As one of the earliest fighting shonen, Saint Seiya inspired many series to come. It has elements like the Golden Power Up that inspired one in Gundum and might be the thing that someone inspired even the Super Saiyan, it has a tournament arc, has side characters with popularity that exceed the main character and a story structure that is used by shows like Bleach. In particular Bleach resembles a lot on Saint Seiya and can be considered a spiritual successor. Both series have male leads trained by a female character, have to fight people from an organization they are associated with, a traitor subplot and a lot more.
Saint Seiya is about Goddess of War Athena and her warriors referred as Saints who fight for the love and justice of the earth. The enemies range from Saints that abuse their power for evil to literal gods. While this anime is an adaptation of the manga with the same name, it handles things a little differently. As in the anime, the identity of Athena isn't revealed and even the person who is Athena is not aware of it, turning it to a great revelation when it was revealed.
Saints fight with what 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:
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.
An advantage what Saint Seiya has over modern fighting shonen is that because of its age, it is not affected by censorship the same way, thus can offer scenes that rival or if not exceed the violence of the manga.
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.
As an adaptation, the anime may not be 100% faithful. More than the things surrounding Athena has changed, but it does give more reason to check out both the source and the adaptation delivering a unique experience as neither is necessary superior to the other. With the more lose censorship from the past, fight scenes have a lot more freedom delivering entertaining action scenes. The Silver Saints feel a lot more important as they would not appear very early and get a lot more focus. The motivation of one of the Gold Saints who fought thinking might is right is more noble in this adaptation. And a bit of the past of the mysterious Gold Saint Aiolos gets explored.
Tho the anime does not adapt the whole manga and stops before the final arc, which got later adapted in form of OVAs years alter, it does have a filler arc. By more modern mindset, filler can be considered off-putting, the writers of Toei at the time seemed to be very adapted in the storytelling of Saint Seiya and delivered a very engaging story arc. Tho instead of Saint Seiya's Greek mythology, they implemented Nordic mythology. Probably with the reason of not getting into trouble if the manga add more contradictory events involving these new characters. So depending on how much you like the setting of Saint Seiya and feel like foreign myths could affect your enjoyment, you might make your decision based on that, as that arc will naturally flow to the arc after.
In terms of criticism, there is not much to say. At most some filler scenes could drag on for a bit too long and Toei being Toei would recycle one particular scene involving Shun and Ikki, as the older brother would come to rescue the weaker younger brother. Some of these scenes could come off in the way it is animated as yaoi bait. And despite Toei's best efforts, they could not stick to their guns and eventually do some continuity errors. Tho these are very minor.
Generally, Saint Seiya is a must watch. Especially for those who want to know how the older generation inspired the newer ones.
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