YMMV / Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Alone. Did he really believe all the stuff about death being the ultimate salvation, or was he just pretending to be the bad guy in order to force others to kill him and seal Hades in the process?
• Anti-Climax Boss: None other than Hades himself. He doesn't do anything but take a hit.
• Ass Pull:
  • Regulus being able to perform both the Athena Exclamation (which requires three Gold Saints) and the Zodiac Exclamation (a move that's more powerful than the aforementioned Athena Exclamation and which requires all twelve Gold Saints to pull off) all on his own during his battle against Rhadamanthys. The only redeeming point is that pulling these moves is what kills him.
  • Rhadamanthys' Plot Armor is thicker than an iceberg, as he survived trough attacks that would kill any other character in the series. Even after being hit by the Zodiac Exclamation (listed above), and having his body split in half (vertically, meaning that his brain was also split in two) by Alone, he still manages to carry Pandora to safety before finally dying. He must be harder to kill than Seiya himself.
• Awesome Ego: Cancer Manigoldo and Gemini Aspros both have huge egos (Aspros' definitely shows right before and during his battle against Mephistopheles Yoma/Kairos) and they are indeed very much awesome.
• Badass Decay: Unicorn Yato. Early on, he was quite useful enough that he not only saved Tenma's life, he actually had a superior kill count to most Saints including those from the original manga. However stronger enemies and increasing injuries eventually decayed his performance in battle and later caused such strain he had to hand down the Unicorn Sainthood to someone else.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Alone for his Salvation Plan. Despite being labeled the purest person on the planet, there is a sizable portion of the fandom calling him more monstrous than Hades. However, many fans still like him as they think he's just a Well-Intentioned Extremist and he still pulled a Heel–Face Turn in the end.
  • Pandora. You either like her for being sexy and a strong woman, or hate her because her attitude toward Athena's Saints and Athena herself is rather... unpleasant. To her credit, though, she gets a lot better after joining with Tenma to defeat Partita.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Pisces Albafica is the most popular Gold Saint of this series, being much more well received than Pisces Aphrodite, from the main series. The author, Shiori Teshirogi, took note of this and wrote a short backstory about him, which received a manga adaptation and kickstarted the The Lost Canvas: Gaiden manga.
  • Taurus Rasgado and Cancer Manigoldo are also popular and much better received than their successors (Aldebaran and Deathmask) from the original series.
  • Bennu Kagaho. It helps that he's an Expy of Memetic Badass Phoenix Ikki.
  • The Dream God Phantasos (the female form at least) is quite popular in Japan and has a number of fan-arts.
• Even Better Sequel: For many Saint Seiya fans, The Lost Canvas is an improvement from the original (which is also a good show) in every possible way. It does help that it improves on some flaws the original had, gives focus to more characters, and avoids the overused "Rescue the Goddess" plot.
  • It helps that the plot never deviates from the initial focus on the relationship triangle between Sasha, Tenma and Alone, whereas Seiya suffered from Motive Decay quite fast.
• Fandom Rivalry: With the Saint Seiya: Next Dimension fans, who tend to dismiss anything related to The Lost Canvas as non-canonical. By other side, The Lost Canvas fans consider it to be much better than Next Dimension.
• Fridge Brilliance: Explaining Youma's time manipulation powers and fondness of younger brothers as due to being the forgotten Titan Kairos, Kronos's younger brother. Specifically, the Greeks had two words for time, Kronos and Kairos. While "Kronos" meant the natural procession of time, "Kairos" meant a specific moment.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Coldly received in Japan, The Lost Canvas gained a strong following in Latin America, just like the original Saint Seiya anime.
• Growing the Beard: To many Lost Canvas fans, the series only got good starting from the Minos vs Albafica fight.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In the original series, the last chapters has Seiya being amazed by Hades' true form and complimented on his sad but beautiful eyes. This series takes that to another level by not only having Tenma and Alone best friends, but also portraying Alone as having romantic feelings for Tenma and being completely obsessed with him. Also, this time it’s Alone who praises Tenma’s (in his own words) “beautiful, vivid red eyes”.
• Ho Yay: Has its own page.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Let's see, you can ship Tenma with Yato, Yuzuriha, Dohko, Sasha (even though they are pretty much Just Friends) and of course Alone. You can choose whichever suits your taste.
• Moe:
  • Young Sasha is extremely cute, and her brother Alone before his Face–Heel Turn also counts.
  • In the manga, Yato is sometimes drawn◊ with a smaller face than the rest of the male cast and big, doe eyes, also giving the Moe effect.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • There is one, and Alone's crossed it... although he does think he's doing it to end all suffering.
  • Aiacos full stop. He sacrifices every single one of his underlings just to prove they are tools.
  • Yoma is not only sacrificing his family to grant his own wish, he also made two brothers kill each other for no reason other than having fun.
• Narm: Alone's name. While the series can sometimes get silly with the characters names, the fact Alone's best friends are named Sasha and Tenma just brings to question how no one noticed he would turn into a villain. Due to this, some fans pretend he is named Aaron.
  • Considering how Tenma clearly states it in the first few pages of the first chapter, I don't think Hades' identity was supposed to be a mystery.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Not these Lost Canvas characters per se, but when compared to their classic counterparts. As mentioned in Even Better Sequel above, The Lost Canvas fixed many flaws of the classic, including the characterizations, so it's a given that many characters would end up being more likeable.
  • Pisces Albafica and Cancer Manigoldo. In the classic series, they are two of the less sympathetic Gold Saints, especially Cancer Deathmask who was a ruthless killer. Here, Albafica and Manigoldo both sacrificed themselves in the most awesome ways possible for the sake of protecting others and became the two most memorable Saints.
  • Pegasus Tenma is considered as being far better written than Seiya by many fans. Compared to Seiya, his Hot-Blooded and Idiot Hero tendencies are toned down considerably - the two qualities that made Seiya rather widely hated by the audience - and he gets bonus points for having a more cheerful and more rational attitude.
  • In a comparison between Saori and Sasha, the latter tends to win in discussions, as she has been portrayed as being kinder, calmer and more mature ever since the very beginning; while the first portrayal of Saori was a Bad Boss who forced her Saints to be her horsies (she grew out of that but the audience would usually remember). And while Saori is mostly portrayed as a Damsel in Distress who has to be rescued (and most of the hate for her is because of this), Sasha tends to stand in the front line with her Saints and helps them rather than having them helped her. It's not that Saori is just a plain bad character, it's just that Sasha is a lot more noticeably likeable.
• Squick:
  • In this universe, it is revealed that Shion mind raped the Cloths he had to repair and derived entrancing pleasure from it. Ewww. Even if he atoned for it, Ewww.
  • The possibility of Sisyphus falling in love with Sasha is this to many fans, as she is the same age as his nephew Regulus.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Garuda Aiacos. After his defeat, he starts moping about whether he once had bonds and is interrupted by Kagaho who was sent to kill him. Kagaho instead spares him and tells him to remember his old persona, Suikyo. What does this mean? Who knows? Aiacos never returns.
• Vocal Minority: While The Lost Canvas is generally considered the best Saint Seiya spin-off, some people would feel that only the original series is good and therefore dismissing all kind of sequels, including this one.

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