With all the High-Pressure Blood and the Cruel and Unusual Deaths, Saint Seiya is chock full of this. Kurumada and Co. can come up with such things...
GOOD LORD!!!
- First, what is possibly the lightest nightmare: the training you need to undergo to become a Saint, so horrible that even the ones that dropped out but survived intact are almost superhuman:
- In the manga, the first part we see is Marin throwing Seiya off the Parthenon one night. You see, the fight for the Pegasus Cloth was the next day, and as she didn't know that Seiya could use Cosmo yet she was giving him a crash course...
- The anime doesn't have the scene above. Instead it has Athena's Pope detailing what Seiya and Cassios go through for the right to a mere Bronze Cloth - that is, fighting giants. Hundreds tried, but only Seiya and Cassios survived and won. And since two guys survived and didn't drop out, they now have to fight each other until one can't fight anymore or surrenders. And as they're Saint trainees, everything is allowed. Slugging the opponent while he's distracted and before the Pope tells them to start? Valid. Hacking the enemy into pieces? That's what Cassios wanted to do to Seiya - and nobody batted an eye when Seiya hacked his ear off. Beating the opponent into unconsciousness, possibly breaking many of their bones in the process? That's how Seiya won.
- Some generic exercises are doing finger-stands (as in, standing on the tip of your index finger) during rain and snow, punching glaciers or mountains thousands of years old and not giving up until they crumbled, and doing upside-down pullups while hanging from your feet above a chasm.
- The training for the Dragon Cloth has as the final task to reverse the course of a waterfall... But the technique involved temporarily reverses the user's bloodflow in the process, and will kill them if they aren't at full health.
- The training for Cygnus Cloth includes going into Siberia's winter in light clothes. Also, this is the one where you punch a glacier and not a mountain.
- Up to Eleven with the training at Andromeda Island and Death Queen Island, considered the worst ordeals of them all. Andromeda Island is a completely barren rock and the final task being chained between two rocks and being forced to push back the ocean tide with your Battle Aura before you drown, while Death Queen Island may be more liveable... And the trainer there was so insane even the one sent to Andromeda Island balked in horror. Both were so bad that the two main Cloths kept there (Andromeda at Andromeda Island and Phoenix at Death Queen Island) were the only ones who had never been assigned a Saint until then, as all the candidates had died during the final task, assuming they survived the training.
- And then there's the training for the Coma Berenices Cloth in Sicily: while the place is luscious, the teacher there is Cancer Deathmask, who is detailed below, and the final task is to go and retrieve the Cloth inside Mount Etna, an active volcano. Also, the Cloth acts as a seal to Typhon, meaning that you need Deathmask there - he's one of two Saints with the skillset to make sure the candidate isn't possessed by Typhon (needless to say, Deathmask's student Mei was stupid enough to try the really risky part unsupervised).
- And the final bit: aside for Coma Berenices, all the information above is the training for Bronze Cloths, the lowest level. Silver and Gold Cloths have likely even harder training, that we're mercifully not shown. Gold Cloths have been shown to be given during childhood as well; Shaka was apparently so gifted that he became a Gold Saint at age six.
- Shaina before her High-Heel–Face Turn:
- During her first fight in the series she faces Seiya, who until now has been built up as an awesome and almost invincible hero with incredible speed-and she casually blocks each and every one of his attacks while counting how many times per second he can strike before beating him down-and torturing him with her Thunder Claw.
- Her disturbing fondness for trying to claw his opponent's face off. And not during the fight, but after they're down for the count.
- The anime episode 16 has Shaina tricking Marin into a vicious fight, under the pretense of a sparring match. The outcome is downright chilling, and if Aeolia hadn't intervened to save her, Marin would have been dead right there.
- Their anime-only second fight. Seiya won the first time because he had his Cloth and Shaina wouldn't wear hers on personal business, but now Seiya meets her while she's on official business and is thus wearing her Cloth. He thinks he can beat her, as he's much more experienced than last time... Then, two minutes later, he's bleeding and defenseless, and Shaina is a bit winded and ready to claw his face off. Seiya would never stop fearing her again.
