#this blog is in serious danger of becoming a compilation of the owner's monologues

[aqualianbird]

So, I am having a relatively stressful episode at work, I have enough alcohol in my blood to make me feel chatty, and there isn’t nearly as much Saint Seiya talk on my dash as I’d need so here it goes :

Let’s talk about ... well, Seiya

It’s dificult for me to comprehend exactly how many fans of Pegasus Seiya there are around. Often it seems like he is the most hated and the most loved character in the fandom simultaneously. No, seriously, I don’t think even characters that were designed to be hated like Tatsumi or Kasa got as much (and for the latter even Shun said the dude was going way too far)

For my part I plead guilty to the first one; my sympathy for the Pegasus knight only lasted a dozen of episodes. I often joked to my sister how the reason I never watched the anime a second time (despite a habbit of feeding on re-runs of favourite shows instead of new ones) was entirely because I couldn’t stand the idea of watching so many frames of Seiya again.

Nevertheless, I always made it a point never to completely exclude completely him for any headcanoning or writing I made around the universe, especially if it touched Athena and the 5 main bronzes - few are the sound reasons to exclude him from the universe that was nammed after him.

I never say much or write much about him because, despite my irritation with the character, I never wanted to reduce him to being The Clown, or make him the bottom of all sorts of jokes.I may be wierd but even if he is a fictional character I wasn’t going to treat him unfairly ... In general we could say I could never picture him in a way that would make him more appealing to my eyes, as a writer or a fan.

So here in this saturday midnight let me first speak ill of Seiya, and then speak way less ill of him (and if you survive to the end you will find out it really is related to my work, that’s what got me thinking)

The many facettes of Pegasus Seiya and how they made me grow as a writer

(Since this is getting long I figured it needed a title)

If I want to speak ill of Seiya first it is because I am a big fan of riddles. In general I just like to understand the logical connections between everything (you have no idea how satisfied I was the day I found out the anime colours of the gold saints’ hair were chosen to contrast with the overwhelming yellows of their armours. Really it’s just like watching those videos were everything fits perfectly into everything). And I think I did figure out why the “Seiya hate”.

Furthermore, with the exemple of Seiya I started understanding many advice given to beginers about character-building and protagonists. I also hope this first part will illustrate how I always tried to “see the good” in Seiya.

I always thought he was a admirable character - in theory. I believe this is a shared feeling, nobody would dare say Seiya is a poor character absolutely useless to the dynamics of the series.  

(Ok I’m idealising a little. but the least one could say is that the content he generates is usually quite neutral)

Everything he does is heoric : he never gives up, he leads, he defeats enemies 300x bigger than himself, he helps those in need ... Seiya is really good, almost perfect in everyway except for his mischievious side, and worthy of all the praise he gets within the universe - in theory.

But oh god how annoying he was in practice

I wonder how many people reading this have never rolled their eyes during one of those typical “Seiya comes to save the day” moments.

So why ? Why is he annoying so many people ? Or, at least, why is he not inspiring as much as other characters of this series do ? I think I found the solution to that riddle (and I know it to be true for at least me and my sibilings)

Personally, I can easily name the moments Seiya irritated me the most. Disrigarding this one scene in a filler where Seiya makes a sexsit comment, it was in the scenes where he appeared at the last moment to save the day and everybody was cheerfully calling him name. Or how he was always the only one to be able to defeat the “big bosses”. All these scenes irritated me in how they were written to make him look as the big hero and protagonist of the show.

Which, you know. He actually is.

The story relates his steps - check

Does heroic stuff : self-sacrifice, never gives up even if the situations look desperate - check

Is indispensable to the plot : he defeats the big bosses, so yes - check

So why ?

Tying to put more words on this, the following sentence formed into my mind : “It is faked protagonism”.

