Saint Seiya: The Hades ~Chapter Inferno...

[Kosh]

...was an utter disappointment. Those who want to skip the history lesson, go down to **END OF REFRESHER**

A quick refresher for those of you not in the know. The original Saint Seiya anime ran in the late 80s and early 90s to great success in Japan. Counting 114 episodes, it was still a ratings behemoth by the time of its cancellation. It was a prime example of a series becoming so popular that sponsors took control. Basically the property was owned in equal parts by Kodansha, Bandai/Toei, and the creator, Masami Kurumada. When merchandise sales and ratings started to go steadily down (due to a variety of reasons, specially a change in direction), the two companies basically told Kurumada he had to conclude the manga and start work on a new one.

The problem was that while the anime was eventually cancelled after a rather hastily wrapped-up arc (the Poseidon Arc), the manga was at its most popular, narrating the great epic of the Hades arc, where the Saints of Athena fight the 108 spectres of Hades, King of Hell. With amazing artwork and character designs, many many plot twists, drama, and cool characters, it ended up being the last arc in the Saint Seiya manga, even though that was not Kurumada's intention. Biting the bullet, he hastily wrapped the manga up at the end of that story.

But Saint Seiya remained greatly popular not only in Japan but also in the many other countries where it took root. Namely Spain, France, Italy and most of South America, in which it was iconic with the beginnings of a number of anime scenes. After much rumours and a lot of expectations, eventually it happened. We had 13 shiny new episodes of Saint Seiya in our hands. And it was great. It had superb animation, a lot of the original voices (though not all, with a cast that big it's kinda impossible), character designs by Shingo Araki (who was in part responsible, with his popular designs, for the popularity of the old anime), great directing and a lot of the old music.

Those 13 episodes, The Hades: Chapter Sanctuary, were great, but covered only volumes 19-21 of the manga. So, we had seven more volumes ahead of us, and no new episodes in sight. The years passed. A new Saint Seiya movie premiered: Overture to the Heaven Chapter. This was a story that started after the end of Hades and was written by Kurumada. It was the manga's planned final chapter. This was meant to satiate the fans' appetites while a lot of contractual problems were dealt with. I don't know the details, but this meant the departure from the Hades project of the director and most of the seiyuu. While the movie did well and presented the beginning of an interesting new story, we still had, you know, the Hades saga to be finished.

**END OF REFRESHER**

Fast-forward to now. We got, I think in January, 6 new episodes of the Hades. This time, it was called Chapter Inferno as it covers the second part of the Hades Arc, that is, the rather long thrawl through Hell to save Athena and defeat Hades. This was, so to speak, the meat of it. The previous 13 episodes were meant to be the prelude, nothing but a taste of things to come.

The Sanctuary Chapter was really the story of the Gold Saints and their sacrifices, showing just how tough a battle the Bronze Saints had ahead of them. Saints fought Saints once more, and there was simply a lot of deaths. But what a story it was. Great animation, directing and editing, not to mention appropriate usage of the soundtrack from the old series, and a style that, while it resembled the old show, was done with simply magnificent animation.

What did we get this year? Well, from watching these 6 newish episodes, we got Chapter Sanctuary's terminally ill cousin. I think it's only fair to put in comparisons, in each area, with the Sanctuary Chapter, which was made years ago at this stage. Let's see:

Seiyuu - The Inferno OAVs start off well enough where the old ones left off. However, something is patently evident from the get-go: the seiyuu are almost completely different. While characters like Seiya don't seem affected, it's evident in the case of Shun, and other characters that had highly distinctive voices. Voices of new characters are acceptable, and I believe recurring Hades ones like Pandora and Radamanthys keep their seiyuu. But as far as the Bronze Saints and Athena is concerned, it's a whole new cast. Comparison to Sanctuary Chapter: Horrible. The Sanctuary chapter, as well as the Overture movie, featured the original cast of Bronze Saints from the TV series, as well as many of the other major characters. This wouldn't be bad if some of the new voices weren't simply quite bland.

Animation - While some episodes, such as the Orpheus mini-arc, have decent animation, for the most part this is ghastly. It literally looks like a version of the old anime only with more shadow tones and a modern palette. Attacks are animated in a way resembling the poorer moments of the old show too. Dialogue scenes are radically undynamic, with basically the same frames repeated over and over again. This makes them almost entirely lose the viewer's attention as they can happen at very dramatic moments of the plot. Comparison to Sanctuary Chapter: Horrible again. Sanctuary Chapter, while maintaining a lot of the show's old style, it kept none of the sub-par animation that sometimes occurred in the old series. Most special attacks had well-placed CGI effects, and plot scenes were anything but boring in an animation sense.

Editing/Directing - The first episode is good enough, a long battle with a spectre, fair enough. But with the possible exception of the aforementioned mini-arc, the pacing and editing is horrible. First of all, the already mentioned re-use of footage, which simply looks horrible and distracting. Second, the pacing of the plot. In most shonen series, Saint Seiya included, the dynamic is that for each fight, at least an episode is devoted to it. Here, many fights end in the middle of an episode, which messes up that tried-and-true dynamic. It doesn't even get points for originality as it simply disrupts the flow of the episode. Moreover, there's many battles that are just a sort of touch-and-go kind of thing. While I am honestly unaware of how those developed in the manga (as I haven't read all the Hades manga), it does add to the overall rushed feeling of the production. Comparison to Sanctuary Chapter: Again, very poor. Almost every battle in the Sanctuary Chapter was dynamic and interesting, even against minor Hades henchmen. They were, at the very least, fun. It is common for Saint Seiya to have the baddies describing the effects of their ultimately useless attacks, part of which we get to see. In Chapter Inferno we simply get standardized purple energy beams, even for the attacks of the Three Generals. Moreover, Chapter Sanctuary finished right where it should have. This basically ends in the middle of a battle, a poorly edited one once more, of course.

Music - There's actual new music pieces that were composed for this part of the story. A whole two of them. That's right. I guess I was expecting a lot here, I just wanted more of the recorded but never used Hades tracks, but we got mostly incidental music from the TV series, often misused. While the piece for Orpheus's music is quite nice, I can safely say we all probably wanted just, you know, actual new music that matched the rather epic, apocalyptic mood of the first part.
Comparison to Sanctuary Chapter: The first part had 90% old music from the show, and the rest were the recorded but never-used tracks for the intended Hades chapter of the old TV show. You can say Sanctuary Chapter loses, except it was the return of Saint Seiya after many years, and it could clearly be seen that many scenes were presented in a special way to emphasize this, along with the use of certain old themes (such as the instrumental Pegasus Fantasy used to introduce Seiya). However, that novelty is gone now. And it's not like Inferno even tries to go for that, it simply reuses old tracks, no fan service at all.


Overall, this is a much poorer effort than 2002's Sanctuary Chapter, as you can see. But this is not over, of course, since the second half of Chapter Inferno should reach us by the end of the year. What is the problem here though? Well, as far as we can tell, it will be six more episodes, and it shall conclude the Hades story. Excuse me? Something sounds wrong there as far as pacing goes. Sanctuary Chapter covered 3 manga volumes, so the intention is to cover 6 or 7 more in a total of 12 episodes? No wonder this feels rushed. I mean, hell, the original manga is rushed like fuck, and compressing it further will do nothing but make it worse.

I hope that, at least, reports are wrong and we're getting 12 more episodes. And I hope they can somehow bring the director back from the first part. I'm writing such a long rant because, as a Saint Seiya fan, I can't believe they'd simply blow it like this, with a clearly significantly lower budget for a product that sells itself internationally on name alone. A wasted opportunity, hopefully the second half will make up for it.