Therefore, Masami Kurumada seemingly came to one conclusion: If the readers didn't want the kind of manga that he wanted to make, then he'd make the kind of manga that he knew readers would love.
Taking the second half of 1985 to conceive of his next work, Kurumada initially thought of making a wrestling manga, before moving over to a karate or judo manga, but after some denials from his editor he went in a different direction. Instead of sports, Kurumada decided to make a more general "nekketsu/hot-blooded" action manga, one with an aspect of "fashion" to it, to contrast with how his prior manga all featured characters garbed in traditional school gakuran or simple sports garb. Specifically, he looked to his fascination with Greek mythology (which he had previously utilized for Team Greece & the 12 Gods of Greece in Ring ni Kakero) & combined that with the idea of constellations, resulting in the idea that his characters would wear personalized armor to battle, which also allowed him to make more explosive & spark-laden combat, which the armor could act as protection for. Originally going with the title "Ginga no Rin/Rin of the Galaxy", Kurumada decided to change the lead's name to "Seiya", initially using the kanji 聖矢/Holy Arrow before deciding on 星矢/Star Arrow, to better match the constellation theme; likewise, one of the first ideas Kurumada had for "Seiya" was a special attack that looked like a meteor shower. Finally, Kurumada would decide to name this new manga Saint Seiya, after both the lead's finalized name & the fact that he was a "Saint", which in this case was the name of the armored warriors who fight for Athena, Greek goddess of wisdom, warfare (specifically strategy & generalship), & handicraft. In the end, Saint Seiya would debut in Combined Issue #1-2 of Weekly Shonen Jump in 1986, and while it initially had a bit of a rough start in its first year, it would eventually go on to find success... and then some.
Once it found its footing, Saint Seiya would become one of the most popular manga in Jump during the second half of the 80s, becoming a consistent top three manga in terms of popularity (at least, according to where Shueisha would place it in each issue of Jump) from 1987 to 1989, even doing the seemingly impossible & surpass Dragon Ball at points! Not just that, but the very idea of Saint Seiya, especially its toyetic concept of armored warriors, resulted in it being picked up for both a TV anime adaptation by Toei Animation & a toy line by Bandai pretty much instantly, with the first episode of the anime debuting on TV Asahi before the manga had even run for an entire year; it literally debuted right as the manga was just starting to become popular, which in turn boosted the anime's appeal. The success of the anime would result in Saint Seiya being the first of Kurumada's works to see international release, starting in France in 1988 under the name Les Chevaliers du Zodiaque, and when other countries started getting the anime many of them would likewise use translated versions of that title. Eventually, Saint Seiya's momentum would start to die out, with the anime ending in 1989 after 114 episodes (& four movies), while the manga would eventually come to cancellation in late 1990, after 246 weekly chapters (later combined into 110 chapters, 111 if you count the bonus one-off story in Volume 13, across 28 volumes), beating out Ring ni Kakero by just four weeks & becoming Kurumada's single longest manga, by length; in fact, the proper final chapter wouldn't get published until the December 12 issue of V Jump that same year.
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| Saint Seiya's Chances of Success in "North of Mexico": Lost in the Void of the Bermuda Triangle |
Unfortunately, the one (major) region that didn't get Saint Seiya in any timely fashion was "North of Mexico", i.e. the United States & Canada; you can't say "North America", as Mexico & Latin America got the anime back in the 90s as Los Caballeros del Zodiaco. Whether it was due to a lack of interest or concerns over the blood & violence seen, Saint Seiya wouldn't see official English release until DiC got the rights to the anime & debuted it on Cartoon Network in mid-2003 as Knights of the Zodiac; I've already covered that whole debacle back in 2018. However, DiC's license would open the floodgates as Shueisha would then have its co-owned English manga publisher Viz Media license & release the original manga in English, though under the full title of "Knights of the Zodiac: Saint Seiya" & with name & terminology changes to reflect the ones DiC made for its edited dub of the anime. I specifically worded it as "Shueisha forced Viz to release the manga", because translator (& long-time Seiya fan) Mari Morimoto has admitted that she begged Viz to license the manga repeatedly back in the 90s, only to be told "it's too old"... yet once DiC licensed the anime the manga was suddenly licensed, too; at the very least, Morimoto was hired to translate the manga. Unfortunately, due to a variety of factors (with its age & association to a notoriously failed anime dub being the biggest two), Viz's release of the Saint Seiya manga was a massive failure when it came to sales, with its initial bimonthly release schedule slowed down by half to just three-a-year in 2007 & the final volume coming out in early 2010; had it taken any longer it's entirely possible that Viz might have just cancelled further releases. However, Viz did eventually re-release the manga digitally throughout the first half of 2014, and it's because of that digital offering that Viz was able to add Saint Seiya to the Shonen Jump Vault in mid-2022, meaning that anyone who subscribes to Shonen Jump today has full access to the entire manga; the first three chapters (or 3/4 of Volume 1) is also available for free to everyone.
Yes, this is a super long introduction but it's all relevant stuff to learn about & know, and it's partially why I held off on doing an actual review of the Saint Seiya manga for so long. Also, you know, I wanted to review as much of Masami Kurumada's non-Seiya manga before I finally got to this one, and at the very least I've since covered all of his other major works, so let's continue celebrating Kurumada's 50th Anniversary by going over "The Big One": Saint Seiya.
[NOTE: While I am reading Viz's translation for this review, I will be relying on the unaltered names & terminology. However, for completeness' sake, I will reference what the alterations are on first mention.]
