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.
Review of Saint Seiya: Legend of Sanctuary
