Is Saint Seiya such a commercial failure?

With the news of the second season of Lost Canvas making it straight into DVD rather than being aired on Japanese TV, I can't help but ponder what's going on with this classic series by Masami Kurumada.

The classic 1986 series had the seal of character animators Shingo Araki and  Michi Himeno, which marked an important point in the making of future anime series.  

Despite being a cult 80's hit with 114 episodes and 5 movies, the making of the Hades saga into anime took 12 years when the first OVAS of Chapter Sanctuary came out in 2002.

It's important to note that the Saint Seiya anime had huge success in Europe and Latin America, but this series wasn't dubbed to English until 2003, when it aired on Cartoon Network, and even then, only 32 episodes were aired. English speaking audiences still have to conform to English subtitles IF they buy the DVDs.

The quality of the first 13 OVAS was phenomenal and they were aired by Animax channel, but you could slowly see a decline in the Inferno Chapter, until we got to see the abysmal and embarrasing Elysium Chapter that put an indefinite and low-key end to the classic manga's adaptation.







Just when you thought that Saint Seiya was done for, a new manga based on the previous life incarnation of the original story characters came out and it's none other than Lost Canvas.

This new version by mangaka Shiori Teshirogi, started to be serialized in 2006 in Weekly Shonen Champion magazine by Akita Shoten, and as of today it has achieved 20 volumes, having a great reception among fans. Then why is the anime adaptation a failure? Quality is not an issue here as the episodes are greatly animated, have great pacing and follow the storyline to a T. Its style is quite reminiscent of D-Grayman.


However, it doesn't seem to have a good reception among the die-hard, purist fans who are not fond of the new drawing style and the look of the armors, aside from being dissapointed on how the last OVAS of the classic series were done in such an anticlimatic quality.

Plus, it has been a frequent complaint that the storyline of Lost Canvas is almost the same as the original, with slightly few variations that allows us to explore certain characters that weren't explored in the classic manga.



Saint Seiya's success has been quite a mixed bag, with more than 25 million copies of the manga sold worldwide, it made the 25th place in TV Asahi's list of the 100 most popular television series, and it has inspired many artists like Tite Kubo himself.