- In their third fight Seiya has decisively defeated her (though that was Anime filler, it's not less awesome). She's not a threat anymore, right? Nope: next time she attacks she almost kills Hyoga and Shun at the same time, before they throw her down a cliff. There's a reason Seiya preferred throwing himself down that cliff rather than fighting her again: with a broken arm, he had better chances against the cliff than against Shaina... Who, like him, survived the cliff. And next time she appears, she's trying to kill Seiya in his sleep in a hospital room.
- Even after her High-Heel–Face Turn she remains someone to not provoke lightly: in the Poseidon arc she spends some time facing Thetys, it seems an even battle... Then Shaina decides she has better things to do and mauls her, with the manga implying that the wounds weakened Thetis to the point she died saving Julian.
- The Silver Saints in general, of which Shaina is a member - the strongest one in Sanctuary. Their ability being superior to Bronze Saints may come as informed after a while, but they still tend to be opponents to be feared:
- Lizard Misty, the Silver Saint (the other Silvers Saints, even Shaina, hold him in such high regard that they call him THE Silver Saint). In the manga, the first thing he does is to blow up Mount Fuji in the attempt to kill all of Saori's Saints in one shot. They only survived because they noticed him just in time and ran while Ikki tanked most of the blow.
- When he shows up to fight Seiya, his reputation alone leaves Seiya shaking in fear. He earned it by taking out all sort of monsters without being wounded once.
- Before the fight can start, Marin apparently murders Seiya and buries him. Misty digs him out just in case, and when he finds him alive he gives him a free shot because he knows Seiya can't harm him before hitting him with the same attack that destroyed Mount Fuji. Seiya almost died then and there, and the only reason he managed to scrape a victory is that a quirk of Misty's personality revealed that his best attacks don't work underwater.
- Even the way he dies is nightmarish: Seiya throws him in the sea with the Pegasus Rolling Crash and takes advantage of his concussion to drown him - and even as he dies from what is implied to be a broken skull, Misty has enough strength to rise up and walk back to the beach, praising his opponent's valor.
- One last bit of fear: in the Poseidon arc Seiya notes that one of the Mariners, much stronger than Misty had been, had a nearly identical fighting style... But less refined. One can only wonder what kind of combat experience Misty had to have such skills...
- Marin is on the side of good. She's also the first to show us the kind of training one has to live through to become a Saint, and in the manga she even throws Seiya down of the Parthenon because she didn't think he had learned to use Cosmo yet and the fight for his Cloth was next morning.
- Asterion is a relative weakling... Who can read minds, and fights in tandem with possibly the hardest hitter of the Silver Saints.
- Perseus Algol at first doesn't seem that strong, about on Shiryu's level. He also has a shield that turns to stone whoever crosses the gaze of the Medusa head that decorates it. And no, closing your eyes doesn't work - Shiryu tried it, and the gaze bypassed his eyelids and turned his shield arm to stone. Only fully blinding himself allowed Shiryu to defend himself from Medusa's gaze.
- Sagitta Ptolemy shows up in a single scene before being killed by Seiya with one attack. Before Seiya attacked him, however, Ptolemy had already fired a rain of illusory arrows... And a single golden one that took down Saori after she had awakened her divine Cosmo, leaving her twelve hours to be healed before she died. The entire Twelve Temples Arc happened because of him: had Saori showed up the Gold Saints would have recognized her and stood at attention, and the hurry to get the one thing that can save Saori keeps the Bronze Saints from just explaining things to at least the Gold Saints who don't know the truth.
- The Hades Arc introduces Lyra Orphee, the strongest Silver Saint alive (Shaina being the strongest in Sanctuary because Orphee was alive but missing in action, living somewhere else). His music can make even gods sleep for a long time or even forever as long as they can appreciate it (Rhadamanthys escaped that attack because he didn't like music and didn't listen) or cause electric shocks, and his Stringer Fine just shreds his opponents.
