I cavalieri dello zodiaco: Saint Seiya - The Lost Canvas

I HAD to give this series 3 stars, and give up watching 10 episodes in, because I just couldn't stand the hypocrisy anymore. This anime is beautifully drawn, the characters and actions are smooth; the voice actors are very good and quite famous ones; the story is an interesting one - to an extent, but boy did they screw the pooch...

In this series, the storyline is set back in the 1800's in Italy long before Seiya and the rest were born, during Athena's last incarnation. I hate spoilers, so I won't get into too much, but I'll say this, the story revolves around 3 orphans who grew up together, 1 a boy who becomes the Pegasus Saint, 2 &3 are a brother and sister, the sister gets adopted to Greece and becomes the new Athena, and the brother who is supposed to be the purest of souls ever born becomes the next Hades incarnation. In this series, the whole band of brothers with Andromeda, Dragon, & Cygnus doesn't exist! NO ONE, even Master of the Gold Libra Cloth, who we KNOW to have been over 500 years old, is NOT the master of the Libra Gold cloth!!! NONE of the characters from Saint Seiya even make a flash forward in the series!!! A lot of the "rules" of the cloths and Cosmo AREN' T followed, they just rewrote things to please themselves while capitalizing on the Saint Seiya franchise!!! The whole thing just feels rushed, false, cheap, and contrived. I FEEL CHEATED!!!

In a day and age where a LOT of the anime I grew up with, like Cyborg 009, Ultraman, & Robotech are being remade to look and feel shiny and new, THIS ONE went off the rails!! BIG NOPE for me!!!

The best successor to the Saint Seiya myth. This is an OVA series.

Incredible graphics and animation. A beautiful soundtrack. The series remains dynamic with no downtime and a plot that unfolds with each episode.

I can't help but draw a parallel with the Netflix series Knights of the Zodiac, one of the worst series on this theme ever made.

The story fits perfectly with the rest of the mythology.

Ambitious animation that would have deserved a sequel.

This series only covers 1/3 of the original manga, which was unfortunately halted by studio TMS Entertainment for lack of revenue.

What a shame! Proof that money doesn't always go hand in hand with art!

The graphics, the music, the characters are all great. It's ashamed that the show was cancelled :( I've rewatched TLC sooo many times and wish the show would be continued on...

And with that I mean one specific aspect: the fact that this series is clearly an attempt to give to the fans of the original '80 Toei classic a copious amount of fanservice by showing the version they wanted of certain characters...without understanding practically nothing of them, or at least what made them interesting to their fans in the first place. The absolute main offender being Albafica of pisces, who is what the non-fans of the poet warrior Aphrodite Pisces from Saint Seiya and the Youth of The Crimson Blood movie wanted without understanding what made him compelling to me and other people to begin with. Other gold cloths are not treated differently, in particular the other favourite of mine Virgo, and there are also copious amounts of continuity errors such as athena female saints removing their masks because reasens. On a side note, the OST is barely fit for a Saint Seiya product IMHO, reeking too much of bog-standard medieval fantasy tones and not enough of greek-inspired tunes. Better than the snooze-inducing, CGI infested Hades Chapter because of its fluid animation but still not really worthy of appreciation overall.

By far the best story line of all Knights of the zodiac, it fufills my nostalgia from the original 80s. Strong characters personality, engages you in every aspect through out the series. Grate graphics and extra thumbs up for keeping the original audio in Japanese.