Saintia Sho: A new Saint Seiya spin-off manga series (plus prologue)

I honestly don’t know how to feel about this. A friend let me know a few hours ago that a spin-0ff Saint Seiya manga is in the works, and she described it as a “Sailor Moon version of Saint Seiya for girls.” Looking around I found some info on wikipedia, and the prologue on a message board.

Saint Seiya – Saintia Sho is an upcoming manga series by Chimaki Kuori, a spin-off of the classic Saint Seiya manga created, written and illustrated by Masami Kurumada.

Kuori is known by her work on the manga adaptation of the Gundam Wing anime and in the Kimi no Kaeru Bashō manga series. Saintia Shō has been scheduled to start serialization in september 2013, its prologue will be featured in that month’s issue of Akita Shoten’s Champion Red magazine. The series will replace the soon-to-be concluded Saint Seiya Episode G, which was authored by Megumu Okada, under commission by Masami Kurumada.

Saintia Shō will follow the traditional central plot common to Kurumada’s original work and its derivative works: Athena, the greek goddess of justice and heroic endeavor, returns when evil consumes Earth, and battles antagonistic deities, the agents of evil, with the assistance of her army of warriors known as Saints, protected by their Cloths, battle armors that represent their guardian constellations. The main character in the series is a young female Saint named Shō, who protects Athena and her Sanctuary from the attack of an antagonistic deity.

The series introduces a new term for the female Saints, which are known as Saintia, whereas in Kurumada’s work they are known simply as Female Saints.

According to the prologue, it takes place after the Sanctuary saga, so my guess is it takes place before the battle against Poseidon. But in all honestly, I honestly don’t know what to think anymore. It seems Kurumada is making any story “canon” for money. Episode G started out as canon, but soon drifted away from the original story line and into something.

The Lost Canvas started out as canon, but just like the other manga, it drifted away really fast, and became its own continuity.

And then, we have Omega, which is a good example of forcing something to be canon just because he’s the original manga’s author, but it suffered from major inconsistencies during the first 51 episodes to be called canon at all. It got better and closer to the original series in the current saga, the one that starts on episode 52. But from what I heard it’s doing pretty bad in Japan, has very few to no sponsors, and the only reason they made a second season is a contract between Toei Animation and a Mexican company for distribution and dubbing rights. That’s pretty sad.

Anyway, here’s the prologue:

HA! That’s Seiya in a skirt! Here’s the link to an English translation a kind anon from the message board I found this did for your viewing pleasure (or out of boredom). If the link expired let me know and I might be able to re-upload it somewhere else.

As you can see on the last page we have a 5-girl team….I guess the taller one is the equivalent of Phoenix? Will she have some kind of yuri attraction to her possible sister? Will I find a ridiculous amount of hentai doujinshis based on this? Will they be good? They’d better be.

[via]