With hindsight I am affraid Seiya’s character suffered a lot from the fillers of the anime in the same way Saori’s roles in fillers left the wrong impression of “damselle in distress” and Shun as “the crybaby always needing his brother to save him”. The fillers repeated ad nauseum the same formula : “enemy attacks - the bronzes go to fight them - Seiya gets hit on the head a lot - Let’s make him hit on the head three times more to show it has nothing to do with the last enemy they fought - He still miraculously avoids head trauma and defeats everyone and is the only one getting carried in triumph”. As a result, his heroic trait was completely banalizing and we were left us thinking “Does he ever do anything new ?”

Talking to my sibilings and seeing the trends on Tumblr the past years, I believe this feeling has been refrazed a lot as “We want to see x characters instead of Seiya”.

This is the point in this analysis where the wannabe writer in me starts putting her two cents. How come even minor characters seem to be more appealing than Seiya ?

I always did get what kind of traits Kuru wanted to give him. In theory. But in practice, they never seem to manage getting past the screen. Leaving out the glamour the Gold Saints’ name offer, if we compare Seiya to the other Bronzes, even taking only manga canon events one could say he suddenly appears quite pale as a character.

For instance, in the course of the series, Shyiru begins undergoing major character developpment from day one; he who had great pride looses his battle against Seiya.

In the later arcs, he sacrifices his eyesight to save his friends in this beautiful scene, which ensues in another character developpment moment where he learns to fight blind, goes to the big 12 temples battle blind. He is the first to kill a Gold Saint -actually he is the only one to have killed 2 gold saints in this battle- and we are very often reminded he is sacrificing a happy life with Shunrei everytime he goes on mission to save the world.

In a similar way, it is easy to be reminded how Ikki is battling his past everyday, how Hyoga is struggling to build a future everyday, and we could all appreciate Shun’s amazing strength in for instance the battle against Pisces or the beautiful scene of his sacrifice in Hades

Next to this, Seiya just seems to be “beaten around”, an idiot who tags along without bringing much into the group aprat from yelling “Saorii-saaaaaan” untill the osts dry up causing him to rise up and defeat the big boss on the cue of pegasus fantasy. And yet, he still receives all the glory in the narative and is at the center of attention.

The general impression me and my sibilings got was “He is the protagonist just because the series is named after him.” The naration and the fillers seem to have built a house of cards around his punch, which is definitively what irritated me and my sibilings and I am theoretising most of the fandom as well.

Now in his defence, his comedic trait and good contact with people does not have much room in end-of-the-world battles against gods that only address to humans talking down to them, and as mentioned the fillers did not do him any favours. The plot of his lost sister is quite forgotten after the first arc, and unlike other characters it does not seems like he picks up any other defining traits during the course of the series. (Personally, the ultimate strie that just made me loose all patience is the shipping with Saori that Toei has going on)

Which is where I realised : this is probably what everybody means when talking of “insuficient of character developpment”

We often see the words “character develeppment” in critiques or writing tips. Everybody stresses how important for your story it is. But it is only recently, paired with the exemple of Seiya that I have truly realised what this means.

I read somewhere that “If your protagonist becomes perfect, if he is not longer evolving, then he stops being a protagonist”. I think with Seiya I could sense the results of keeping a protagonist that is not longer evolving in the story.

One could also argue he is not sacrificing as much as the others. Like sure, he is ready to sacrifice his life every time, but it also never seems that his life is in any real danger - he only ever ends up in the hospital after the big guy is defeated. He never seems to suffer any consquences of his injuries during the battles - has the narative ever implied he could not throw his punches as well as usual because of his injuries ? He mostly attacks, falls down, can’t move for a few minutes and then gets up again. It is more a narrative of “If you don’t succeed, try harder and harder untill you do”.

Which helped me put in practice another writing advice : do not let your main characters excape the consequences of their actions.

It does not mean everything has to be realistic (of course they can loose way more blood that humanly possible and still survive because it visually increases the dramatic effect). I come to realise it means that if you give too much free passes, the stakes will not feel as high, and your plots will bear much less tension than they potentially could.

