Ask John: Why Didn’t St. Seiya Succeed in North America?

Question:
I’ve been wondering why was Saint Seiya not a success for western viewers? Why does it seems that all the new fanbase for the series old and new are from South America?

Answer:
I arrived at the party a bit late, first watching St. Seiya anime in the early 1990s on worn-out VHS full of sound and image drop-outs and tracking flaws. I was surprised and mildly impressed by how violent the series was considering that it was a mainstream 80s show that pre-dated Dragon Ball Z. But I’ve never been a particularly big fan of St. Seiya, then or now. So a die-hard fan may be able to express a more thoughtful and detailed reasoning that I can, but I’ll make an attempt. I think that there are a number of reasons why St. Seiya hasn’t caught on in America, the biggest two being the show’s age and its character designs, other reasons including the way it was broadcast on American television and its incomplete DVD release.

St. Seiya probably never had a viable chance of becoming successful in America because it reached America so late. The series premiered in America twenty years after its Japanese debut, and many years after it had become an established hit in Spain, Italy, France, Mexico, and Latin America. Since the popularity of anime exploded in America during the early 2000s, there’s been a noticeable resistance to virtually every anime made prior to the 1990s. Very late 80s anime series like Ranma and Dragon Ball Z have fared well in America, but older shows including Lupin, Mobile Suit Gundam, Maison Ikkoku, Dirty Pair, Urusei Yatsura, and Hokuto no Ken, just to name a few, have never achieved mainstream success. Since the majority of America’s anime fans were introduced to anime in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the majority of them aren’t interested in anime which, to them, looks and feels old or out of date. For long time anime fans and those who wholeheartedly love the art form, it’s discouraging to see so little respect and interest in older anime, but viewers have every right to like and dislike whatever they choose. The fact that the St. Seiya anime itself is older than many of today’s American anime fans probably has a lot to do with why today’s American viewers aren’t interested in watching it.

Viewers used to 80s anime character designs and familiar with the St. Seiya character designs through man years of experience with them may be readily willing to overlook their obvious stylistic excess. The character designs have a distinctly effeminate look, and changing into color coordinated magic armor has some similarity to girls’ dress up dolls and childish “Power Ranger” style heroes. St. Seiya may simply demand more leniency from viewers used to anime heroes like Spike Spiegal and Vash the Stampede than average Americans were willing to give.

The mere appearance of the show – both its age and its character designs – may have predisposed Americans against the show before they ever even watched it. Upon watching it, there are other factors which may have discouraged American interest. DIC brought the series to America and heavily promoted it as a children’s program. The show’s broadcast on the Cartoon Network was heavily censored with both digital editing and script revisions to disguise or eliminate violence, death, and religious symbols. Of course, by removing the violence from St. Seiya, much of what makes the show appealing is also lost. Hardcore American fans avoided the drastically censored TV broadcast. Mainstream viewers may have been insulted by the obvious and condescending edits. The show was relatively quickly pulled from American TV.

AD Vision did release an uncut and uncensored version of the series on domestic DVD, but ADV was always vigorously defensive about questions regarding how much of the series they would release on domestic DVD. Many American fans were, as it turns out, justifiably concerned about AD Vision’s commitment to fully releasing the long anime series on domestic DVD. AD Vision’s repeated claims that they would release “all” of St. Seiya were eventually revealed to mean not all of the existing animation, but rather all of the series that ADV had acquired distribution rights to, which turned out to be only 60 episodes, not even enough to finish the first story arc. I don’t know exactly how many potential American consumers hesitated to purchase the domestic uncut DVDs out of fear that they’d be investing in an incomplete release, but I do know for certain that lacking consumer confidence caused some collectors to not purchase the domestic DVD release.

I really don’t know anything about anime fandom beyond Japan and America. I don’t know exactly why St. Seiya is so popular in Europe and Latin America, but it certainly is. There’s also a significant fan following in China, as proven by a recently released Chinese St. Seiya fan film. The series’ popularity is probably attributable to its intense action and its even more intense themes of masculine emotional bonding, and loyalty and brotherhood between men, developed through a long unfolding narrative. In many of the countries where St. Seiya is popular, it was introduced while it was still current or relatively recent. By the time the series reached America it struck American viewers as old, and possibly slightly homoerotic. Rather than seeming exciting, St. Seiya felt like a rehash of Dragon Ball Z and Yu Yu Hakusho to American fans (despite the fact that St. Seiya predates both). The heavily censored American television broadcast that alienated intelligent and older viewers, and lacking faith in the show’s domestic DVD release were probably the last nails necessary to build a coffin for the show in America.