Back in the Age of Myths the Greek goddess Athena would defend the Earth against all opposing forces, including fellow gods like Ares & Poseidon, with the help of her "Saints [Knights]", 88 warriors based on the constellations in the sky who fight using nothing more than their own bodies, due to Athena's hatred of weapons, & their "Cosmo", the mini-universe of power found within everyone that humanity inherited from the Big Bang of creation itself. Seiya is a young Japanese boy who has spent the past six years training in a secluded part of Greece known as "Sanctuary", Athena's secret base of operations, with hopes of earning a "Cloth", the armor that all Saints wear into battle. Seiya is in this situation because of the late Mitsumasa Kido [Lord Nobu], head of the Graad Foundation [Grande Foundation] who discovered the Gold Sagittarius Cloth, meant for one of the 12 Gold Saints (the highest rank of Saint), & decided to send 100 orphans from around the world to learn to be Saints & return to Japan, so that the greatest tournament in the world could be had: The Galaxian Wars [Galaxy Tournament], with the winner receiving the Sagittarius Cloth itself. Seiya manages to earn the Bronze Pegasus Cloth, one of the lowest rank of Saint, & returns to Japan so that Saori Kido [Princess Seinna], Mitsumasa's granddaughter, can keep up their end of the deal & reunite Seiya with his sister, Seika, who went missing shortly after Seiya was taken by the Graad Foundation. Seiya is one of just 10 orphans who managed to return to Japan with a Bronze Cloth, but the Galaxian Wars will only mark the start of Seiya & the Bronze Saints' battles, which includes fighting their fellow Saints for control over Sanctuary itself, due to Saori's own origin as the reincarnation of Athena herself, as well as threats of world conquest by the likes of Poseidon & Hades.
In traditional Kurumada fashion, Saint Seiya is made up of multiple primary story arcs: The Sanctuary Chapter (Volumes 1-13) introduces the main cast & later sees them needing to face off against the Silver & Gold Saints in a battle against the corrupt Pope [Master] of Sanctuary; the Poseidon Chapter (14-18) sees the Sea God himself freed from the seal Athena put on him millennia ago & wants to flood the planet so that he can rule over all, with Athena willingly putting herself in danger by staying in Poseidon's Main Breadwinner [Mainstay] pillar so that she can take all of the flooding rain in place of the Earth; & the Hades Chapter (19-28) has the God of the Underworld, once again, start a war with Athena for control of the planet, just as they had done 243 years before. That being said, though, the first & last story arcs themselves can also be split up into multiple sub-chapters, in a sense. The Sanctuary Chapter is made up of the Galaxian Wars Sub-Chapter (1-5), where Seiya & his fellow Bronze Saints fight in the tournament, only for rouge Bronze Saint Phoenix Ikki to steal the Sagittarius Cloth alongside the evil doppelgänger Black Saints, due to Ikki finding out some truths behind Mitsumasa Kido's grand plan; the Silver Saint Sub-Chapter (5-8), where the Bronze Saints fend off attacks by the Silver Saints (the middle rank of Saint) that are sent out by the Pope; & the Gold Saint Sub-Chapter (8-13), where the Bronzes take the fight to Sanctuary itself & need to make their way through the 12 Palaces of the Gold Saints in order to save Saori from death via an arrow that will kill her in 12 hours. Meanwhile, the Hades Chapter is made up of the 12 Palaces Sub-Chapter (19-22), where some of Hades' Specters (his equivalent to Saints), including some Gold Saints who died at the hands of the Bronze Saints & now work for Hades, invade Sanctuary in an attempt to kill Saori; the Inferno Sub-Chapter (23-26), as Seiya & Co. charge into the Underworld to bring Athena her own Cloth to fight Hades with; & the Elysium Sub-Chapter (26-28), which sees the final battles against the last remaining Specters, the gods Hypnos & Thanatos, & finally Hades himself within the realm of the Elysian Fields.
Before we get to the actual plot of Saint Seiya, we should at least go over the primary cast of characters first. Pegasus Seiya is an earnest & impetuous lead character, never staying down during a fight & forever willing to fight for the right thing, though he initially doesn't act like this. At first, Seiya is a little more selfish, not even wanting to fight in the Galaxian Wars & only really agrees to do so after Saori promises to help him find Seika should he win the tournament, while his childhood friend Miho gives him the idea that a good performance in something seen around the world will naturally result in Seika seeing him & wanting to reunite; once the plot really gets into gear, though, this element of Seiya is pretty much dropped completely. Dragon Shiryu is a martial arts master taught by Roshi (literally "Old Master") of Goroho, China (i.e. Mt. Lu, or "Rozan" in Japanese), one of the 12 Gold Saints of Sanctuary & is literally hundreds of years old, & Shiryu is easily the most willing of the gang to risk his own life & body to achieve victory, not to mention arguably bleeds the most throughout the entire series, as though it's impossible for him to ever just bleed to death. Cygnus [Swan] Hyoga is generally the most serious of the group, a half-Russian/half-Japanese, ice-based Saint who initially follows his instructions to the letter (he's initially ordered by Sanctuary to kill his fellow Bronzes for competing in the Galaxian Wars, as Saints shouldn't fight for personal gain) but learns to ease up somewhat, while still following his emotions. Andromeda Shun is a strict pacifist who prefers to not fight, and his Nebula Chain is perfectly emblematic of this, primarily being used for defensive purposes; when left with no other option, though, Shun will go on the offensive, & may even be the most powerful of them all.
