Saint Seiya: Knights of the Zodiac (1992-1999)
Manga by: Masami Kurumada
Published in: Viz/ Shueshta (for 28 issues, 4 have been published
                        domestically by Viz as of late 2003)
By: Ramses

Introduction

In 1988, Shueshta published Masami Kurumada's newest story "Saint Seiya" in the pages of their popular comic magazine anthology "Shonen Jump". Between 1988 and 1994, the adventures of the valiant Pegasus Saint named Seiya where published, 28 books in total, spanning from its simple beginings to the epic that fans will always remember. It has spawned a long running anime series, many movies and several other forms of merchanside such as toys, video games, gadgets, and trinkets.

Saint Seiyra not only been a success in it's native land of Japan; Europe, Asia and South America have also embrased the series with wide arms, heck, even yours truly used to remember as a kid, running from school back to my house and catching their adventures on TV with my older brother back in the carefree days of the early 90's, living in Mexico.

Now in 2004, Viz has succesfully translated the adventures of Seiya and the gang to English for the U.S. With the show just ending it's run on Cartoon Network and the uncut DVD's selling out all over, the Manga is no dout a good stop for anyone in need to know what happens next.

Story

Seiya is a young boy who grew up in an orphanage in Japan, he would soon be taken to Greece to train to become a Saint. The stacks where against the young boy, but his strenght and power were proven to be the up to par in his final match for the Pegasus Cloth and thus was awarded his Sainthood by the Pope and reconized as Pegasus Saint Seiya.

He returns to Japan to find his sister is missing, but the Grand Foundation, as lead by the current heir Saori Kido, the same foundation that housed him, his friends and his sister agrees to fund a search for her, but in exchange, Seiya must fight in the "Galactic Tournament" with several of his old friends, whom have also become Saints. Seiya agrees and the battles begin...

But a dark shadow covers the arena where the young saints fight, as they would soon find that the prize was the mythical cloth of Sagittarius, but evil forces from beyond want to recover the cloth so they can become unstopable in destroying the world. These forces soon make their attack and Seiya and his friends Shiryu, Hyogah and Shun must act to retrieve the cloth from Shun's brother Ikki before it's too late.

The series would soon after change from it's simple beginings to a more mature and even harder hitting stories as the series progressed.

Review

As you can tell, I'm very pasionate about this manga and the series in general. There's a lot more to this story than what I described above, but I don't want to spoil too much yet since the U.S. Manga has reached a lot of the crucial points that would soon forge the rest of the series.

Overall, for it's time, it's pretty intence and very bloody (if you're into that kind of junk), but nowadays, bigger and better mangas have come to take center stage and the age of Saint Seiya shows if you compare it to today's hottest titles.

The artwork, just like the story, starts off very basic, very much a sign of its times but as the series moves along further, the art and the story begin to change, by the time we hit Hades (part 3), they've gone full circle. Some of the most beautiful designs for cloths and a well pased and structured story brings the world of Saint Seiya together.

The english translation of the series starts off very weak, a direct cut and pase from the T.V. at first, but once the series hits book 2, the errors fade away and it becomes a near-perfect translation of the Japanese books. Another good point is that there is not much editing work in the series, only a name change (Cygnus to Swan) was the only notable difference. All the blood and gore is still intact form the Japanese version.

Conclusion

The series is one of the finest mangas you can read. It may take a bit of time for it to get up to speed, but once it does you will never look back. I highly recomend it to anyone looking for an alternative to Dragon Ball or Yu Yu Hakusho or fighting Manga's in general

Ramses gives this one a 10/10

Don't miss it!

Ramses