Knights of the Zodiac 21

Masami Kurumada – Viz – 2007 – 28 volumes

Oh, Saint Seiya. Remember how last volume I said I couldn’t think of anything that would top the Celestial Faerie Star battle against Mu? Well, I forgot all about Virgo Shaka. The only way to make the Virgo Knight cool would be to make him as cosmically (no pun intended) awesome as Shaka is. His fight against the Bronze Knights was probably one of the most memorable from the Palace of Athena storyline, but his fight against the Hades/Gold Knights here brought tears of joy to my eyes.

First off, he has a rosary with 108 beads. Each bead represents one of the Hades Knights. He just kinda… waves his hand or something, and a bunch of them die. For every dead Hades Knight, a bead turns black. So he holds that in his hand during the fight to reinforce just how thoroughly he is winning.

Also, nobody seems to really be wounding Shaka. They just… don’t even touch him, which is unusual in this series since people are always punching other people. Shaka’s moves are energy-based and rooted in Buddhism, so every time he yells an attack, he gets a very ornate background. Also, he kills everyone when that happens.

So it comes down to Shaka and three Gold Knights who have turned traitor. Despite the fact that nobody lays a hand on Shaka, there are many pages dedicated to the fact that Shaka is prepared to die by facing the three Gold Knights, there is some symbolism when he takes them behind his temple to do battle under a grove of Sala trees, et cetera. Very theatrical. Shaka uses his ultimate attack, which traps the traitor Gold Knights in a dimension and robs them of their five senses, one by one. The only thing that can shatter Shaka’s spell is… The Athena Exclamation.

The Athena Exclamation is a move that must be performed by three Gold Knights. It is forbidden because it is so powerful, it’s like unleashing all the power of the Big Bang on one spot.

The Big Bang. Yeah. The Athena Exclamation is performed three times (sorta) in this volume.

There’s not much else that happens in this volume. At the beginning, there’s a brief fight between Leo Aiora and the Earthly Low-Lying Star Worm Knight of Hades. As creepy as he is… he’s just no match for the Athena Exclamation. Or even Shaka’s Heavenly Dancing Dharma.

Basically, what I’m saying is that this series still has some of the most over-the-top and entertaining fight scenes I’ve run across in a shounen manga (which is pretty amazing given the fact that they don’t even need the benefit of plot to occur), and also that Shaka may be one of the best characters ever.

Of course, the way things have been going, I’m sure that the next volume will somehow top this one. I have no idea how this series does it, but it does.