Then there's Phoenix Ikki, Shun's older brother who initially starts off as a villain before becoming arguably the most dedicated to fighting for Athena, though he rarely sticks around with his fellow Bronzes. Instead, Ikki prefers to make sudden appearances when things get truly rough, acting as a sort of emergency reserve fighter, while his Cloth's ability to self-repair & resurrect (like the Phoenix itself) allows him to come back from situations that would normally kill other Saints. As for our supporting cast, the major one would be Saori Kido, a.k.a. Athena. Much like how Seiya was first introduced as more selfish in his actions, Saori is initially introduced as a bit if a highfalutin rich girl who thinks she's inherently better than the Bronze Saints that she had known since her grandfather took them all in six years prior, even treating them as literal slaves back when they were young children. However, once she reveals the truth behind her origin in Volume 7 she instantly transitions into a much more benevolent person, befitting the goddess that she's the reincarnation of, so much so that one could probably argue that "Saori" died during her backstory & "Athena" simply took her identity from then on out. To be fair, it is later shown that the gods can full-on possess their respective mortal reincarnations, so this is actually entirely plausible.
But, really, it's time we get to the storytelling of Saint Seiya, and there's no putting it nicely... it has a very, very, VERY rough start to it. As mentioned, Kurumada created Saint Seiya to be a manga aimed precisely at the "mainstream" (he even admits this in Volume 1's author's note), so what he decided to do was essentially just come up with a basic skeleton of a concept & let the readers decide some of the initial set up. Yes, Seiya, his iconic Pegasus Meteor Punch attack, the general idea of the Saints, Cosmo, & the like were decided by Kurumada himself, but when it came to who will accompany Seiya in his battles as part of the "Five-Man Band", so to speak, he seemingly left that up to the readers to choose. That's why the manga literally begins with a tournament, because it's often a popular story arc with readers that allows for easy justification to see fights happen, and it also allowed Kurumada to introduce 10 different Bronze Saints as soon as possible. Sure, Hyoga & Ikki being introduced as late arrivals likely meant that Kurumada had some plans in mind for them early on (Ikki was seemingly always intended as an initial villain, while Hyoga could have gone either way), & Seiya was a lock, but that still meant that readers could choose between Dragon Shiryu, Andromeda Shun, Bear Geki, Unicorn Jabu [Jab], Wolf Nachi, Hydra Ichi, & Lionet Ban (OK, maybe not him) for who would become a major character, seemingly based solely on their designs & initial fights in the tournament. In fact, it really seems as though Jabu was Kurumada's personal pick, since his design was inspired by RnK's Ishimatsu (who Kurumada admitted was based the most on himself), yet the readers seemingly went with Shiryu, Shun, & Hyoga instead, relegating Jabu to be (at best) the de facto leader of what I call the "Secondary Bronzes", as they do make appearances later on in the manga but in mostly small ways.
This results in Volume 1 of the manga being kind of rough, arguably the roughest introductory volume for any Kurumada manga. It's not bad, as the first half detailing Seiya earning the Pegasus Cloth is good, but the second half setting up the Galaxian Wars, an unlikable Saori, a rivalry with Jabu that in retrospect goes absolutely nowhere, and no real logic behind what exactly winning the Sagittarius Cloth would do for any of the Bronzes leaves the reader with a feeling of "This is a big bone to chew on, sure... but where's the meat?". Volume 2 is a little better, mainly bouyed by a good Seiya vs. Shiryu fight, & Volume 3 finally gives the manga some sort of a focused plot when Ikki is introduced & steals the Sagittarius Cloth, followed by some proper worldbuilding with the introduction of Aries Mu (& his young student Kiki), the only man who can repair damaged cloths... by requiring massive amounts of blood from a Saint. However, I'd argue that it's not until Volume 4 that Saint Seiya truly starts finding its identity... one of violence, insane feats, & a general feeling of "Yeah, why the hell not?!". In this volume alone we get moments like Hyoga managing to hold onto Ikki's arm after he's been punched through the chest so that he can freeze Ikki's arm somewhat, Shiryu hemorrhaging blood like its nothing in order to access his full power against Black Dragon (all while admitting that he only has half the amount of blood he should have, due to the cloth repairs), Black Swan gouging his own eye out so that he can send Ikki the final image of the move Hyoga used to defeat him, Shiryu stabbing a near-death Seiya's "Star Points" (which match the placement of his guardian constellation) so that he can bleed out poisoned blood that's killing him... and the start of Ikki's own backstory, which sees the love of his life killed right in front of him, solely so that he can give into pure hatred, as his master taught him.
