Saint Seiya/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Complete Monster: Cancer Deathmask, indeed. He kills people right and left constantly and casually, and sometimes without even noticing, children included. Seiya's look of utter revulsion when he discovers that and has to explain it to the blind Shiryu constitutes quite the scene, as well as how nonchalantly Deathmask shrugs it off. His pinnacle of monstrosity comes when he attempts to kill Shiryu's adoptive sister Shunrei, sending the always calm Shiryu into such a My Name Is Inigo Montoya moment that the scene becomes Shiryu's Crowning Moment of Awesome since it's the first sight of a seriously pissed off Shiryu - and it's self-admitted, too!
    • That isn't even everything Deathmask had to offer in sense of being a Complete Monster. In the G Saga mangas, an enemy that entered the House of Cancer notes the thousands of human faces exposed on his walls like trophies. He also says that the general feeling of the place was as if the faces were screaming in agony, but Deathmask appears and politely disagrees with him, saying it's not agony, but euphoria.
    • Delta Megrez Alberich from the Asgard Saga also qualifies as this. Easily the only unsympathetic Odin Warrior without anything similar to Pet the Dog moments, as well as incredibly manipulative and selfish. To the point that while all other God Warriors fought for Hilda's sake, truly thinking they were doing the right thing, Alberich knew exactly what was going on and planned to kill everyone involved, so he could retrieve the seven Odin Stones to resurrect the Odin Cloth and kill Hilda himself.
  • Crowning Music of Awesome: The North American dub's theme song was I Ran
  • Die for Our Ship: The Hyoga/Shun shippers are ferocious towards Freya.
    • And the Seiya/Shaina shippers hate Saori.
    • Don't forget the Shiryu/Seiya and Shiryu/Mu fans that bash Shunrei, or the Saori/Seiya fans that hate on Miho despite how the poor Shy Blue-Haired Girl is firmly put in the Unlucky Childhood Friend role.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Shiryu constantly tops the popularity polls in Japan when the manga was published.
    • The Gold Saints, definitely. Most fanfiction is about them.
    • Ikki may not be big in Japan, but he certainly is in the West, particularly South America, where he is regarded as the manliest of all (and I mean, ALL) the Saints.
      • Speaking of South America, after Scylla Eo was revealed to be from Chile (more exactly, from Isla San Felix), he became quite the hit between Chilean fans. If you go to Tumblr, you'll see that this has reached Memetic Mutation levels, as some Eo photosets have him speaking in Chilean Spanish slang.
      • Something similar happens in Brazil, homeland of Gold Saint Aldebaran.
  • Fanon Discontinuity: Got plenty of them to choose from. Some fans might refuse to acknowledge Episode G as being part of the canon Saint Seiya universe, others might do the same or add to the discarded list the Lost Canvas. Some fans can write out of their minds characters used during fillers or specific to the anime or manga. And then you have the movies. You can add to that the Hades, Inferno and Elysium OVAs.
  • Fanon: Due to the age of the series and the fact that it was posted on the Internet more than ten years ago, a lot of people actually believe that Deathmask's real name is "Angelo". It's a deliciously ironic name, granted, but it's not stated anywhere in the actual series.
  • Fan Nickname: Many fans affectionately dub Shiryu as the "walking blood bank," for obvious reasons.
    • Shaka despite of his charisma and seems nothing is ridiculous about him can't escape from how alike he looks with barbie or Ai Minako/ Sailor V. It's a common nickname for Shaka that he is a life size barbie.
    • And Camus... Oh Camus, he gets too many nicknames that are all ice related. Some are cool and some are downright ridiculous. He even dubbed affectionally as penguin for who knows why?!
    • Can't forget Deathmask. His lack of a proper name has had fans coming up with various hypotheses. One of the most popular is Carlo.
  • Fan-Preferred Couple: Seiya and Shaina have way more fans than supposedly Official Couple Seiya and Saori.
    • Also, Aioria/Marin.
    • On the Yaoi side of things, there is Hyoga/Shun (who have Ship Tease with several girls) and Camus/Milo as two of the most popular couples.
  • Fan Yay: The amount of yaoi fan-art[1] and fan-fiction of this series is quite Egregious. This can be incredible misleading to newcomers; a lot of which think this series is about Yaoi Guys, while this one of the manliest old-school Animes you'll ever see. It's right there along Dragon Ball and pretty darn close to Hokuto no Ken on the manly scale.
  • Fashion Victim Villain: the Ghost Saints
  • Fridge Brilliance: The main five Bronze saints' constellations are Pegasus, Dragon, Andromeda, Cygnus and Phoenix. The first four are visible only in the Northern hemisphere. Phoenix is only visible in the Southern hemisphere. Suddenly, Ikki not hanging around his True Companions makes a lot more sense, eh?
  • Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Virtually unknown in the US, minor success in Japan... massive hit in Europe and Latin America.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: The Latin-American TV dub for the Hades Saga has Seiya voiced by Irwin Daayan. Irwin's break-out role, 12 years ago, was... another Seiya.
  • Ho Yay: Episode 59[2] is extremely guilty of this, as Shun volunteered to warm Hyoga's frozen body in the Libra house with his own body, and how! Can you blame the Yaoi Fangirls? And no, even if you don't see much slash ship tease (as this series was done before the Ho Yay subtext years), you can't deny that the fandom loves their Ho Yay and denying it it's as useless as using a hand to block the sun.
    • Most Silver Saints proclaim that they are out to avenge Misty and the others. One wonders: "How come he was so popular?"
  • It Was His Sled: You'll never guess who Hades' vessel was on Earth.
  • Magnificent Bastard Saga, under the effects of his Split Personality. Debates are wild over whether it could be Hades, though this has never been explicitly stated (manga vol 13 shows a soul leaving a cleansed Saga ; manga vol 26 showed Shun getting black hair and Ikki pointing out the same thing happened to Saga), though Word of God seem to imply that Saga always was this screwed up all along. Probably a case of author changing his mind at some point.
    • Also, Shaka. Holy COW, Shaka. And his Heel Face Turn does not make him less manipulative.
      • Shaka's manipulative way in some way is because he manage to fool three gold saints to kill him by taunting them, they are pretty much beaten by Tenbu Hourin and what else they had been through to pretend betraying their beloved goddess. They cried Manly Tears for him in a sense for nothing because he is pretty much alive, he fooled everyone in sanctuary except Athena, Shion and Dohko. But then again he gave a clue to Athena and the old saint already knew about 8th sense. This is also considered Nice Job Breaking It, Hero because as a direct result of his plan the six gold saints left and the bronze saints almost killed themselves for the sake of revenge. Good grief no one died. Although he probably knew they wouldn't kill anyone.
    • Radamanthys.
  • Memetic Mutation: The Mexican Spanish dub is full of this, especially Death Mask calling Shiryu evil for burning his hand. Once again, the pot called the kettle black.
    • From the Latin American Spanish dub: "DANCEN ROSAS PIRAÑAS, AAAAAAHHHH!" ("DANCE, PIRANHA ROSES, AAAAAAHHHH!", a parody of Aphrodite calling his Black Rose attack), "MUERE SEIYAAAAA!" ("DIE, SEIYAAAAAA!", which was delivered by Saga's LA-VA in an extremely hammy manner), and a Gag Dub of the first OP that parodies the Ho Yay in the series (damn, why can't I find it on Youtube...? T_T).
      • The "DIE, SEIYAAAAAA!" meme exists among the Portuguese-speaking fans as well, complete with a short video of Saga's Brazilian VA delivering the line - with a twist. You know it's a meme when even Adult Goku's VA says it!
    • What, have you forgotten "ANOTHER DIMENSION"?
  • Moe: Shunrei
  • Most Annoying Sound: Seiya's voice when he was younger, almost more annoying than Crow Jamian's.
  • Narm: In one of the Hades OAVs, there's a scene that features Siren Sorrento in his civilian clothes, talking to the Poseideon!possessed Julian Solo. He was wearing... a dark pink suit and a VERY frilly white shirt. Does this remind you of a certain prosecutor?
    • Whenever someone starts crying in this series, their tears roll down their faces -- until they reach the chin. Then they stay there as if they were made of transparent jello. So many Tear Jerker moments ruined by that little detail.
      • One of the earliest Tear Jerkers goes to HELL by pretty... questionable perspective shots. When Esmeralda is fatally struck down by her own father, we see Ikki rushing to the victim's aid... and we see him running towards her from below, as if there was a camera underneath the scene. This gives the impression that the crying Ikki is pretty much swimming in air or crawling to her air, thus making the impact of the scene go POOF.
    • Also, many of the Cloths (of all kinds) have very... special designs. Or look really odd when worn. A Narmtastic example is one of the Spectres, Deadly Beetle Stand... who, well, looks like a real life beetle. Or a a Pinsir. What The HELL was Kurumada thinking?!
  • Needs More Love: In North America.
  • Never Live It Down: One would think that Shiryu is only known for losing his sight.
  • The Scrappy / Designated Protagonist Syndrome: Seiya, because his victories never come from power, skill, or strategy, but simply continuing to fight beyond any reasonable limit every damn time.
