Los Caballeros del Zodiaco: La Leyenda del Santuario

The entire movie is Seiya fighting everyone and the other knights just watching his sacrifice. It's very different from the classic animations. For someone who enjoy the other knights, like me, it's kinda boring.

I've read some absurd negative reviews about this film, here on imdb, and I underline some negative reviews are truly absurd bordering on ridiculous.

Yesterday I saw this film in CGI, I was very surprised by the good CGI, the fluid animations, pleasant music, very surprised by the beautiful armor (they are really nice graphically), many good special effects, the plot is smooth and follows with pleasure, ultimately the film is not a masterpiece but it is not bad either, in fact I would say quite good. It's worth a watch because it's really well made in many ways.

Saint Seiya: Legend of Sanctuary, Good CGI movie...

I grew up watching saint seiya and I have always been a big fan of the TV show, but I have always hated the saint seiya movies in the past. The only thing I remember from the old saint seiya movies is the long long scenes of the bronze saints getting beat up much like the fillers in Dragon Ball Z when goku and others would scream for a whole episode while transforming to the next super saiyan stage.

Back to the movie, all the designs and small details(Sceneries, Architectures, Armours and the fight moves) in the animation were beautiful and very well thought out. People were right that there weren't much character "development" since its a 90 minutes movie, but the actions and dialogues did a very effective job of showing what each character was about. It is basically the same old straight forward but effective cartoon plot which I expected going in, so I have no idea why so many reviewers are complaining about it.

Every little detail might not be true to the original TV series, but the whole movie was very entertaining and the details well well thought out if you pay attention. So, if you are not a super hardcore saint seiya fan and are very much into well done animated film then you should probably give this a watch.

I'm not the first Saint Seiya fan to review this, but i thought i'd give a different opinion on those i've seen.

-----Designs------ So let's start with designs. I applaud them for trying new designs for everything. The Cloths(armor) that the Saints wear have been upgraded to be more functional with a helmet that can fold down and up at will. It is a very interesting function, and i do like it. Although some of Kurumada's interesting details on the cloths are gone. Cloth boxes are now transported magically via a dog-tag that the Saints wear, which was a strange leap from the theme of "Only proper training and guts will make you strong" that was persistent in the original series. The movies tries to cater to the current younger Japanese generation, with a different kind of humor. Hence small trinkets and such are shown for some seconds in order to promote the film's merchandise.

I loved that they changed Milo into a woman however, as it did give the Goldies more variation, and Milo was a good candidate since he didn't have much personality except being stoic even in the original series.

However, several designs are designed in a very stereotypical way, such as Saga's dual colored Gemini cloth. Aldebaran, the Taurus Saint has a nose ring, etc. etc.

Environment wise it's decent until we get to the Sanctuary which has been transformed into a Chinese MMORPG setting, with stone buildings flying in the air here and there. That was just bad design in my honest opinion, and was very out of place from the ancient Greek inspired setting of the original series.

The big bad Saga transforming into a Final Fantasy boss in the end did not help things.

I love the animation however.

----Plot and characters---- So adapting something that took around 40 episodes into 90 minutes wasn't the smartest idea to begin with, hence there would be hick-ups in the plot. A smarter thing would have been to do the Galaxian Wars plot first, and then move on to the Sanctuary in a second film.

Saori's story was a nice idea, but didn't work quite properly as in the manga she already knew she was Athena before the beginning of the story.

Many, and i mean many character's stories were left out, or only had a tidbit to make a newcomer confused. It is a hard job to balance the five Bronzies, but it would have been better to focus on Athena, Saga and Seiya. The movie doesn't deliver on any of them quite well. Saga has basically no backstory to why he is evil, while in the manga his reason are elaborated much further.

----Music----- The score has it's peaks and bring a nice feeling to most of the scenes. They aren't however memorable.

The Movie's theme song "Hero" by Yoshiki is a nice tune, but contains some horrific lyrics about a person cutting their wrist in order for their hero to come. I'm surprised such a song actually went so far in production....

I can't tell you how much I love the visual quality of this film, the armor is beautiful and well detailed, the characters have well-developed and lovingly detailed visual characteristics, fabulous CGI.

One point that leaves a lot to be desired is the script, it is really weak and disjointed, it has many unnecessary scenes that could have been relevant moments and made better sense, for example the stance of the Knight of Cancer, it took all the refinement of cruelty of his real nature for a comedian. The final battle was extremely fast-paced and lacked detail. If they had left all the flaws in the script and invested in the quality of the final battle and its complexity, the end result would certainly not have been negative. It's important to note that the film is not a replica of the manga, it's a new experiment and shouldn't be taken as a faithful adaptation, but even so it could have been better developed, as there were a lot of holes in the script that didn't narrate much but rather confused.

In short, it's a good movie for those looking for great visual effects, but for those expecting a well-written script or a faithful adaptation of the original work, it's a bad product, and 90 minutes isn't enough to bring out the complexity of the Sanctuary Saga.