What is Saint Seiya: Saintia Shō?
The war retold from inside Athena’s household, by the women who were always there.
Saint Seiya: Saintia Shō, by Chimaki Kuori, ran in Champion Red from August 19, 2013 to July 19, 2021, in sixteen volumes. Its premise opens a door the original manga left closed: alongside the Saints stand the Saintias, young women who serve as Athena’s handmaidens and bodyguards, fighting a parallel war against Eris while the Sanctuary arc unfolds around them.
THE BOOK ITSELF
Kuori’s Saint SeiyaThe placement
Saintia Sho runs concurrently with the original story’s first movement: the Galaxian Wars and the road to Sanctuary happen offstage while Shoko, the Equuleus Saintia, fights the war’s other front. Familiar scenes gain a second camera angle.
The art
Kuori draws with a shojo-trained line: finer, more romantic, the Cloths rendered as jewellery as much as armour. It is the most visibly distinct art style in the modern constellation.
The anime
A ten-part anime adaptation aired across 2018–19, carrying Saintia Sho to the screen generation; as with Lost Canvas, the manga is the complete version and the anime the introduction.
WHY IT MATTERS
The expanding constellationA widening house
Between Episode.G’s Gold Saints, Lost Canvas’s previous war and Saintia Sho’s Saintias, modern Saint Seiya is a constellation of viewpoints on one mythology, each with its own artist. Saintia Sho is the volume that proves the house can hold a woman’s war story at its centre.