- The anime-only Peacock Shiva and Lotus Agora aren't much, and Ikki can easily take them down at the same time... Or could if their teacher wasn't the below-mentioned Virgo Shaka, who spent most of the fight keeping Ikki paralyzed from afar while they beat him down.
- Also existing only in the anime continuity is Altar Ares. Yes, Ares: he's the guy that Saga murdered and replaced to gain control of Sanctuary. That alone isn't that scary... But the fact he could assume anyone's looks and has the immense strength of a Silver Saint is. And since that is an ability of the Cloth, that means his successor in the novel Gigantomachia has the same power.
- Lizard Misty, the Silver Saint (the other Silvers Saints, even Shaina, hold him in such high regard that they call him THE Silver Saint). In the manga, the first thing he does is to blow up Mount Fuji in the attempt to kill all of Saori's Saints in one shot. They only survived because they noticed him just in time and ran while Ikki tanked most of the blow.
- Speaking of the above episode 16, it is full of bloody nightmare fuel:
- Sanctuary goons sabotaging peace conferences, causing civil wars, mayhem and wanton destruction all over the world.
- Cue whiplash to peaceful Greece. Cue Mood Whiplash to the Sanctuary where were trainees are subjected to what amounts to extremely brutal torture in the name of training.
- Ikki is already the bringer of Mind Rape and horribly bloody fights, but he actually tops himself in one memorable fight against Capella, a Silver Saint who threatened Seiya and Saori. Capella's weapon is a set of shields attached to his armor, which can be also thrown as projectiles - so far so good, huh? Well, Ikki uses his powers to trick the guy into believing he cut off his own hands with said disks/shields (no Gory Discretion Shot here), and goes further when the guy ends up Hoist by His Own Petard by having said shields fatally injure him in the chest and stomach before he is shown physically unharmed but with his mind broken, as he falls off the cliff they're fighting on.
- The manga rendition of his attack against Wolf Nachi in his first appearance is even worse. In the anime, his illusion punches shatter Nachi's cloth and knock him senseless. In the manga? They shatter his body, ripping off his arms when he tries to defend himself and eventually blowing open his torso, spilling his guts, giving a clear shot on his spine, before only leaving his smiling head. Ick.
- His attack against Virtue Eligor in the Lucifer movie is nothing to laugh at either. The illusion starts with Eligor decapitating Ikki, only for his headless body to walk towards Eligor (which he proceeds to stab to no avail) while the fallen head is taunting him. Then said head screams maniacally about sending him to hell while a swarm of locusts comes flying out of it's mouth towards Eligor, only for the head to melt afterwards, while Eligor is pierced through the chest, leaving him falling dead. Jeez!
- The Asgard movie features an illusion of Ikki getting impaled by Thymir Rung’s boomerangs, which serves to conceal the actual outcome: Rung’s boomerangs hit him in the chest. Lesson to learn? Never, ever throw a full power attack after taking the Phoenix Demon Illusion Fist. You WILL hurt yourself. See below the Abel movie example for a perfect use of the technique.
- Anything that Cancer Deathmask ever does until his Heel–Face Turn in the Hades Saga and the Soul of Gold series. Special mention to his namesake, the little matter of these "masks" in the Cancer Temple. And how he can send his opponents to a really scary fighting field where lack of fighting spirit will make you join the legions of the moaning dead going to Hell, and where one misstep might send you down to your death.
- In Episode G, the masks scare the crap out of a giant. The giant was effectively a low-powered god who believed himself invincible. That is how nightmarish Deathmask is.
- And to make things worse... This guy is a Gold Saint, meaning he has immense destructive power, can actually take some of what he dishes even without his near-indestructible Gold Cloth, and, most importantly, moves at the speed of light.
- According to the Saint Seiya Taizen (the series Encyclopedia) not only the Gold Cloths are alive, but they hold a faint trace of their former owners, usually a righteous warrior yearning for justice, thus able to abandon their owner when he's growing closer to darkness and evil. Go figure what an utterly despicable, evil and cruel Saint could do if the "moral compass" inside his armor happened to be formed from the embers of the late Deathmask's personality...
