Anime: Saint Seiya: Kamigami no Atsuki Tatakai

Although not the best of the Saint Seiya movies, this one has a few interesting things to offer. This is mainly in relation to Hyoga as a character though as he gets a side of his personality not explored beforehand (or since) put forward here. The disappointing thing is that the storyline does not give the character much to work with and we are again given a kill 'em all plot. The one thing the story has going for it is that it could be seen as a leadway into the Asgard Series (much like a manga chapter written by Kurumada.)

The animation is just brilliant when compared with other productions of its time. This is again due to the stellar character and background drawings of Hikari. His visuals are gorgeous to the eye and the budget of this movie allows the animation to match its quality. The atmosphere of the movie is depicted to new heights with impeccable animation on the scenery as everything moves beautifully, and the very fluid and well depicted fight scenes. The theatrics are also gorgeous due to (again) the amazing drawings.

The sound is fitting to the scenes but does not offer anything very memorable. This is probably due to most of the budget going to the wonderful animation and that there was not much money left over for epic instrumentation. The seiyuus are once again great at depicting their respective characters, even though the storyline does not reeally give them much to work with.

The evil saints weren't that interesting overall and as Saint Seiya is usually great because of its interesting antagonists, this movie was a bit disappointing and dragged the character and story mark down. The most appealing thing about this movie is the use of Hyoga. Always one of my favourite saints he is given a chance to break away from secondary material if just for a few scenes. Shiryu is also used adequately in this. Shun, I don't know why but, is always a damsel in distress in the movies and this is no exception. Seiya is as boring as brick in this as his character does not develop in any way.

With the good and the bad taken into consideration, they were merely okay overall. The storyline was very much a kill 'em all tale, thus moving things along quickly to get to the main antagonist without really offering much character or plot development along the way. This made the movie a little disappointing as it had a promising romantic start but to appeal to the shounen jump crowd,a good story is sadly compromised for fight scenes (though very exciting ones).

I enjoyed watching this and I get the feeling the first two movies were more of an introduction to the series than anything else, because everything you see here is done better in the TV series. If you were thinking of giving Saint Seiya a try, this could be a good place to start but remember that the TV series is nowhere near as cliched.