Saintia Shou

Godly relief!

In the same week that trailer came out for the horrific Netflix adaption of Saint Seiya, the newest anime in the franchise aired as well.

And luckily, this is a lot more intresting, based on the manga who follow (more or less) the timeline of the original series.

The Saintias are the hand maidens of Athena, and perhaps this is in one go my biggest gripe with the series.  You see, originally Saori didn't realise she was Athena until somewhere in the Silver Saint arc, but here she already is aware while still organising the Galaxian Wars.

The story follows Shoko, a young girl born under a bad star and destined to become the host vessel for Eris.  however, at a young age she and her sister where saved by the intervention of Milo of Scorpio, and he did save her life even though that went against his orders.  Later on, the godess returns, but Shoko's sister instead sacrifices herself to protect her sister.  This leads to Shoko donning her sisters Equleus cloth instead, and set out to defeat Eris.  Not once, but twice...

Facing Eris's Ghost warriors, including a ressurected Saga, the series tes together a lot of things with the old series, and some of the Omega series, like a saint "academy" and what happened with it during the origial series.  Hint: Deathmask of Cancer.

It is a highly enjoyable, even though perhaps not the greatest, series in the franchise, and it makes the wise decision of not side-lining the Golden Saints once again, but as the series progresses actually brings them to the fore as protectors of Athena, with the hand-maidens, who are at bronze level, being the back up force.

A sweet 10 episode series with some nice cameo's of familiar faces, and hopefully a second season will be made to face off Ares, AND give some more screentime to the other saintias apart from Shoko.

A nice watch if you are a Saint Seiya lover, but perhaps a bit hard to follow if you don't know anything about it at all...