- Brainwashed and Crazy Leo Aeolia versus Seiya. Such brutality and bloodlust coming from a man so honorable is truly a scary sight.
- Even worse is, as ruthless as Aeolia was when welcoming Seiya to his temple, he was still retaining some good in him, sticking to a Creepy Monotone demeanor, which the mention of Athena being in mortal peril could somehow bring out a humane reaction, with Aeolia visibly in pain. The viewers could be treated to a charming display of his brain wriggling and twisting due to the influence of the Illusion.
- Then, when Seiya managed to land in a hit, which Saga fully counted on... He literally turned in a ruthless murder machine, with all good in him removed. If not for Cassios' Heroic Sacrifice, which Saga obviously could not reasonably anticipate, Seiya would have been properly screwed right there.
- What Scorpio Milo's Scarlet Needle will do to you when you have taken fourteen hits: you will turn into a living blood fountain while you lose your strength and your five senses.
- The first attacks are nothing to scoff at, if the reactions of Seiya and Shiryu are anything to go by.
- During the Twelve Temples arc, when the Sagittarius Gold Cloth makes its return, Saga starts doubting whether he actually really managed to off Aeolus or not. Saga is sitting in his throne room when all of Saori's ten Bronze Saints barge in to attack. The Gold Saints, all twelve of them and fully armored, jump out of nowhere and put themselves between the invaders and Saga... And then, before Saga can realize there's something wrong with the situation, the Gold Saints turn toward him, faces obscured by shadows and only their eyes visible, and come close to kill him themselves. And there's all the Gold Saints in the group, including Deathmask (who by this point was already killed), Shaka (presumed dead), Aeolus (who is long dead), Aphrodite (described as the most terrifying of the Gold Saints by Saga himself), and the Gemini cloth itself. That's when Saga wakes up in terror... But this literal nightmare left him so shaken he can't help but look around in fear.
- Gemini Saga, appearing to be a sincerely pure and good man, having a seizure in front of Seiya, before turning into evil incarnate out of the blue and lashing out at him at the speed of light. YIKES.
- To say nothing about how Saga at this point is a total No-Nonsense Nemesis, goes straight for the kill with Another Dimension, with Seiya ending up saved only because Saga's good side stops him. The evil side is willing to compromise: he will merely remove Seiya's five senses before offing him.
- The ensuing conflict is extremely intense and it is truly sobering to see Seiya throw everything he has, and Saga standing up for more, brushing up even the Pegasus Rolling Crash as interesting, but ineffective.
- Then Ikki comes in, and in the manga they have an illusion battle. Saga first tests out his control by having Ikki pierce his own arm before taking Seiya's head. Thankfully, Saga himself was under the influence of Ikki's own illusions, but by Ikki's account, if Saga had ordered him to kill Seiya first, he couldn't have shaken the mind control fast enough to avoid tragedy. Oof.
- Then Saga takes the gloves off and obliterates him with his Galaxian Explosion. This was so thorough that in the upcoming Poseidon arc, Shun assumed his brother was dead, which is why Lymnades Kasa's ploy described below had even a remote chance of working.
- In the anime, it is no better. After Seiya managed to use the shield to save Athena, Saga is dealing a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown to Seiya, and Ikki who was only merely delayed comes to the rescue. Cue Saga inflicting the mother of Curb Stomp Battles on Ikki, instantly destroying his Cloth and removing his five senses in the span of a few seconds. The frenzy with which Saga punches in close combat is truly a terrifying sight to behold, so iconic it became one of Saga's combo moves in the fighting games.
- In the manga, Saga having a Villainous Breakdown as he is stopped by his good side's Mind Screw / Armor-Piercing Question: "WHO ARE YOU?"