Going back to Seiya as much as his actions are heroic in theory, they do not feel heroic to most people watching it probably because his "never giving up and keep punching” attitude does not have consequences. They have as much effect as him getting out the trash : it sure is unpleasant, it smells baad, the trash starts leaking, it’s disgusting, you hears noises inside the trash disposal and nobody wants to know what would thrive in this smelly and juicy environement, but in the end it will be over in a second. You just throw away the bag, maybe you got a bit of trash juice on your shoes but it will easily be washed away by water.

Taking the same problem from a different angle offers the opportunity to look into giving traits to your character :

We can all agree that “never give up and keep punching” was intended to be Seiya’s main trait of character. It seems, however, it did not result to be as memorable or as inspiring as planned. Which reminded me of this other piece of advice :

“If you give your character a trait you consider his most defining characteristic, but never challenge it at any point, this trait is going to have as much effect as a mole on their cheek” - it is now loud and clear to me.

With the exemple of Seiya, I would add variety in the challenges is important, because repetition decreses tension, and less tention also means less investment in one’s story (or the story involving one particular character).

And if repeated to much, it becomes annoyance towards one’s character.

Calling myself out - Time to work on liking Seiya

Now this has gotten so much longer and personal than I ever expected, but after speaking so bad of Seiya I really do not want to leave out the part where I speak good of him. Especially when it involves my favourite kind of riddles with Saint Seiya characters : fill the gaps.

As mentioned before, it was always quite clear what traits Kurumada wanted to give the Pegasus Saint. Let’s start with the most obvious ones:

Mischievious side, implying as well that :

Has a sense of humour

Quite good with people or at least with kids

Rebel/independent side (flashback of Saori ridding Jabu, the begining of the anime)

Never gives up

Is a good leader / is capable of bringing people toghether / of rallying people to his cause

The last ones on the list are quite easy to forget about him, because of the “lack of challenge” discussed earlier (nobody would have ever forgotten about his leader skills if let’s say he had prevented Hyoga from turing over completely to Poseidon to stay with Isaak). In that spirit, I recently came across an idea that would make those two traits more “challenging” and give a more human dimention to his character.

Now the fact he was since always a bit of a rebel has an influence on his leader capacities, as being an independent mind he stands out and will not depend much external factors to go in a direction. But this alone does not make such an unchallenged leader as Seiya.

Now this is where my current employment helped this reflexion :  I work customer service, more precisely a position involving processing and solving issues.

The very first advice I was given during training was “Always sound confident. Even if you understand jack about what the customer is talking about, just sound confident. Make believe that you know your shit even if you are just about to google a crash course on the subject. Because if they even think for a second that you don’t know they will eat you“.

And let me tell you how accurate this advice is. I became the favourite of this Italian lady who always had problems with her printer because I read to her in a very confident voice an article I was reading on the spot after punching out her question in google.

It is not easy, and it really pumps your adrenaline, but it is true : if you sound confident people are going to follow your lead and believe in what you say. Even if you yourself have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.

Now today, I was thinking how this could be the secret behind “The Miracle of Seiya”; maybe this is why Seiya is very good at being a leader, and even more, why he is very good at being a leader in the apocalypse fighter army of Athena.

He reassures everybody and gives them hope by making them believe he has 100% confidence in a given situation and that everything is under control, much like I became a printer and Wifi expert in the eyes of that Italian lady even though I actually dread those motherfuckers.

That would totally explain this bit at the Cancer temple too, this scene we all make a little fun of, where is is all “Don’t say that Shiryu ! We must think that we have still 9 hours to save Saori !” and moments later he seems to be ignoring his own advice saying “that’s not a lot” (Could be also something lost in translation tho)

And with this sort of influence on other people, he finally becomes a crucial character to the story, as he becomes the glue to the team without which it is possible the other bronzes would not have been as solid of a team, maybe even disbanding as the challenges they faced seemed often hopeless.

And with that I think I am ready to write something involving Seiya someday ...