Saint Seiya
Knights of the Zodiac

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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 the ... goddess 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.

CONS
1 there is no tension because you know, from the begining, that the "ultimate attack" of the enemy isnt going to do shit
no one ever is defeated, or lose a limb, they just get covered in blood and continue like nothing despite being supposedly without their senses or with broken bones
this becomes evident by the end of the 12 houses arc and remains true till the end of the of manga

2 they explain a lot of their moves, everytime a bronze knight made a question to an enemy regarding his abilities this one
will always answer in detail about his technique, which i found to ... be really absurd

3 A lot of characters look alike, almost identical to the point that the only thing that helps to make them apart is their hair and armor

4 the fact that each and every opponent understimates the heroes, always, they never capitalize in their initial success they always let the fights drag, never attack the oponent when is vulnerable, or when they actually do it, in the few cases such thing ever happens, they are promptly interrupted for the convenience of the heroes

5 the enemy that thought himself far superior to the bronze knights happens to be shocked when, unexpectedly, the bronze knight actually manages to hurt him, this happens with every major enemy

6 a regular character acts like a walking deus ex machina, that will ALWAYS appear when the bronze knights are in danger or at disadvantage. The way the chracters are often saved due to a "pressure point" or the fact that "an attack wont work twice on a knight" feels cheap, like an artificial way to shield them from death. In general, every convenience that can happen in favor of the heroes happens, and every mistake the enemies can make they end up making

7 the characters are all flat, they are all good, pure, incapable of doing any kind of wrong they are at the end the same way they were at the start in regards to their personality

8 the manga never miss a chance to remind you how strong the main villian of the arc is and how there is no way for them to defeat him but they still survives all attacks without any major injury

9 the fights are usually just a panel of the character standing yelling his attack name with the enemies flying around him, this to illustrate that the foe has been hit with force, an actual drawing of a character throwing a punch or a kick and such move landing of the adversary is something that doesnt happen in this manga

PROS
1 i believe the designs of the armors are really well done, they look pretty good and an actual effort went on think how the armors transition between their folded (when in storage) and extended (when in use) states
2 the general theme of greek mythology is interesting, unique even, i dont recall ever reading any other manga with such themes
3 there are some points in the history that are interesting like: what happened to this characters sister? or how did this character end up being the vessel of such entity?

in short, i dont really recommend this work, the first two arcs (galaxian war and the 12 houses) are enjoyable but after that it repeats the same formula again and again till the end

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 seeing ... the 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.