- In the anime, the fact that the five Bronze Saints gave Seiya their Cosmo for a Pegasus Comet Fist so powerful it disintegrated what remained of his Bronze Cloth and very nearly put Saga in orbit, and that he... just came back for more. Or so he thought, until Saori pointed out that Seiya had dealt a lethal blow to his evil side. But the moment he came back was a major Oh, Crap! moment for everyone present, and we are talking about the five surviving Gold Saints nearly going This Is Gonna Suck.
- In the manga, Saga's defeat: he's touched by the light of Athena's shield... And something comes out of him screaming while he goes back to normal. Apparently he was under a Demonic Possession the whole time... But we don't know what. (Recent extra chapters of the manga elaborate that this was a Lemure, an extra soul bound to Saga at birth by a servant of Hades)
- When he comes back fully good, it turns out he's The Unfettered, and that the only difference between him and his evil side is the goal, with the latter aiming to Take Over the World because he genuinely thought he could do a better job than the gods and the former instead choosing to obey Athena.
- One of the freakiest things about him is that, even if you count everything that happened above, Saga was the good twin. His brother, Kanon, was even worse.
- Everything Shaka does while fighting. Unless you have a very good reason, accept his offer to spare your life and run whence you came ASAP:
- Anyone invading his Temple is shown a beautiful illusion of a magnificent land... That can turn into hell at a moment's notice.
- He can also use his illusions, or just plain hallucinations, to Mind Rape an enemy and summon horrifying visions.
- During the Twelve Temples Arc, Shun attacked him with the Nebula Chain. This is when the Attack Reflector trope makes its debut, as the chain stops, turns on Shun, and nearly strangles him to death complete with his Nebula Chain visibly tearing through his neck's skin. before Shaka decides to spare him by throwing him onto Seiya. That was terrifying enough that Seiya and Shiryu were stunned in horror.
- During Tenma Kōfuku, an illusion of paradise appears (and in the anime, it's accompanying by an incredibly ominous, heavily voice-filtered reciting of the Heart Sutra
)... Then Shaka appears, you hear the screams, and that's when you see the poor guys he just blasted into figurative Hell with his Cosmo while Shaka is levitating, towering over a vision of hell as if a taunting guardian of Heaven.- In the manga, this attack is so terrifying that Shaka took away Ikki's memory of their first encounter to prevent him from going insane, and when he restored it Ikki tried to run for the hills. Ikki.
- Rikudō Rinne. Remember Deathmask's ability to send souls to the gates of hell? This attack skips the gates and directly throws you into one of the six Dharma's rebirth realms, that he'll describe before throwing you there to see where you'll end.
- The visual in the anime is just as bad as one would expect from this attack.
- During their fight, Ikki nailed him with the Phoenix Genmaken at one point. He wouldn't have noticed, had he not heard Ikki shouting its name-just as he sent it back to him, sending Ikki to The Riverbed of Death where he must carry Shun as a baby barefooted through an endless riverbed of sharp rocks while Shun keeps getting heavier, with Shaka offering him relief from the torment if only he'd drop that baby brother of his.note
- During the Hades saga he reveals a new attack, Tenkūhaja Chimimōryō-with which he summons evil spirits and sics them on his victims. The Specters facing it, who live in service of the setting's literal hell were terrified by it.
- And even if you realize what kind of monster you're fighting, don't bother running away: you cannot escape him, and if you try, the moment you stop to catch a breath, you'll find yourself on Buddha's palm as he compares you to Sun Wukong's equally fruitless attempt to escape from there. At least he won't drop a mountain on your head before imprisoning you for 500 years...
- And finally, there's what happens when he gets serious and opens his eyes: Tenbu Hōrin, with which he takes away his enemy's senses one by one, describing what he is doing, and there's nothing they can do about it, not even run. Worse, if they still won't go down when he has taken all the five senses, he goes for the sixth-that is, the ability to think.
- To make it worse, the attack also wounds the body. In the Hades Saga the Surplices worn by Saga, Shura and Camus get damaged every time he takes a sense, and when the attack debuted against Ikki his Cloth disassembled on it's own, fell on the floor and instantly disintegrated.
