>>1
It's sorta hpyed on this board but you shouldn't let that get to you. Saint Seiya certainly has its qualities and its moments but overall it's just far, FAR too long and repetitive. Fights usually consist of both sides showing off their moves (the 10,000th time seeing Ryu Sei Ken it really gets annoying), then the good guys being several overpowered and getting the **** beating out of them until they are literally nothing but bloody pulps but then the friendship and determination burning in their hearts suddenly (and randomly) give them the necessary power to beat the enemy out of nowhere. Saint Seiya's crew pulled random DeMs and power ups out of their ases long before Ichigo, Naruto or Luffy were even born.
Oh and the battles aren't just formulaic as hell (the formula only stops being used in the Hades arc) but they are also just like rpg battles. Everyone always waits for the enemy to finish his speech and his move. Which means no fast paced, dynamic action but just showcases of the exact same moves over and over again. About every 5 minutes you're facepalming because the main characters could easily have won if they just interrupted an enemy's move but instead let themselves get hit and wait another 15 minutes because they aren't allowed to win before the last minute of the episode.
The problem is that the Hades arc (which is awesome and the only part really worth watching) requires you to have at least a bit of knowledge about the characters and the world so you can't skip the 114 eps of the TV series. To make it worse, the TV series also has a lot of craptacular filler (think Bleach Bounto arc).
I'd recommend to watch the TV series canon eps and then move on to the Hades OVA.
Watch: 1-15 (character introduction)
Skip: 16-35 (16.22 are filler, 23-35 are boring as hell canon, at least but maybe some others randomly pull new moves out of their ass but nothing actually interesting. You might wanna watch like 32-35 because it will show how some things happened that will be part of the next eps)
Watch: 36-73 (main meat of the TV series you might say)
Skip: 74-99 (maybe watch 74 and 98/98 because the last 2 eps of this craptacular filler arc introduce the new canon arc)
Watch:100-114 (final canon arc of the TV series)
And then you can finally move on to the good stuff.
As for the movies, they are utter crap (exact same repetitive stuff as in the TV filler) except for the 5th which I haven't watched because it takes place after the Hades arc which isn't fully animated yet (yes, massive cliffhanger ending).
Overall I gotta say that while Hades arc is awesome, it doesn't really make up for having to go through the TV series first so unless you are prepared to watch a lot of boring stuff until you can full enjoy it, don't bother with Saint Seiya in the first place.
Oh and btw, I hope you don't expect anything on DBZ lvl. People on this board always exaggerate Saint Seiya power lvls, saying they could beat DS and all but that's complete and utter BS. People supposedly as fast as the speed of light get hit by people only as fast as sound, moves that supposedly have the power of an exploding galaxy can take out one building at best and even moves with supposedly the power of the big bang aren't anything special even when compared to YYH. The characters always talk big but their actions don't quite follow.