to mention, the story has an ongoing sequel that attempts to solve these issues. Whether if they will or not, that remains to be seen. If you are a fan of Bleach especially, I highly recommend you to read Saint Seiya. You will not be disappointed.
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 seeingthe phrase "The same attack never works on a knight twice" A LOT. More than half of the battles come down to this idea, making them absolutely boring. On the other hand, the idea of using Greek mythology and constellations was absolutely brilliant and had a lot of potential, unfortunately, potential that was wasted.
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 thefirst 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.
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 thecharacters still look amazing. This is a traditional battle manga, win by will power and friendship type. But it is one of the pioneers of this genre. I still recommend it to anyone who enjoys battle manga.