- Just one last bit: once you start fighting him he knows no mercy. Not even the Mercy Kill... And the one time he tried to give it one, it was out of curiosity at what mercy is.
- Almost forgetting... Even if you kill him, he won't stay dead. Ikki used a suicide attack to take him down, and all he could manage was to warp the both of them in Another Dimension, from which Shaka could have still come out on his own. The only reason he asked for Mu's help in teleporting back to the Sanctuary was because at that point, Shaka decided to spare Ikki's life, and couldn't bring Ikki back with him on his own. And when he did die in the Hades Saga, something that happened only because he threw the fight and even then he had to instruct his opponents on what to do because he was just that superior, the end result was that he had finally found a way to invade Hades' realm and wipe out his army in their base before attacking Hades himself. There's plenty of good reasons even Hades, an actual god, was terrified when he found out Shaka was coming for him...
- And to make everything worse-no matter what, he may slip a monkey joke or two into the context of his attacks, just for the hell of it. He's having fun doing it.
- Anyone invading his Temple is shown a beautiful illusion of a magnificent land... That can turn into hell at a moment's notice.
- Asgard Saga :
- Megrez Alberich's "Amethyst Sealed" technique: Oh sure, it merely looks like it turns you in a Human Popsicle like what Camus did to Hyoga, right? WRONG.
- You will get drained of your Life Energy at a FAST pace, while Camus' Freezing Coffin merely makes you a Human Popsicle. Also, the shards of amethyst keep on growing, most likely eating in your body, as these crystals holding skeletons are completely full.
- The kicker? You will be conscious the whole time, and in visible agony from the outside.
- And to make it worse, Alberich lies about the No Ontological Inertia aspect of this technique. Meaning, he knows that if he dies the spell will be broken, and he also knows he is a physical pushover in close quarters who could not win in a fair fight, so he pulls that card every time he is at a disadvantage. This means after getting in a lucky hit on Marin and trapping her, he plays Seiya and Hyoga like fiddles, tugging at their heart strings by pulling the "If you kill me, they're doomed!" card.
- And when you thought Alberich could not top that? He can command the very forces of nature to give a trouncing to his opponent. Only Shiryu got around it successfully because he had the right equipment to deal with the job, AND the mental discipline to force a stalemate and block that technique, THEN being a Combat Pragmatist by pulling a I Surrender, Suckers forcing Alberich to use "Amethyst Sealed" one time too many, when Shiryu could take it on safely enough without his shield.
- Benetnasch Mime, aka Dissonant Serenity incarnate. Master of illusions, potentially capable of giving even Gold Saints a run for their money with light speed blows (according to Ikki's account), and to top it off, a Musical Assassin with Razor Floss. The Dissonant Serenity part? As if all of that was not monstruous enough, Shun's Andromeda Chain is capable of sensing hostility and killing intent, YET it did not react at ALL to Mime using Razor Floss to entrap and very nearly END Shun.
- The very fact it took Mind Rape to release his repressed rage and for the Andromeda Chain to acknowledge his killing intent. HOW broken is that poor man that he could nearly KILL someone, yet not register as ACTIVELY WANTING to?
- Megrez Alberich's "Amethyst Sealed" technique: Oh sure, it merely looks like it turns you in a Human Popsicle like what Camus did to Hyoga, right? WRONG.
- Poseidon Saga :
- Scylla Io's introduction. A beautiful maiden turning into a monster assaulting you with six beasts. Shun very much thanked the Nebula Chain for bailing him out of that one.
- Siren Sorento. A Musical Assassin who can pull a Brown Note on you going per the legend of sirens and their bewitching song.
- The effect? It can either prevent you from using your full powers (see Taurus Aldebaran in the manga), or it can outright turn your brain into mush if Sorento decides to be serious with you. Basically, he can decide to nerf you at will, and you won't realize it until it's too late.
