I HAD to give this series 3 stars, and give up watching 10 episodes in, because I just couldn't stand the hypocrisy anymore. This anime is beautifully drawn, the characters and actions are smooth; the voice actors are very good and quite famous ones; the story is an interesting one - to an extent, but boy did they screw the pooch...
In this series, the storyline is set back in the 1800's in Italy long before Seiya and the rest were born, during Athena's last incarnation. I hate spoilers, so I won't get into too much, but I'll say this, the story revolves around 3 orphans who grew up together, 1 a boy who becomes the Pegasus Saint, 2 &3 are a brother and sister, the sister gets adopted to Greece and becomes the new Athena, and the brother who is supposed to be the purest of souls ever born becomes the next Hades incarnation. In this series, the whole band of brothers with Andromeda, Dragon, & Cygnus doesn't exist! NO ONE, even Master of the Gold Libra Cloth, who we KNOW to have been over 500 years old, is NOT the master of the Libra Gold cloth!!! NONE of the characters from Saint Seiya even make a flash forward in the series!!! A lot of the "rules" of the cloths and Cosmo AREN' T followed, they just rewrote things to please themselves while capitalizing on the Saint Seiya franchise!!! The whole thing just feels rushed, false, cheap, and contrived. I FEEL CHEATED!!!
In a day and age where a LOT of the anime I grew up with, like Cyborg 009, Ultraman, & Robotech are being remade to look and feel shiny and new, THIS ONE went off the rails!! BIG NOPE for me!!!