Saint Seiya 17
March 20, 2009
Oh dear, what am I going to do with this series? The story… the story isn’t GOOD, and I think that has to do with the fact that the Poseidon arc here isn’t very good, but it continues to do this thing where the characters have no problems doing more and more insane things in order to beat their opponents. Neither the characters or the opponents have any problem with people not dying, fighting with blood gushing from neck wounds or eye sockets, or people returning from the dead for no apparent reason.
I mean… Hyoga fights one of his old friends from Russia on the ocean floor. Just… you know, runs into him down there. A friend he saw die when a glacier plowed into his face. In order to beat this friend, he has to get his powers down to absolute zero. Except, apparently, they can both do this. So then Hyoga is possessed by the spirit of their dead teacher (who Hyoga killed a few volumes ago), and uses his dead teacher’s finishing move. Twice. For some reason, the second time kills him. Or they may have just been discussing how the first finisher would kill him, and then it didn’t, so then they got the real finisher out. This series is good for talking up moves, using them, and then talking up even more deadly moves that are somehow more powerful than their former most powerful move.
Yes.
Lots of armor is broken in this volume. Some new and bizarre skills emerge despite the broken armor, and I suspect all will somehow end up with gold upgrades when all is said and done. I’m actually kind of surprised that didn’t happen at the end of the last story. An… evil half emerges, which was something I suspected at first during the Sanctuary fight and was explained away, but I am not surprised it was used as a story element here.
Also, that panel of evil Roshi was pretty awesome. I don’t even know that he’s supposed to be evil, which makes it even better. This series would do something like that.
March 20, 2009 at 6:08 pm
Interesting fact : Hyoga’s eye wound is one of the few wounds that won’t be healed by the end of the manga. :P
Well I like the scenes with Ikki in this tome. And next volume is the end of Poseidon, and I think the final tome is the best of the Poseidon arc. (Ok the rest is not really great :P )
March 21, 2009 at 12:26 am
[...] (Tiamat’s Manga Reviews) David Welsh on vol. 2 of Papillon (Precocious Curmudgeon) Connie on vol. 17 of Saint Seiya (Slightly Biased Manga) Deb Aoki on vol. 1 of Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei (About.com) Tiamat’s [...]
March 22, 2009 at 3:53 am
Wow, it’s kind of random that Hyoga’s eye never heals. I didn’t think anything like that was permanent in this series. Maybe that’s a symbolic wound, or something.
Ikki’s scenes were pretty cool. The finality of him being banished to the Bermuda Triangle, followed by him just waltzing back in saying that he wasn’t as good as his brother? That was kind of awesome.
I’m kind of glad I’ve only got two volumes left. I don’t really like this story arc, and I am really looking forward to the Hades parts.