- Another very nasty problem? Three people, Aldebaran, Siegfried (depending on the medium), and Shun assume the attack is sound-based since Sorento ostensibly uses his flute and his melody to attack. WRONG. It's something beyond sound that directly attacks the opponent, and blocking sound propagation either by punching out your eardrums or by creating a vacuum will NOT protect you.
- Lymnades Kasa. A very creepy Master of Illusion and telepath specialized in plucking the memories of your dearest person, and mimicking their appearance to lead you to bring down your guard, becoming ripe for the killing, basically weaponizing a Heartwarming Moment. Seiya and Hyoga fall prey to it, and Shun narrowly escapes it thanks to his chain sensing murderous intent.
- However, the man is still so skilled and adept at his mimicry, that Shun still falls prey even as Kasa impersonates Ikki IN FRONT OF HIM, in part due to an Adaptation-Induced Plot Hole : in the anime Ikki had survived Asgard just fine, but in the manga, Ikki was supposedly dead from having been blasted to smithereens by Saga and gone missing ever since, so at least this version makes it more credible that Shun would desperately want to cling on to the hope that his brother was alive.
- As for the effectiveness of his powers and his level of mastery in mimicking others, including personality? When Kasa finally found the memories of Esmeralda, he was near death and could not deal the killing blow, but Ikki concedes that if he had pulled that card sooner, he'd have been completely screwed.
- Sea Dragon Kanon. At the very least, he gives Ikki the mother of Oh, Crap! moments upon their encounter, and you know that anything capable of scaring Ikki means BUSINESS.
- And also, Ikki does give something back in kind with his illusion upon browsing through Kanon's memories. Then, horrifyingly enough, after Shaka and Saga, Kanon is one very rare individual to face Ikki's Mind Rape with NO CONSEQUENCES, and to pursue his onslaught with a Roaring Rampage of Revenge, delivering a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown to a hapless Ikki; even though usually by this point of the fight, Ikki's advantage would be impossible to counter!
- Hades Saga:
- Papillon Myu is a Specter who can transform multiple times. He starts out as a blob, then as a caterpillar-ish thing that will trap you into a cocoon, in which there is a very real possibility you will die. And if you survive this, he will reveal his own Bishōnen Line final form, and his array of psychokinesis powers.
- Overlaps with Creepy Good in some way, but as mentioned above, Shaka ends up Horrifying the Horror when he pulls out his own specters and demons against the Specters in his temple.
- Sphinx Pharaoh is a Specter with an Egyptian theme. He can perform the infamous Test of Osiris to see if you're a pure-hearted person by literally putting your heart in a scale to weigh it against the Feather of Truth. While you're still alive.
- Pictured. Ikki pierces Shun's chest and extracts Hades' soul from his body (a creature that looks very much like an abomination), destroying it. Suddenly, Hades' real soul emerges from Shun's chest in Alien style, but it turns out that was all a dream in Seiya's head.
- Seiya waking up in Cocytus, completely held in freezing ice, surrounded by the dead bodies of past Saints who dared to defy Hades. That is to say, every Saint will, by default, end up in Hades, since being a Saint is by definition, being an enemy to Hades.
- Thanatos remotely killing Pandora. Then trying the same thing on Seika just to spite Seiya.
- The fact that Hades has a sword, and is very willing to use it to deal piercing damage. Seiya sustains some of the more horrific wounds in the series at Hades' hands, and the worst of them stick through Next Dimension...
- The series has some really scary music that sets the mood very well:
- Illusions Of 12 Temples, for the creepiest moments of the Sanctuary Arc.
- The first half of Find Balmung Sword, from the Asgard Arc.
- The eerie 108 masei, and the downright disturbing Greatest Eclipse, from the Hades Arc.
- Illusions Of 12 Temples
- The Asgard Movie:
- A Brainwashed and Crazy Hyoga being utterly ruthless against Shiryu. First, Hyoga removes his mask and gets him to lower his guard, offering his hand for a handshake, getting him to think he had just been a spy in enemy territory, for Hyoga's expression to turn downright vicious, freezing his hand to the bone, rendering him nearly unable to fight back, even if he had the WILL to. Shiryu pulls through via Heroic Willpower but gets beaten within an inch of his life before he can strike back effectively.
