Los caballeros del Zodiaco: La Leyenda del Santuario

I am not familiar with the original 1986 anime television series Saint Seiya or all the follow-up movies, OVAs, and original net animation. I stumbled upon this movie more or less by accident while looking through director Keiichi Sato’s filmography. Based on the information at hand, I figured that it might not be bad, and I did not even need to know the original adaptations to get a handle on this one. So what is this movie all about? The description will probably sound pretty crappy because I did not get the beginning, and there will probably be a lot of SPOILERS, so perhaps you should not even read it. In a certain dimension referred to as Sanctuary, there is a refuge where the reincarnation of the Goddess Athena oversees the peaceful ruling of the world. It all begins when one of the holy protectors flees and is pursued by another saint who sees him as a traitor. These two fight each other in shiny golden armor until they start flagging. The fight ends, and one of the saints passes or falls (I cannot remember exactly) through the dimension into some debris or something, and some expedition finds him there. The saint who has it "in the bag" manages only one thing, to pass the information to one of the expedition and give him what he has been protecting all along - a small child, the supposed true incarnation of the goddess Athena. The little girl grows up, and on her sixteenth birthday, she learns who she is and that her stepfather has secured a group of young men to protect her and get her "where she belongs." The poor girl does not even have time to get a good look around and absorb this information before she is attacked by the holy protectors of Sanctuary, who see her as a fake, a heretic, just someone who wants to subvert their super religious order. Fortunately, in a pinch, our sweet girl is saved by a bunch of young boys in matching shiny armor. They decide to get our little goddess into her Sanctuary and, on the way, kick all twelve of the holy golden protectors who represent the zodiac signs into the back end of their shiny tomorrows. END OF SPOILERS. I apologize again for the awful description. However, I wanted to capture how the whole thing affected me. I guess it was probably too colorful and flashy for my taste. The animation had the typical advantages and disadvantages of traditional Asian 3D CGI animation. This means that some of the exteriors were quite nice, and the characters are mainly bishonen (pretty boys). This is appropriate for Asian 3D animation, so if you are comfortable with that style, then you do not have a problem (I do not mind the style), even though their movements were terrible and unnatural in places. It also tried hard to give a cool impression. As usual with these sorts of productions, it did so with the help of crazy, supposedly dramatic, and constant slow-motion that was terrible and killed any atmosphere. So I found the narrative quite weird; I did not enjoy the characters; it was all glitter and glaring until it hurt my eyes. The dialogue was not worth writing home about, and the twists like "guys, I am not really your enemy, I was just testing you" were really stupid. I understand that for people familiar with the premise and the setting, it probably is not going to seem that terrible. However, I am not those people, and after this fiasco, I am probably not going to even get into it. 1.5/10. (14.02.2016) (menos) (más)