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| "Woah, he's hemorrhaging everywhere!" is pretty much Shiryu's motto. |
Truly, what makes Saint Seiya so notable is that Masami Kurumada essentially (but not literally... I think?) looked to (comedy) metal band Spın̈al Tap & decided to just take everything about the kind of manga he made at the time "up to eleven"... and, to be perfectly honest, it's what wound up saving the manga. If you look at Saint Seiya's placement in Jump's Table of Contents, which tends to at least showcase what manga Jump prioritized over others (i.e. the more consistently high in placement, the more popular it tends to be), it shows that the series very quickly dropped down the ToC after debuting, & after only half a year was literally appearing dead last; if anything, Kurumada's cachet at the time gave him leeway that would have otherwise killed newbies. This corresponded to the entire Galaxian Wars part of the story, but once Ikki got introduced & the Sagittarius Cloth was stolen the manga found itself a bit of lifeline, and maybe one can argue that Kurumada going "to eleven" with the wild imagery & moments was a Hail Mary attempt to keep readers interested, but you can't deny that it worked. However, what truly saved Saint Seiya is what happens in the second half of Volume 5, once the stuff with Ikki is done with: The Introduction of the Silver Saints. Whereas before the plot revolved around characters of similar status & situation fighting each other for a nebulous reason, followed by then fighting what were essentially evil doppelgängers lead by one of their own, the Silver Saints give a proper focus as to what Saint Seiya, & Kurumada in general, is arguably best at, which is the main characters fighting against seemingly insurmountable odds by going into battle with forces beyond their strength. Right from the start we see Lizard Misty being able to deflect Seiya's Pegasus Meteor Punch like it was nothing, while also dealing immense damage to Seiya with literally a single finger, which in turn makes the reader want to see Seiya want to rise up & figure out a way to surpass Misty, even if it's purely in sheer will & determination. Naturally, this kind of escalation in power continues as the Bronzes fight more incoming Silver Saints sent by the Pope of Sanctuary, before they then take the initiative & go to Sanctuary to fight the Gold Saints... but before all of that we should address a major flaw of this manga, at least early on.
Simply put, there are a lot of elements introduced early on that either play absolutely no importance in the grand scheme of things or are outright ignored or forgotten later on, yet are initially treated as big deals at the start. Probably the most infamous of all would be the reveal in Volume 5 that Mitsumasa Kido is actually the father of all 100 orphans that were sent around the world to train to be Bronze Saints, which would make Seiya, Hyoga, Shiryu, Shun, Jabu, etc. all half-brothers. It's an utterly absurd idea that makes not a lick of sense when you put even a modicum of thought into it, as it not only implicates all manner of horrible things (namely the idea that an old man like Mitsumasa impregnated 99 different women [again, Ikki & Shun are full brothers] in the span of only a couple of years, max), but simply sounds so ridiculous that the only way fans have managed to even explain it is via the long-held fan theory that Mitsumasa was the reincarnation of Zeus, since Zeus was known for doing much of the same in Greek mythology, often through trickery & deceitful ways. In fact, when the entire backstory is explained in Volume 7 it's revealed that Mitsumasa had already sired the 100 orphans BEFORE he was given Athena & the Sagittarius Cloth, which just makes him even more of a horrible person! Thankfully, beyond the reveal itself getting spread amongst our heroes, it's a plot point that's completely ignored & effectively forgotten by the time the fights with the Gold Saints start up, outside of the occasional mention by the Bronzes calling themselves "brothers"; wisely, the anime adaptation completely skips over this entire plot point.
Beyond that are smaller details, like Seika essentially being forgotten about (outside of the rare mention of Seiya still searching for her, & a side plot where Seiya's teacher Eagle Marin is teased as possibly being Seika) until the very end, Kurumada initially teasing Hyoga's master as being the Scorpio Gold Saint via silhouette before later changing it to the Aquarius Gold Saint, or the simple fact that the existence of the Saints was revealed to the world via the Galaxian Wars, but after the Sanctuary Chapter it's as though everyone forgot that entire (unfinished) tournament ever happened. There's also an initial bit of xenophobia in Sanctuary regarding Japanese people becoming Saints, which is then made hilarious when Kurumada later reveals (via a mini data book in Volume 13) that Saints come from all over the world, with only a handful actually coming from Greece. That's partially why those first few volumes of Saint Seiya are so rough, as while Kurumada didn't necessarily write the manga from scratch on a weekly basis it's obvious that he didn't properly plan out the beginning when it debuted, which results in a lot of stuff that's either nebulously defined, utterly bizarre & nonsensical, or outright ignored as the series moves on; Volume 7 focusing mostly on explaining the backstory certainly helps, at the very least.
Thankfully, & to quote a phrase I used in my recent deep-dive into B't X when I compared it to Kurumada's prior works... "Just stick with it; it gets better!" Saint Seiya is a manga that rewards you when you give it time to find its groove, and once it does you wind up with one of the most iconic & influential action manga of all time. In terms of the "choreography" the fights seen in Saint Seiya are rather straightforward & still harken back to Ring ni Kakero's occasional methodology of "Hero tries his special attack, fails, figures out what to do to win, & defeats his opponent", but they're almost always backed up by two things: Raw Intensity & Sheer Bombast. In short, no fight in Saint Seiya feels like anything short of life or death, as each side throws out their best moves almost instantly and the concept of "feeling out" an opponent early on is mostly thrown out the window. Take, for example, Dragon Shiryu vs. Perseus Algol [Argol] in Volume 7. It initially starts with Shun trying to fight Algol, only for it to be revealed that Algol has the Medusa Shield, which (like its namesake) can petrify anyone who looks at it, even turning both Shun & Hyoga to stone in succession. Shiryu manages to avoid looking at it, since he quickly realized what it'd be due to the Silver Cloth Algol was wearing, but it's quickly shown that Shiryu's fear of petrification makes him unwilling to fully commit to hitting his trademark Rozan Rising Dragon Blow on Algol, since he keeps glancing away at the last moment, and even trying to use Algol's reflection in his Dragon Shield, a la how Perseus killed Medusa, doesn't work, since Algol obviously knows that trick. When blindfolding his eyes still results in half of Shiryu's body getting petrified, since the Medusa Shield goes through all barriers to hit the retinas, Shiryu comes to the totally logical conclusion of gouging his own eyes with his fingers, completely blinding him (& thereby destroying his retinas), which allows him to fully commit to hitting Algol with the Rising Dragon & win the fight. The best part? Shiryu's eyes later get fixed (Cosmo is essentially a cure-all, when used just right) & he can see again... only for him to literally lose his sight again the very next story arc!
