Saint Seiya was written in January 1986 by Masami Kurumada. Saint Seiya is a battle shonen themed after mythology, most often Greek mythology, whose plot centers around the "Saints of Athena", mystical armor wearing warriors who protect the Earth under the guide of the goddess Athena. The series is a very large franchise now with numerous series although unlike some of the prior entries I've talked about, they tend to stick closer to the feel of the original, if not exactly, so I can mostly focus on the original when talking about SS. My favorite version is the Lost Canvas.
3 Reasons I love it:
1: It's Elegance. Everything about Saint Seiya is incredibly elegant and there's a clear attempt to imbue everything with dignity and grandeur. The armor designs, music, storylines, and characters are all like something out of theatre. I really like how the story's sense of importance in presentation matches the giant stakes of every battle. Everything has such a sense of scope and importance in SS. Compared to most shonen of it's day, Saint Seiya was known for it being less comedic, more dramatic and emotional, more restrained, characters being more underplayed and less comical exaggerations, and having lots of pretty boys. It's really no surprise it got a large female following.
2: On a related note, Saint Seiya does an amazing job matching the feel of myth. Mythological Fantasy is really good at creating a sense of dignity and grandeur and SS is really good at matching that. The characters all feel like they come out of myth, being archetypal and following character arcs that are designed to led their archetypes to their extremes. The series humanism sneaks up on you because you are so used to the feeling of wonder and perhaps intimidation at seeing the power of divinities, of natural forces, swept up in the cosmos that when the series reminds you the greatest cosmo is within the human potential to grow endlessly, it feels all the more impressive. The series is about, I think, the contrast of the conceptual realm, the divine, the natural forces which are great and terrible but are limited to being what they are, vs the human realm where we are naturally much weaker but can grow without limit to far exceeding what we were.
3: It's directness to the plot. The Saint Seiya Manga is really direct in it's plot. There's basically no filler. The Anime has more, although still compared to a lot of shonen series, SS is relatively speaking a very direct story with each arc the Saints having to beat x number of minions of arc bad guy in usually 1 on 1 fights that usually correspond to them. I don't like filler and SS is really minimal on it.
3 Flaws:
1: Probably the biggest flaw, and what everyone mentions; the series is really repetitive. Especially the original series, each arc has basically the same structure. It gets a bit predictable at times.
2: Saint Seiya has a bad tendency towards deus ex machina. Things will sometimes happen, and the series will try to explain why it happened, but it will basically state a rule it stated on the spot as opposed something foreshadowed beforehand. Either that or it will be only foreshadowed in the sense that it's something that happened before like Seiya's ability to massively grow in cosmo via the power of friendship.
3: It has some very standard shonen tropes. So these aren't a huge bother for me personally, but if you are the type to get bothered by lots of flashbacks and lengthy explanations of abilities and tourment arcs and the like, then you may experience some of that. Saint Seiya was one of the first big successful shonen, and so it helped popularize many of the tropes that younger shonen series adopted. It's partly why the series' quick pace is very surprising, since that's not a trope most shonen get from it. Likewise while it's characters are more subtle then most of it's contempories they are still basically the battle shonen tropes of the book dumb hot-blooded main character, the angsty edgy loner that was once a villain, the quiet reflective one that became close friends with the main character through combat etc. Watching Saint Seiya be expected to be surprised at the newness of it's themes rather then it's plot structure or how it tackles battle shonen genre.
Favorite Part:
This one changes around for me, but my favorite part of Saint Seiya currently is Shiryu defeating Deathmask in the Sanctuary Arc. It slowly builds on the theme of whether or not one can depend on abstract concepts like justice, and though Deathmask proclaims he does not believe them, he is still surprised when his own cloth abandons him for his sins and he is defeated by his sins. I really like Shiryu's moments.
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