- The Eris Movie:
- Seiya yet again dealing with an enemy dabbling into poisons, and losing his five senses before being beaten to a pulp by Orion Jager.
- Lyra Orpheus being the first enemy to weaponize his chords into Razor Floss. Say what you will about Shun, but if Ikki had not seen the technique first, it might not have gone so easily.
- Also the illusion scene where Orpheus gets put on fire to a reprise of his theme is this, but with a touch of Nightmare Retardant, since it nearly gets funny at this point.
- The scenes where the graves of forgotten past Saints are shown to be opening, and the sight is NOT pretty.
- From the Abel Movie:
- Whenever Atlas dishes out punishment with Burning Corona, an attack so strong it literally warps space and leaves the target a crispy, smoking mess. The only fighter who can remotely begin to compare would be Saga when he uses his Galaxian Explosion.
- For a split second when Deathmask uses the Underworld Waves, you can see his aura take the shape of a deathly skull, before the red glare subsides, revealing a dark crab.
- Every single scene showing the Yomotsu Hirasaka and the poor wretches falling down the pit to the Underworld with wails of despair. The horror and despair factors are further upped from the original anime: is this the fate awaiting every human living in the Saint Seiya world? This implies the gods are deliberately letting Hades make the afterlife a Crapsack World for humanity and have been doing so for untold millenia.
- What Ikki pulls on Aphrodite sounds like a very mild example at first, but with a helping of Fridge Horror does a very good job of reminding us of the true fear of the Phoenix Demon Illusion Fist : Showing him enjoying his beauty, and then turning into a grotesque mineral abomination, which is supposed to be what his soul looks like. THEN, a very pissed Aphrodite is taunted into striking with his Bloody Roses against Ikki's Phoenix Flaming Wings Takeoff. He ends up taking the blow in the face, and as he tries to stand up for more... He realizes his own heart was pierced by one of his own roses. That's right, not only does the illusion inflict the obvious Mind Rape, but even if it doesn't kill/neutralize you on the spot, the effects will also not wear off immediately and end up messing with the victim's reflexes and body control, so bad they run the very serious risk of ending up HARMING THEMSELVES if they try a poorly timed counterattack; and LETHALLY SO if they are taunted into attacking at full force. Once under the spell, WHEN does the illusion wear off exactly?
- Hyoga made to nearly bleed to death against Berenice with his Razor Floss. You could actually argue it was a sweet mercy that Berenice decided to put him on fire for mouthing back at him.
- Any time Abel shows his Nightmare Face. The worst part is that in such moments, he just has a very stoic and stern expression, and the nightmarish aspect comes from lighting effects on his face, eyes and expression, which do a perfectly fine job of highlighting his inhumane and unforgiving nature.
- Even Abel's death is a thing of nightmare in a way. The music comes to a very tense climax, and after being pierced in the hear by the Sagittarius Arrow like so many villains, he is visibly leaking his essence from the very lethal wound, yet he somehow manages to stumble back to his throne, screaming like a demented madman in his death throes "ABEL IS GOD!", before being crushed by a mural from his temple falling apart.
- The Lucifer Movie:
- The introduction with Abel, Eris, Poseidon wreaking havoc on Earth. Eris' onslaught ends up causing very visible Body Horror.
- Seeing the Gold Saints being utterly manhandled in literal seconds.
- The aforementioned Ikki vs Eligor fight. YIKES.
- During the Black Saints arc, Seiya has a nightmare about Mu killing Shiryu: In the anime, this is portrayed with a Jump Scare moment of Mu pushing Shiryu off a cliff, but in the manga, Mu beheads Shiryu and uses the blood of his severed head to repair the broken armors. And Mu is shown with a big smile on his face while doing this.
- In the manga, Cassius collected the severed heads of the opponents he defeated, and was planning on doing the same thing with Seiya.
