Ask John: Will St. Seiya Ever Be Released in America?

Question:
Why has Saint Seiya not been imported to the US? The extreme popularity of Dragonball Z and the recent TV airing of Yuu Yuu Hakusho is evidence that there is a clear market in America for combat anime. The highly derivative Samurai Troopers/Ronin Warriors was also imported here with a TV airing. But the US seems to be the only country in the world that hasn’t done at least a video release of the show that effectively founded the genre in Japan. Is there a factor that I’m missing somewhere?

Answer:
I think that there are a number of factors that combine to make an American release of St. Seiya very unlikely. It’s true that St. Seiya has been widely available in much of the world for years and remains immensely popular in France and Spanish speaking countries, but the show is virtually unknown in America. It’s also a very long show, with 114 episodes and 4 theatrical movies. Immense episode counts are usually a deterrent to an American release, however this seems to be largely disregarded with martial arts/action series like Dragonball and Yu Yu Hakusho. Most likely, the major setbacks to an American release of St. Seiya are the show’s age, its extreme violence, and its bishounen characters.

St. Seiya premiered in October of 1986, six months after the premier of Dragonball and 8 years before the Japanese television premier of Yu Yu Hakusho. (The heavily St. Seiya influenced Yoroiden Samurai Troopers premiered in 1988 and Heavenly Sphere Shurato in 1989). While Dragonball is actually older than St. Seiya, original Dragonball has a very child-like look to its art style that belies its age. St. Seiya, on the other hand, is very much a product of the 80s and shows its age much more clearly than Dragonball. While Samurai Troopers has nostalgia value to rely on in the American market, St. Seiya, with little name recognition, simply looks too dated for the taste of many American anime fans weaned on more contemporary fare like Outlaw Star and Cowboy Bebop. Tied in to the dated look of the animation is the very highly stylized “bishounen” look of the Saints themselves. The Saint Seiya boys are virtually the epitome of the “beautiful” yet masculine anime heroes. While American fans don’t mind at all the muscular, rugged men of Dragonball or the handsome, angst-ridden boys of Gundam Wing, the watery eyes, sparkling teeth, and flowing locks of luxurious hair representative of the St. Seiya boys may be too effeminate for many American viewers.

While the bishounen look of the characters may be a difficult sell to Americans, the intense, extreme violence of the show only serves to enforce the show’s limited market potential. While it took Dragonball some time to develop its emphasis on martial arts competitions, and Yu Yu Hakusho a very long time to focus heavily on hand to hand fighting, St. Seiya dives into bloody, bone-breaking, man to man, hand to hand combat from the very first episode. In fact, even years along when Dragonball had evolved into Dragonball Z and the Saiyan warriors were engaging in world shattering fights, no Dragonball Z fight ever approaches the sheer bloody brutality of St. Seiya, which routinely featured characters being crushed, burned, stabbed, maimed, and literally beaten to death. While Dragonball and Yu Yu Hakusho have both come to America with the help of television broadcast, and Samurai Troopers is making its comeback based on nostalgia for its American television broadcast, St. Seiya is simply too violent for American television. And editing it simply wouldn’t leave enough footage to make up a full American season’s worth of episodes. Without support from television broadcast, there’s likely just not enough interest in or demand for St. Seiya in America to make licensing such a long series worth the time, money and effort.