That's the kind of pure, unadulterated intensity & bombast one has to go into Saint Seiya expecting, and the end result is a series that, as mentioned before, goes "up to eleven" & stays there, only occasionally dropping back down for specific moments, like the start & end of a story arc or when a major plot point or backstory is explained. This is a series where Bronze Saints, the literal lowest of the pecking order, are capable of attacking at the speed of, at the very least, Mach 1 (i.e. 767.269 mph, or the speed of sound), and that's treated as mere baby steps compared to the Gold Saints, who can literally move at the speed of light, i.e. 670,616,629 mph, or roughly 874,030.658x the minimum speed of a Bronze. We've all heard of the sixth sense, i.e. ESP or even just intuition, but Saint Seiya eventually defines the Cosmo itself as the "Seventh Sense", and the Hades Chapter even goes as far as introducing the "Eighth Sense", Arayashiki, which allows the living to enter the Inferno without dying. Every single thing about Saint Seiya can often come off as Kurumada looking at titles like Fist of the North Star & Dragon Ball, saw what they're doing, & responded with "Yeah, I can top that", and execute it all with absolute earnest. In the end, all Kurumada wants to do is entertain his readers, and when the intended audience are teenagers one way to do that is to make things look like the coolest, most bombastic stuff ever. Naturally, this is also accented with absolute bloodshed, which when combined with the iconic "Kurumada Launch" & head-first "Kurumada Fall" results in many a giant blood-laden splat. The common joke is to bring up Shiryu's ability to seemingly bleed on command, but all of the Bronzes often wind up covered in blood, to varying amounts, throughout the manga.
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| What does blowing up planets have to do with a constellation themed around the twins Castor & Pollux? Absolutely nothing! |
This also applies to simple naming convention, because you know what's cooler than simply having a name? Having a title to go with your name, and when it's all based on things like constellations, the Zodiac, sea creatures (for Poseidon's Mariners), & mythological creatures (for Hades' Specters) you wind up with admittedly memorable names that stand the test of time, and even allow for some thematic connections. For example, Taurus Aldebaran isn't just named after the constellation, but also the brightest star in said constellation (a red giant, specifically). Cancer Deathmask [Mephisto] has his given name be a reference to the practice of casting someone's face after passing, and Kurumada continued that concept for the character by focusing on the Beehive Cluster, a.k.a. Praesepe, which in Chinese astrology is called the Ghost, or Gui Xiu, & is often associated with corpses being piled up. Therefore, instead of having aquatic attacks befitting a crab, Deathmask has attacks based on death & can send people to Yomotsu Hirasaka, the boundary between the living & the dead. DiC, meanwhile, was so worried about a guy having "Death" in his name that they decided to rename him after Mephistopheles, who in some stories is literally the Devil himself; death is a no-no for kids' TV in the U.S. & Canada, but referencing the Devil is just fine, apparently. Sometimes, though, Kurumada just goes with whatever he wants, like Virgo Shaka having absolutely nothing to do with the zodiac constellation's maiden namesake, instead having a Buddhist mysticism theme to match the fact that his name is the same as the Japanese name for the historical Buddha. Same with Pisces Aphrodite having nothing to do with fish & instead being all about using deadly roses, or Capricorn Shura having the spirit of the legendary sword Excalibur in his right arm, though Shura at least has one attack based somewhat on a horned goat (Jumping Stone).
In fact, there are a ton of references in the various names of characters here, and if Ring ni Kakero showcased Kurumada's excellent naming sense when it came to naming the superblows (since his characters there had mostly straightforward names) then Saint Seiya was Kurumada showing that same naming sense for the characters themselves, though the special attack names here are also top notch. Seiya's Pegasus Meteor Punch & Pegasus Rolling Crush, Shiryu's Rozan Rising Dragon, Hyoga's Diamond Dust & Kolodnyi Smerch (Russian for "Cold Tornado", which was replaced in the anime with the generic "Aurora Thunder Attack"), Shun's trio of Nebula Chain, Stream, & Storm, & Ikki's Heavenly Flying Phoenix & Phantom Demon Punch are just the small beginnings of the myriad of memorable attack names seen in Saint Seiya. Some of my personal favorites include Scorpio Miro's Scarlet Needle & Antares, Gemini Saga's Another Dimension [Dimension of Exile] & Galaxian Explosion, Aries Mu & Shion's Stardust Revolution & Starlight Extinction, Sea Dragon Kanon's [Canon's] Golden Triangle, Wyvern Rhadamanthys' Greatest Caution, & Griffon Minos' Cosmic Marionation, but I could seriously just continue listing off name after name after name, because Kurumada just hit the jackpot with this series. I have felt that B't X's naming sense was a little underwhelming, but after seeing Saint Seiya get banger after banger after banger of amazing names I can understand if Kurumada likely started running out of instantly memorable new ones by the 90s. Unfortunately, Viz's English translation had to maintain naming changes enforced by DiC, and even after getting past the content that DiC had actually adapted up to (around Volume 8) the staff at Viz still decided to make some changes here & there later on, like the unfortunate changing of "Main Breadwinner" to "Mainstay", due to a misconstruction that no one in America actually uses the phrase "main/primary breadwinner". To be fair, though, the post-Sanctuary Chapter changes are fairly rare, and one of them (Siren Sorrento's Dead End Symphony being changed to "Symphony of Death") even got changed back to its original name later on.
