Saint Seiya: Legend of Sanctuary (2014)

Sadly Over-hyped

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

After watching this movie I am disappointed. A recommendation for different kind of watchers:If you are a Saint Seiya anime fan, please spare yourself from a painful time watching this movie. If you are not a fan, you might just survive the experience. The movie will just throw random stuff at you consistently during the 93 minutes it lasts. If you like cool CG and animation, by all means watch it. Kudos to all the CG and technical staff that participated in the making, their work is simply impressive. If there would have been a script on par with the technical work, this could have been a really good movie.

The movie tells the story of a girl named Saori, who is the reincarnation Athena, and her guardians, the Bronze Saints, against the Pope's servants, the Gold Saints, who were also supposed to be protecting Athena. The soundtrack has a few nice tracks but nothing memorable or related to the original series. The visuals are decent at best, the 3D characters look lively though their exaggerated expression along with the cheesy dialog makes any non battle scene cringe-worthy. The armors redesign are also exaggerated, specially the Gold Saints armor that have far too many details and/or resemble their original design or the constellation they were supposed to represent. The Bronze Saints are also too far detailed to represent the lowest class of Athena's defenders, and the Silver Saints received no attention at all. The fight scenes are nothing special and the camera angle choices are poor. Some effects are dated like dust and explosions but the film makes up for it with some good looking re-imagination of the cosmos which a relevant piece of the plot. The Sanctuary is basically Asgard from the Thor movies. The plot however, is badly conducted as it is quite linear and leaves nothing for the vier to expect, most of the characters suffer from bad development and other are barely mentioned. Some of them were clearly changed so to not be too unlikable (or forgettable) due to their short screen time. On that, the addition of Deathmask's dance sequence is an odd choice, adds nothing to the plot and only takes valuable screen time. The end is just a mess, with a Final Fantasy like giant monster and bad explanation on what's going on. After finishing one question remains, how something that clearly showed so much effort ended up looking so lazy, the answer is beyond me.

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.

As someone who grew up watching the original "Saint Seiya" anime, I found "Saint Seiya: Legend of Sanctuary" to be a mixed bag at best: The first half of the movie introduces the story and the main characters in a decent (albeit a bit rushed) manner, but during the second half (Specifically, after the Taurus House part), the plot turns muddled and hard to follow. Not as muddled as in movies like "Final Fantasy: Advent Children", but I think that some scenes will confuse those viewers who never watched the original series. (Hey, I watched the original series several times, and I still found some parts of this movie to be confusing and not very well explained)The short duration of the movie (90 minutes approximately) is simply not enough to cover the 73 episodes of the Sanctuary Arc from the original anime, having too many characters which aren't properly developed (Case in point: Pisces Aphrodite, who only appears in this movie to be killed off without doing anything relevant to the plot.)Some moments lack of the same emotional impact that the original anime had due the rushed narrative (For example, the duel between Camus and Hyoga, which isn't as memorable as in the 80's series, since their whole master-disciple relationship is merely referenced, but not explored)Visually speaking, the film is very impressive and well done, though I'm sure that the comparisons with the Final Fantasy games will be unavoidable.(Specially taking in consideration the transformation of the main villain near the end of the movie, which reminded me the final boss battles from those videogames) The soundtrack was decent, but in my opinion the soundtrack of the original series was far more memorable. While it was moderately entertaining to watch "Saint Seiya: Legend of Sanctuary" had the potential to be something much better. I wasn't expecting a 100% faithful adaptation (That would have been impossible in such short time) but it could have been a far more memorable experience with its own merits instead of being a merely watchable flick.On a side note, the Latin American dub used almost all the voices from the original series for the movie, and I think that was a nice touch for the nostalgic fans. 6/10