    • There are so many people hate Seiya for reason stated above, and it seems many people forget Seiya keeps doing analysis in the first part of the series about saint's fighting style. He is the one who figure it out how Misty's attack works and even Aldebaran's Great Horn. Off course most of this analysis come from Marin's teaching. Yes... in the last part of the series Kurumada seems stop doing it to focus more to the plot. BUT that's doesn't mean Seiya is the most pathetic one especially if one can remember he DIDN'T forget not even a single thing that Marin taught him for years!!! Some may not be a fan of Seiya, but he DESERVE some justice.
      • Indeed. In fact, we even see Seiya employ different strategies against Sea Horse Baian and Harpy Valentine, two characters who show up in the series' middle and final arcs. When against opponents who are on his level, Seiya has one of the best strategic minds out of anybody. It's when he's completely outclassed that he resorts to just spamming the same attacks over and over until he finds a hole in his opponent's moves to exploit.
    • Saori is reviled by "fandom feminists" who hate how she prefers to act as The Strategist, use her Healing Hands and become a Barrier Maiden, rather than being an Action Girl like the female Saints. This apparently makes her "an useless Load and Distressed Damsel without any value for the show"... nevermind that the *real* Goddess Athena (Goddess of Strategy and Defensive Warfare) acted like that in Greek mythology, guiding the heroes and planning their strategies rather than fighting unless it was really needed, and that Saori herself always was the one to deliver the Finishing Move on the Big Bad, after going through lots of crap to help the guys as much as she can.
    • We also have, among the Golden Saints, Pisces Aphrodite being bashed for being a ruthless Gorgeous George who fights with poisoned roses and not with hand-to-hand techniques.
      • Speaking for every boy in Latin American who was a Pisces during the '80s and '90s, the month they aired his episodes were extremely embarassing for us. Even Virgo's got off well compared to us. Heck, they may have got the best one! * Sulk*
      • The Hades Saga even seem to confirm both as Scrappies. Both Aphrodite and Deathmask go down like chumps early in the Hades chapter, and get re-re-re-killed by one of the Judges upon arriving in the underworld with a single attack. Sure, they had also gone good along with the other resurrected saints and were trying to get close to Hades to kill him, but both were disposed of as quickly as most second string Spectres.
      • Aphrodite's rose attack was the source of an absolutely hilarious Memetic Mutation in Latin America. "DANCEN, ROSAS PIRAÑAS, AAAAAAH!"
    • And last, Shun is a Scrappy for being The Chick in the Five-Man Band and a Technical Pacifist with girly looks and a pink armor. He's kinda Rescued from the Scrappy Heap in the Hades Saga, but still has lots of haters.
      • Poor Shun was doomed from day one. His Andromeda cloth had boobs.
      • In France, the dubbing made it even worse. Shun was actually voiced by a woman in the very first episodes, until the dubbing studio realised he was Ikki's brother.
      • That happened in Portugal too.
  • Seinfeld Is Unfunny: People who are seeing the series for the first time recently suffer from this. Probably one of the reasons of why it tanked on the USA... that, and the censorship.
  • Ship-to-Ship Combat: Where. Do. We. START.
    • First we have het shippers that, i.e, trash either Saori or Shaina due to their common interest in Seiya: Shaina is "a stalker and a bitch", Saori is "pathetic and not feminist enough". And everyone hates Miho.
    • Then we have the Het Is Ew camp, which denies any positive and possible romantic influence the girls may have on the guys. Shun/Hyoga shippers are really bad about it, bashing Princess Freya despite how much of a Plucky Girl she is and hissing at the mere mentions of Shun's Unlucky Childhood Friend Jun.
    • And THEN we go to the Yaoi fangirls. Which guy is the right one for the male they ship around? These can get very, very bloody: i.e. you do NOT go into the path of a Shiryu/Seiya fangirl and tell her Shiryu should go with Mu instead without expecting at least some snark, and at worst some flames.
  • Sliding Scale of Anime Obscurity: Level 0 in South America, level 1 in Japan and Europe, level 4 in North America.
  • So Bad It's Good: DiC's English dub. All of the voices, really, but especially Hyoga (they gave him a surfer accent) and Ikki, whose deep voice is hilariously over-the-top. All the failed attempts to censor the show (blue/purple blood, flashes instead of punches) just make it more awesome, and the appropriately 80s theme song is just icing on the cake.
  • Unfortunate Implications: Even if they don't look like it. We have to remember that the Galactic Wars had 13-14 year old kids beating the life out of them for entertainment only.
  • Uncanny Valley: Eurydice's eyes are creepy.
    • She's entirely creepy. She's granite from the shoulders down, for crying out loud! Poor girl.
  • World of Ham: Oh God, so much.
  • The Woobie: June, Seika, Esmeralda and Eurydice.
  • Woolseyism: The Italian dub, see that article for further information.
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  1. ↑ 8 out of 10 fan created pictures you'll find online are somehow related to shipping and/or FABULOUS!
  2. ↑ 59? What if it were 69?
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