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| Seiya, you're going to throw out your back with such poor form. Sagittarius Aiolos [Aioros] would not approve. |
For the most part I've been focusing on the Sanctuary Chapter in this review, and that's because it also showcases probably the biggest flaw with Saint Seiya: It's an admittedly repetitive manga. Once Kurumada fully establishes who's who & what the main plot is, the manga becomes focused primarily on one thing, and that's battles. Not just that, but Kurumada kind of relies on the same general template for all three story arcs, namely that it starts with Athena's side being attacked by enemy forces, Seiya & Co. then head into enemy territory in response, and said enemy territory requires the Bronzes to make their way through said territory, defeating enemies that guard certain outposts before finally making it to the final encounter with the big bad of the arc. This is true of Ikki & the Black Saints invading the Galaxian Wars before the Bronzes head to Mt. Fuji in response, is repeated with the Silver Saints attacking our heroes before the Bronzes head to Sanctuary to fight the Gold Saints, is repeated again when Siren Sorrento tries to attack Athena before the Bronzes head to Poseidon's underwater sanctuary to fight the Mariner Generals, & is repeated once again when the Specters & former Gold Saints attack Sanctuary before the Bronzes head into Hades' Inferno to chase after Athena & deliver her Cloth to her, taking out Specters along the way. Even some of the opposition have some similar aspects, like Shaka & Chrysaor Krishna having spiritual bends, Lymnades Caça [Kaasa] using illusions similar to the trek through the Gemini Palace, & Hyoga having to fight old allies in Aquarius Camus & later Kraken Isaac. Sure, there are differences between the story arcs, like Poseidon's ocean-holding pillars radiating out from the central base or the trip through the Inferno seeing Kurumada seemingly play around with expectations a little (shortcuts through enemy territory, plowing through foes in a single punch, etc.), as well as the obvious plot points that are exclusive to each arc, but there's no denying that Saint Seiya can be simply described as "One story arc repeated three times over, with minor changes". In fact, Saint Seiya's entire modus operandi is really just a copy of the Ashura Chapter of Ring ni Kakero, which saw Ryuji & his friends make their way through the Ashura Clan compound, defeating guardians at various gates in order to continue advancing until they reached the end, which itself was essentially a conceptual expansion on the Shadow Tower from the Shadow Chapter of RnK; look, Masami Kurumada just really likes Bruce Lee's The Game of Death, I guess.
However, the quality of Saint Seiya still manages to shine throughout the repetitive nature of its plotting, and it's simply due to Kurumada's knack for creating memorable characters & moments in a flash. The battle through the 12 Palaces in the Sanctuary Chapter is iconic for good reason, as each Gold Saint has a unique style & aesthetic, and the do-or-die nature of the fights (due to the time limit the Bronzes have) results in instantly intense battles where everything is given right away. While the battles against the Mariner Generals do imitate the Gold Saint battles to some extent, they're still well done fights, while the climactic encounter with Poseidon himself, the final stretch to destroy the Main Breadwinner to rescue Athena, & the revelation of who was really pulling the strings make for a very good finale to the Poseidon Chapter, and even allowed Kurumada to create a proper chain of events that help give the entire manga's story up to that point real weight & importance. Meanwhile, the initial part of the Hades Chapter sees Kurumada invert the status quo somewhat by having Saga, Camus, & Shura, now all working for Hades, take the trek through the 12 Palaces under a time limit, and instead of all of the Bronzes being given a focus it's instead just Shiryu experiencing the events mostly by himself. In fact, Kurumada kind of pokes a little fun at his own leads by having them be told by everyone that they're technically barred from Sanctuary & should just live normal lives, because they've already given so much to fighting for Athena... and yet they STILL want to do everything the same exact fight-until-death way as before, showing that Seiya & the others have essentially learned nothing; it's like an early prototype of the deconstruction Kurumada would make more obvious in B't X.
When it comes to Masami Kurumada's artwork, Saint Seiya is the very epitome of what his style looks like to the majority of people who are familiar with his work, so much so that you'll occasionally find complaints about how "bad" his art has become today, simply because it's not a 1:1 replication of what they remembered it looking like in his most iconic work. While I think people who say that are especially too harsh & are getting way too attached to their own personal nostalgia, there is no mistaking that the artwork in Saint Seiya is, much like the events of the manga themselves, Masami Kurumada going up to eleven. This is, without a doubt, Kurumada taking everything he learned while making Ring ni Kakero, Fuma no Kojirou, & even (to a small extent) Otoko Zaka when showcasing spectacle via manga & executing it to its highest scales. When someone bleeds it's not just a few drops or trails, but rather it pours & nearly stains the page at points. When Seiya dons the Sagittarius Cloth & readies an arrow to fire at Poseidon he's not just pulling back on the string of the bow, but rather his entire body pulls back with the arrow, as though he's about to fire his entire self with it. And when special attacks are launched at foes... well, there's good reason why so many of the images I'm using for this review are special attacks & the like, because truly nothing is off limits. Kurumada even uses a literal blank white page during the Hades Chapter to showcase the power of the Athena Exclamation, which requires three Gold Saints to combine their Cosmos together into a single attack; it's so powerful that it reduces the foe to nothingness.
