[Anime] Saint Seiya Omega - Talk Up!

[Lynxara]

THat's why I say that I think the show is too in love with trying to duplicate the first Gold Saint arc's magic. The original Gold Saints all ended up being really popular characters, to a greater or lesser extent. It's why a lot of the Saint Seiya spinoffs and sequels tend to focus heavily on them. Since Omega is introducing a new set of Gold Saints, they're probably going to push them pretty hard in hopes that people will like them and want to buy toys of them for the next 20 years.

It's just... again, this doesn't work without the context of the original Gold Saint arc. What made people love those characters was the intensity of their interactions with the original Bronze Saints. They clearly weren't just evil, but they were all insanely powerful, and any reason they had for not just wiping the floor with the Bronze Saints was going to be intensely personal. You wanted to see these characters clash, and hope that the Bronzes could squeak out a win somehow. There's just not the same electricity with the Omega Gold Saints.

 

[Inui Takumi]

It's just... again, this doesn't work without the context of the original Gold Saint arc. What made people love those characters was the intensity of their interactions with the original Bronze Saints. They clearly weren't just evil, but they were all insanely powerful, and any reason they had for not just wiping the floor with the Bronze Saints was going to be intensely personal. You wanted to see these characters clash, and hope that the Bronzes could squeak out a win somehow. There's just not the same electricity with the Omega Gold Saints.

I agree that they are not pushing that point home successfully. As someone who hasn't seen the original Saint Seiya series, the Gold Saints do not really hold any weight in the show. Since a majority of them just show up in their temples like Pokemn Gym masters, they just feel like empty obstacles. I think the only one we really have a connection to is Mycanae and even then, there isn't much to go on outside of him being asked to look after Eden.

This show went from an awesome show based around an quest where they met interesting characters along the way to a Game of Death scenario just without the stand out villians.

 

[Galaxian]

It's sort of backwards to what happened during the original.

The original Gold Saints were a last minute addition to the the manga and were meant to only appear in that one arc, but they became so much more popular than the Bronze Saints, that the next arc (two arcs in the anime) suffered because it didn't involve the Gold Saints (to this day there are still fans that complain about that in a story point of view).

Toei was aware of the Gold Saints popularity (they even made a comment about that in their site for Omega), and since focusing on the Gold Saints worked for the Lost Canvas manga, they try to put them on the spotlight in Omega.

While I am enjoying the second half, I can still see its many flaws and my favorite episode in this second part has been ep35 because of the way it treated the relationship between Eden and Aria.

However...

Spoiler

If its any consolation, spoilers say that ep39 will have something different from the original series... Unfortunately, it still about the Gold Saints overshadowing Kouga and the others.

 

[Eldar]

Eden has to be one of the most broken Bronze Saint. All the attacks he used here are entirely new. I don't think he has reused any attacks.

 

[Galaxian]

Eden has to be one of the most broken Bronze Saint. All the attacks he used here are entirely new. I don't think he has reused any attacks.

He has used Folgore Renaiscence twice (eps 8 and 24).

I like that they made Orion's Devastation look like the Athena's Exclamation that killed Virgo Shaka in the original.

 

[NeonZ]

It's kind of weird to see all the negativity here regarding the Gold Saint arc of Omega, considering how in almost every other forum it seems to be considered the best part of the show, even if that still means rather mixed reactions.

Having said that, I do agree that the Gold Saints here lack some kind of build up, although I can't pinpoint why very well. Most Gold Saints in the original also debuted during their house battles, and, unlike here, many didn't even have backstories or anything, they were just obstacles. Yet, their presence here is lacking somehow.

I think it might have something to do with the build up of the seventh sense, or the lack there of in Omega. The fact that Yuna and Ryuho have the seventh sense now but aren't doing any better than the other bronzes just because "they're hurt" doesn't help. It really should have been introduced way back during the school arc and highlighted when the golds appeared there, rather than only mentioned right during the 12 houses battle. Building up the Seventh sense better would have helped all the gold saints at once.

 

[Galaxian]

BIG cameo on the next episode of Omega in two weeks...

[HIDE]

[/HIDE]

 

[Lynxara]

It's kind of weird to see all the negativity here regarding the Gold Saint arc of Omega, considering how in almost every other forum it seems to be considered the best part of the show, even if that still means rather mixed reactions.

I wonder if it's that, on a mostly English-speaking forum like this, there's no real nostalgia for the original Gold Saint arc. Saint Seiya never penetrated any English-speaking market back during its heyday, and its push during the early 2000s fizzled. Most of the viewers watching Saint Seiya Omega on a forum like this are likely to be fans of Heartcatch PreCure, or general fans of shows in Omega's format (sometimes called "kid anime").

As far as that goes, it's not too surprising to me that the kid anime fans would prefer the more Digimon-like traveling arc to the Gold Saint stuff, which is trading very heavily on familiarity with Kurumada's work. I mean, the seventh sense thing barely made any sense back in the original, but it was a lot of fun as part of the gleeful over-the-top absurdity behind the Gold Saint arc's melodrama. It's always felt a bit out of place to me in Omega, which previously seemed to be making the setting more sensible by putting an actual system in place for them (as opposed to the original setting's "whatever Kurumada made up that day").

 

[Aoiblue]

I think one of the big things that does annoy me in this Gold Saints arc is that the Gold Saints just.....keep repeating their names over and over again and why they are named so.

 

[jolyne]

The Gold Saint arc is a mixed bag for me. On one hand, it is really, really repetitive. Gold Saint has a dramatic backstory he or she has to tell them just because, he or she beats them up, one of them awakens the Seventh Sense and defeats the Gold Saint. Rinse and repeat. It's not particularly exciting, to be honest. On the other hand, the characterization has become more interesting now that it is mainly focused on Kouga, Yuna and Eden and their relationship (between them and with Aria) has become the strongest part of the story. Ever since episode 29 the focus has really tightened up and even little stuff like Yuna being so willing to give Eden a chance but being unable to leave Kouga alone or Kouga's dislike of Eden and his "I will fulfill Aria's will because I let her die" motivation feels weighty, as if it was building up to some sort of interesting character-driven climax. To be honest, I actually feel that mostly ignoring Souma and Haruto has been for the best.