Anime Attack! Saint Seiya Part 2: Saint Seiya: The Hades Chapter - Sanctuary

Year: 2002 Genre: Action Age Group: Teens Episodes: 13 Based on the Saint Seiya Manga by Masami Kuramada Here’s part 2 of my Saint Seiya anime reviews. Here we have the Saint Seiya OVA Hades Chapter - Sanctuary. As I mentioned before this OVA series sought to continue where the anime left off and finish the series to the end of the manga. They did this quite a long time after the show was canceled but in some ways this is probably good. I should say first that I thought that this was easily the best of the original Saint Seiya series. The first reason why has to do with the intro sequence. At first there’s this emotional type theme song that is new and your typical modern anime opening. I remember thinking right away, "I wonder how awesome it would have been if they brought back the original theme song". Well after the generic type sequence I found out they did bring back the original theme song! The new sequence is meant to be an opening for the DVD I guess and they did reuse the original opening. As I mentioned in my notes for the TV series I was rather fond of the original theme and I think it does an excellent job in setting up the show. Aside from the opening they also brought back pretty much all the original voice actors. I never really expected a show to have the original voice actors 13 or so years after the TV series ended. This went a long way in giving the feeling that this wasn't just some new revival-type facelift of an old series it was an extremely faithful continuation of the old series. I also liked the art style quite a bit; it had a rather dark setting and style and didn't make everything all pretty like in most modern shows although things are a lot more crisp looking overall the backgrounds and scenery definitely stay in the style of the old show. There’s some obvious usage of 3D (something I'm not particularly fond of) but in this case it didn't really hurt the series. Overall the art style went a ways to add to the idea that this was a faithful continuation of the old. The other thing to note about this series is that the plot is considerably better than any of the story from the original series. It is the starting arc of the battle with Athena's true enemy, Hades and his 108 spectres (they are like evil saints). They do a number of things in this series that you just don't expect and gives you a couple of things to think about, this being in strong contrast to much of any big action anime where they ALWAYS do what you expect them to do and it always plays out in the typical way. The story also shows a bigger role from the Gold Saints and addresses something that bothered me in the old series. I always wondered why the Gold Saints never did much of any of the fighting since they are supposed to be the strongest 12 saints. This series focuses almost completely on the Gold Saints, as the remaining ones defend the Sanctuary from Hades' minions who have come to kill Athena. Like I said there are a number of unexpected things that happen in this plot wise and the story sets up the next OVAs as they head to Hell to confront Hades. Overall this series is just plain good in my opinion. The fact that it feels like an awesome new continuation of the old series combined with the considerably better plot elements makes the show shine as something better than the rest of Saint Seiya. There were just too many parts of this show I liked. I highly recommend this series. Although it’s clearly in its best if you've watched the original Saint Seiya TV I'd say it can probably still be good if you haven't. My Rating: 5/5 Next week I'll conclude the three part Saint Seiya semi-reviews where I'll cover the final two OVAs of the original Saint Seiya storyline. Saint Seiya - Hades Chapter Inferno and Elysion.