Yeah, Saint Seiya isn't really known for showing any actual contact between blows, but that's made up for with the sheer visual accentuation showcased, and while such imagery was mainly there for effect in Ring ni Kakero these wild images are seemingly taken at face value in Saint Seiya. When Saga hits you with a Galaxian Explosion, you very well may actually be seeing planets exploding before your eyes. When Kanon hits you with the Golden Triangle you're literally being sent to an alternate dimension where various objects have been lost to time. Kurumada also takes full advantage of fake out imagery, whether that's simply via premonitions or induced via an attack, resulting in many panels or entire pages where more grotesque imagery is shown, if not simply showing characters getting decapitated more often than you'd expect. Saint Seiya is a manga that fully embraces being wild & crazy when it comes to scale & concepts, so Masami Kurumada absolutely gave it his all in delivering imagery that matches the "up to eleven" aspect of this series. Finally, there's no ignoring the Cloths, Scales, & Surplices, all of which are wholly unique in design, drawn in excellent detail, & every volume includes multiple breakdown charts of how each & every piece of armor transforms from its original displayed form to its actively worn form; as mentioned, Saint Seiya was very toyetic from its very concept, and Kurumada took full advantage of that.
Kurumada also wholly utilizes the Tezuka Star System here, with Seiya naturally being based on RnK's Ryuji Takane, visually, while characters like Ikki, Jabu, & Shun are "recastings" of Kenzaki, Ishimatsu, & FnK's Kirikaze, respectively; hell, even Gold Saint Leo Aiolia is a recasting of the titular lead of Raimei no Zaji. In fact, in keeping with the "up to eleven" style, Saint Seiya itself sees Masami Kurumada take the Tezuka Star System to its absolute limit by reutilizing various attack & character names, terminology, & even plot points from his prior manga, effectively re-introducing them to a whole new generation of readers... but that's something so encompassing that it requires its own piece to properly go over *hint hint*.
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| Different "camera" angles, but even their poses are kind of similar! |
Finally, one last thing to mention is the whole aspect of "Who Made Who: Dragon Ball or Saint Seiya?", because those two Jump manga really did have a bit of symbiotic relationship. Yes, Akira Toriyama's iconic series debuted barely more than a year prior to Kurumada's (Issue #51 of 1984 vs. Combined Issue #1-2 of 1986), but Toriyama himself had already previously admitted looking up to Kurumada in the afterword of Volume 23 of Ring ni Kakero (released in mid-1982), so it's natural to believe that Dragon Ball was influenced in some way by Kurumada's style from the start. In turn, it's also natural to believe that Kurumada saw Dragon Ball as his primary competition when he debuted Saint Seiya, but the real fun comes from when you consider when certain iconic moments happen over in Toriyama's series & what Kurumada was doing in that very same issue. For example, people will sometimes cite the debut of King Piccolo as the first real point where Dragon Ball started moving more into the wild action it would become iconic for, rather than the comedic martial arts tale it was before then. That point would be Chapter 135, "The Death of Krillin", so what was going on over in Saint Seiya in that same issue of Jump? Virgo Shaka was unleashing one of his most iconic & powerful moves, Tenbu Hourin/Heaven Dancing Dharma, on Phoenix Ikki over in the Sanctuary Chapter; in short, Kurumada was more than outdoing Toriyama when it came to wild action visuals.
What about Chapter 195, "The Mysterious Warrior of Space", which started what one can call the the "Z" portion of Dragon Ball by introducing Raditz? In that very same issue of Jump Saint Seiya was nearing the end of the Poseidon Chapter, with just a little over 10 issues to go before the Hades Chapter began. This is notable because by this point something that'd later be deemed "Power of Gold" (mainly for Bandai's Myth Cloth figures) was introduced, which was a power up for the Bronze Saints where their Cloths would start glowing gold, to reflect the fact that their Cloths were repaired using the blood of the remaining Gold Saints after the end of the Sanctuary Chapter. Huh, a power up where characters start glowing gold? Sounds familiar... By the way, when did Goku first turn Super Saiyan? That happened at the end of Chapter 317, "Life & Death", which first appeared in Issue #15 of 1991... 19 issues after Saint Seiya's final weekly chapter ran in Shonen Jump, and nearly three whole years after Seiya's Pegasus Cloth first turned gold during the Poseidon Chapter. Yes, Dragon Ball is an icon of shonen action manga, and its influence & inspiration around the world is undeniable, but in some ways it's easy to see that Akira Toriyama was still influenced by Masami Kurumada, even nearly a decade after he wrote that afterword in Volume 23 of Ring ni Kakero, as while Toriyama eventually proved that he could do action manga (which he felt he was incapable of back in 1982), it's because he knew who to look to for inspiration.
