What are the Saint Seiya films?
Six animated features and one Hollywood attempt, spread across thirty-six years.
Saint Seiya went to the cinema early and often: four animated features between 1987 and 1989, while the television series was still running. The film line then slept for fifteen years, woke for the ambitious and ill-fated Heaven Chapter: Overture (2004), returned as CGI in Legend of Sanctuary (2014), and finally crossed to Hollywood live action in 2023.
THE TOEI FOUR
1987 to 1989Evil Goddess Eris · 1987
The first feature: Athena’s Saints against Eris and her Ghost Saints, released while the TV Sanctuary arc was still airing. Compact, gorgeous, and the template for the three that followed.
The Heated Battle of the Gods · 1988
The Asgard film: a northern war against Odin’s God Warriors, whose designs proved so popular they echoed back into the television series’ own Asgard material.
Warriors of the Final Holy Battle · 1988
Lucifer himself as the enemy, the franchise at its most operatic. The third film in barely a year of production.
Warriors of Armageddon · 1989
Apollo and Artemis enter in the fourth film, closing the theatrical run of the classic era. North America received none of the four until Discotek Media’s subtitled DVDs in 2012.
THE LATER THREE
2004, 2014, 2023Heaven Chapter: Overture · 2004
A sequel to the whole manga, Seiya against the gods of Olympus, intended to open a trilogy. It underperformed, the trilogy stopped, and the story it began waited until Kurumada’s own Heaven Chapter manga of 2026 to resume.
Legend of Sanctuary · 2014
The CGI reboot for the franchise’s 25th anniversary year: the Sanctuary arc retold in ninety minutes of polished computer animation, released June 21, 2014.
Knights of the Zodiac · 2023
The Hollywood live-action film, with Mackenyu as Seiya, premiered in Japan on April 28, 2023. Kurumada had rejected a Hollywood pilot decades earlier for changing the characters; the finished film arrived a generation later to a divided house.