Saint Seiya Funko POPS

Saint Seiya, also known as Saint Seiya: Knights of the Zodiac or simply Knights of the Zodiac, is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Masami Kurumada. The story follows five mystical warriors called the Saints who fight wearing sacred sets of armor named “Cloths“, the designs of which derive from the various constellations the characters have adopted as their destined guardian symbols, and empowered by a mystical energy called “Cosmo“. The Saints have sworn to defend the reincarnation of the Greek Goddess Athena in her battle against other Olympian Gods who want to dominate Earth. It was serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump from 1986 to 1990, with the chapters collected into 28 tankobon volumes by Shueisha. The manga was adapted into an anime television series by Toei Animation that ran from 1986 to 1989, before being continued in the form of three original video animation series between 2002 and 2008. Four animated feature films were shown in Japanese theaters from 1987 to 1989, with a fifth in 2004 and a sixth in 2014. Since 2006, creator Kurumada has been publishing a sequel manga titled Saint Seiya: Next Dimension. Several spin-off manga by different authors have also been created, as well as a standalone anime and original net animation. Saint Seiya has been successful, with over 35 million copies sold as of 2017.

The series began to be known in the West after it became popular in France in 1988, where it was given the name of Les Chevaliers du Zodiaque, this was also the first foreign release of the series. Both the original manga and the anime adaptation were also successful in other Asian, European and American countries, however, none of them were translated into English until 2003. In North America the manga is licensed by Viz Media, the anime has been released by both DIC Entertainment (as Knights of the Zodiac) and ADV Films, and the first four films were released by Discotek Media, and was DiC’s only show to first and last air on Cartoon Network. The Saints are the 88 Warriors of Athena. They fight wearing armors called “Cloths” of different power and endurance according to the rank of the specific Saint, the design of which derive from the constellations the characters are born under. Athena’s Saints are divided into three different classes which, Gold Saints, Silver Saints and Bronze Saints wearing Gold Cloths, Silver Cloths and Bronze Cloths respectively. The latter is the class that the five main protagonists are part of in the manga authored by Masami Kurumada and is the lower class, then Silver Saint are the middle class and Gold Saints represents the elite and are considerably stronger than the other. Cloths are inspired to the 88 constellations (88 good and 88 bad). There are still 28 constellations that were not used in Saint Seiya. The Cerberus constellation was deleted in 1919, therefore it is anachronistic.