Like any sort of iconic work nothing is made in a bubble, and seeing how Dragon Ball & Saint Seiya helped encourage each other to some extent simply makes me appreciate both of them even more. Toriyama felt that Kurumada's sheer intensity was impossible to duplicate, while Kurumada felt that Toriyama's inherent skill was something that he could only hope to even approach through hard work, and in the end that made the two perfect counterparts to each other, in a sense. Of course, there's also the influence Saint Seiya has had on other mangaka, like Tite Kubo's Bleach effectively being its generation's Saint Seiya (Soul Society vs. Sanctuary's 12 Palaces, Hueco Mundo vs. Hades' Inferno, etc.), Naoko Takeuchi's iconic Sailor Moon being a female-led shojo take on Saint Seiya, or the fact that shojo mangaka collective CLAMP literally got its start making Saint Seiya (& Captain Tsubasa) yaoi doujin. In fact, while the term itself originated in the late 70s, Saint Seiya is often cited as one of the manga that helped popularize the term "yaoi" in Japan, due to the various doujinshi made for it, & turn it into the de facto term for male/male romance manga, until "Boys Love/BL" took hold in the early-to-mid 90s. Saint Seiya's influence on manga (& even anime) is a subject beyond the scope of this review, and even I can't possibly do justice to how deep it truly goes. In fact, a fair amount of stuff people tend to think of as a Dragon Ball homage in various works are sometimes, in fact, Saint Seiya homages. Take Super & Hyper Mode in Mobile Fighter G Gundam, for example, which director Yasuhiro Imagawa has fully admitted is a Power of Gold homage, yet most people think it's a Super Saiyan homage, despite Imagawa making sure to avoid that connotation by keeping Domon's hair black, a la how Seiya looks.
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| Viz's covers don't match the original tankouban at all, which is why Viz's Volume 15 uses Japan's Volume 28's cover. |
In the tagline for this review I bring up the idea that Masami Kurumada was "selling out" when he created Saint Seiya, and in some sense he knowingly did just that. When it came to the success of Ring ni Kakero & (at least until he decided to end it early, following his father's death) Fuma no Kojirou they were manga that Kurumada had wanted to make that just happened to become hits, so it's understandable that he felt Otoko Zaka would likewise be a hit, as he probably thought that Jump's readers were willing to read whatever he was making. When that failed big time it's also understandable to think that Kurumada immediately realized why that was, and why RnK & FnK were more successful & appealing, so he decided to make a manga that would, ideally, make him a lot of money. That's the idea behind "selling out", as it involves someone deciding to do something that they know will reach a wider audience, partially because that's where the money is, even if it means that it may go against the kinds of stuff that they had made previously. When compared to Otoko Zaka I think it's absolutely fair to say that Masami Kurumada "sold out" with Saint Seiya, similar to how people felt that Metallica "sold out" with "The Black Album" in 1991.
However, just as The Black Album is still an excellent album filled with memorable songs, Saint Seiya is still an excellent "battle manga" that has more than deserved its status as one of the most influential & iconic Jump manga of its era, if not all time. Yeah, the manga has a very rough start to it & requires a good few volumes before it truly starts finding its groove, but once Kurumada realized what he wanted Saint Seiya to be it will dig its hooks into you hard, similar to how songs like "Enter Sandman", "Sad but True", "Wherever I Roam", & "Nothing Else Matters" stick in your head forevermore. That being said, though, just like how hardcore Metallica fans would still prefer for newcomers to listen to other Metallica songs, like "Master of Puppets", "Search & Destroy", "For Whom the Bell Tolls", or "Ride the Lightning", I think it's also reasonable for someone like me to recommend newcomers to Masami Kurumada's works to maybe not always start off with Saint Seiya. A big part of that today is due to various factors, like the aforementioned rough start or the repetitive nature of the story arcs, but also simply because the entire franchise is now just so gigantic that there's a real sense of "Where do I even start?". Not everyone wants to begin with a manga that takes a few entire volumes to really get going (let alone an anime that requires watching many episodes, in equivalence), but at the same time there are just so many spin-offs to choose from, some of which are more newbie friendly than others. Someone I know made 2015's Soul of Gold their first Seiya experience, as it was the most recent anime at the time, and while that would be far from what I'd recommend starting off with, it just shows how huge a franchise Saint Seiya has become.
Unfortunately, aside from TokyoPop's release of the B't X manga (which was a notorious bomb & now nigh-impossible to get complete) or Anime Midstream's release of the B't X anime (which is at least still in print on DVD & can be streamed over on Tubi, as of this review) there really is no other means for anyone to really get started with Kurumada with anything except for Saint Seiya, barring heading into old fan translations & the like. The Fuma no Kojirou OVA's are a now-Aniplex production & is likely unlicensable, while the Ring ni Kakero 1 anime's fansubs remain unfinished (& manga fan translations for either series are both unfinished, too), so while people curious about Metallica can try out any era of that band's music today with little to no hassle, the same can't be said for (most of) Masami Kurumada's non-Seiya works in English. Personally, re-reading the Saint Seiya manga has more or less maintained the placement I had for it in the past (i.e. in eternal combat with B't X for the #2 spot, as #1 remains Ring ni Kakero), and despite that rough start I would still heartily recommend people give the manga a read, as while it does require some investment the series can be a quick read, due to its primary focus on fights. I just wish there were more options out there, so that others can potentially get into Masami Kurumada's works like I did, as the Saint Seiya manga was the third Kurumada series I tried out, after the anime for both B't X & Ring ni Kakero 1. Had I started with Saint Seiya, I'm honestly not sure if I'd be the big fan of his works that I am today, and I do feel that there are more ideal entryways into Masami Kurumada's works. I love Saint Seiya, but I still love some of Kurumada's works more, either completely or at least in certain aspects; even something that I still rank Saint Seiya above, like Ring ni Kakero 2, has elements that are superior.
Still, Saint Seiya is Masami Kurumada's most iconic work for good reason, so how in the world could Kurumada possibly follow it up? Well, that'll be for next month...
Manga © Masami Kurumada
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