Saint Seiya: Knights of the Zodiac / YMMV

Badass Decay: While most Bronze Knights were Demoted to Extra in the second half of Season 1, Magnus and Shaun got hit by this really bad, as their fights against the Silver Knights were adapted out, and they were easily defeated by Perseus Algol and Vander Guraad.
Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Seiya discussing with a talking manhole cover (who is a security guard for the Galaxian Wars) is something that no one would have expected to see happening.
Base-Breaking Character:
- Shaun. There's those who love her and those who hate her, most of the criticism being towards the controversial Gender Flip. There's a third group that like her as a character, but admit that they can't ignore the Unfortunate Implications of changing Shun's gender.
- Hyoga. Some like his characterization and his development throughout the show, while others find him too much of a jerkass and too different from the original Hyoga.
Broken Base:
- Esmeralda's design. Some fans think it's fine since in the original she resembled Shun a lot and it makes sense for this to also be the case in this version. Others are more critical of it, finding the design to just be a lazy Palette Swap of Shaun and wishing the creators had given her a new appearance in this reboot.
Fanfic Fuel: Since the start, fans have been wondering how the Hades arc would go in the reboot with Shun's Gender Flip, leading some to come up with their own scenarios for it and how Hades!Shaun would be. There have also been works despicting Shaun not being possessed by Hades, but by the goddess Persephone. Even though the reboot is currently in the Sanctuary arc, the glimpse of the Yours Ever pendant on baby Shaun's neck has been considered enough proof that the Hades arc is being foreshadowed and will happen in the future.
Growing the Beard: The second season, Battle for Sanctuary, is considered this.
Ho Yay: Guraad and Kido have quite a bit of this, with their interactions making them come across as bitter exes. It's common to see fans referring to them as Saori's two gays dads.
Incest Yay Shipping: Ikki/Shun always had its shippers, and this version is no different, with Ikki/Shaun also having its admirers. This version of Esmeralda, Ikki's confirmed love interest, resembling Shaun even more has also helped.
Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Despite her status as Base-Breaking Character, Shaun has been paired with quite a number of characters like Hyoga, Ikki, Saori and June. She has also been shipped with characters that haven't yet appeared in the reboot, like Hades and Pandora.
Les Yay:
- Shaun/Saori. Fans like the idea of the two having a Lady and Knight romance. The same shippers also love the potential of a Foe Yay Shipping between the two if the show ever reboots the Hades arc.
- June/Shaun had already a small following before June was even confirmed to be in the show, due to the Shun/June Ship Tease in the original series. Their affectionate moments won the hearts of fans, even those who didn't ship them in the original.
So Okay, It's Average: While the most abrasive reviews this series got are pretty harsh due the changes made to the plot and the characters, other, more positive reviews tend to consider it not terrible, but not particularly remarkable either and choosing to stick with the manga or the 1986 anime.
Special Effect Failure:
- A major reason why the show was given backlash when it was first revealed was the animation itself, looking low-budget with many hallmarks of late-2000s Nickelodeon CGI on full display including rough looking texturing, underlit rendering and hair that looks like plastic and barely moves. The doll-like designs of the characters don't do much in the way of helping things. These issues don't really improve much by the time of its sequel Battle for Sanctuary.
- This is also the reason why the Bronze Saints don't have their helmets this time, as the animators were unable to get it to work properly.
- In "The Seventh Sense", the fight between Seiya and Aldebaran has some very pixelated texturing going on with the temple floor in multiple shots.
They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
- The reaction to the Netflix trailer can best be described as apocalyptic, to say the least. The dislike/like ratio in the English, Portuguese, and Spanish trailers is overwhelmingly in dislike corner. The biggest cause of this has been Shun's Gender Flip, which producer Eugene Son admits was a unilateral decision by him in order to have a female main character without having to create a new character and/or change the story, even though Toei expressed reservations about the change. It's a big enough deal that newspapers in Latin America ran articles criticizing the change. Neither the cheap looking late-2000s TV CGI, cartoonish and stilted voice acting (despite Sentai Filmworks's cast returning to this series) or the fact that the first batch of villains were a human army helped matters any.
- For Latin American Spanish viewers, the situation is even worse, as Seiya's voice actor went from Jesús Barrero, who passed away in 2016, to Darío Yazbek Bernal, who is Gael García Bernal's younger half-brother and, while he did some acting, especially in Money Heist, another Netflix series, he never did voice acting before and it shows, as his acting sounds wooden and out-of-place for a character like Seiya. However, Alfonso Herrera, who voiced Magnus/Hyoga, received a more favorable reception.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Vander Guraad, a normal Human who wants to liberate humankind from the will of the gods and one of the very few times the saints fight against a villain using traditional weaponry, many consider that this could be used for an interesting set up for the conflict of the gods but that it was wasted with an erratic and contradictory characterization and the rushed plot made him even more disposable than the regular filler villain with his motivation undermined by the existence of the two prophecies about Athena.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Combining both the Black Saints from the original series with the Steel Saints from Toei series is actually a good idea, since a common criticism of the Black Saints is that they were never explored as characters beyond being common goons, and adding Cassios to their ranks, who was Seiya's rival to obtain the Pegasus Cloth, and giving him the Black variation would be an excellent idea... except that the Black Saints are not dark counterparts of the main group, and Cassios can't be the Black Pegasus Saint.
Trans Audience Interpretation: A few fans like to headcanon Shaun as trans.
Win Back the Crowd: While the initial release was affected by Tainted by the Preview and very negative reactions from the fandom, with many refusing to even give the show a try, once the story moved to the Sanctuary arc, introduced more fan favorite characters and the animation also began to improve, it started to receive more approval. It also helps that fans of the show started to post on social media about the more positive aspects, leading some to finally watch the show and form their own opinions about it. Though the general consensus about the writing is still So Okay, It's Average, there will be people pointing out many plot points and characterizations that the reboot did better than the original.

YMMV / Saint Seiya: Knights of the Zodiac

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