Eagle Marin

Eagle Marin (鷲星座の魔鈴) is a fictional character from the manga series, Saint Seiya, written and illustrated by Japanese mangaka Masami Kurumada, and later adapted to anime. Marin is a female Silver Saint of the Aquila (Eagle) constellation, and Pegasus Seiya's teacher during his days as Saint apprentice.

Power and abilities
As a Silver Saint, Marin possesses advanced mastery of the Cosmo, which grants her abilities that are far superior to those of Bronze Saints, including tremendous superhuman physical strength, and the ability of attaining speed of movement that ranges from mach 2 to 5.

Her special techniques:

Meteor Punches (流星拳): Marin's main attack. She attacks with her fist hundreds of times in one second, after generating a punch burst, much like a meteor shower. This is the signature technique she taught Seiya.

Eagle Toe Flash (イーグルトゥフラッシュ): She used this attack to beat Hound Asterion, it consists in a swift jump that ends in a sharp diving kick of tremendous force.

Empty Fist (空拳): Not really an attack, but a deceptive maneuver. She used it to trick the Silver Saint Lizard Misty into thinking that she had killed Seiya with a piercing blow to his chest, while in truth, she only rendered him unconscious, unharmed.

Teacher
Marin is a Japanese Silver female Saint who resides in Athena's Sanctuary, in Greece. She was separated from her little brother and she has spent years looking for him. When Seiya was sent to the same place to be trained as a Saint, as Seiya was Japanese too, he was assigned to Marin, who was known as a hard trainer, but she was able to instruct Seiya in the ways of the Saints. When he obtained the Bronze Saint status after 6 years of training, Marin faced Ophiuchus Shaina's opposition, but Seiya was able to overcome that obstacle and return to Japan.

Traitor
When Gemini Saga, disguised as the Pope, ordered the Silver Saints to attack and kill the Bronze Saints he deemed traitors, Marin was ordered to go too. She went along Lizard Misty, and with Mu's help deceived him, tricking him into believing she had killed Seiya. Misty discovered the truth, and fought with Seiya but was defeated by him after a bloody battle.

Marin came back with Hound Asterion and Whale Mozes to investigate the fate of Misty, and she was exposed by Asterion's mind reading power. She quickly attacked Mozes, but with Asterion reading Marin's every move before she could attack, Mozes defeated her. Then she was tied to a post in the sea as a bait to attract her disciple, the Pegasus Saint. During the battle with Seiya, Mozes mentioned that Marin and Seiya could be siblings due to their similar background and Seiya, realizing his possible long lost sister could die, was filled by anger, gathering strength out of his moribund state and defeated the enormous Whale Saint. When Seiya reached to help Marin, Asterion stepped in and knocked out Seiya, Marin seized the opportunity to untie herself and intervened to fight the Hound Saint; as she cleared her mind with no thoughts, Asterion could no longer read her mind, even when he used his lethal Million Ghost Attack, Marin countered it and performed her Eagle Toe Flash, defeating Asterion without killing him. She told the Silver Saint to go back to Sanctuary and sent the Pope a message of defiance with him, then she disappeared for some time. Before leaving, she also left Seiya a message in the sand: "Protect Athena", a secret message which later revealed Saori Kido is the true incarnation of the goddess of justice and wisdom.

The Truth is Revealed
During the battle against the Gold Saints, when Seiya headed to the Pope's palace and was poisoned by Pisces Aphrodite's Demon Roses along the stair way, Marin appeared to help him. She gave her mask to Seiya to filter the scent of the roses, but without the mask to protect herself, she collapsed. Seiya recovered with the help of Marin's mask and blew away the roses with his Pegasus Meteor Punches, he didn't want to leave Marin alone and was tempted to look at Marin's true face to discover the truth, but Silver Saint Ophiuchus Shaina appeared and told Seiya that she would take care of Marin. When Marin recovered, she explained to Shaina that she had gone to the forbidden place known as Star Hill, and she had discovered the real Pope, Shion's corpse, discovering the truth of the identity of the false Pope. Star Hill is only reserved to the Popes, only one with great power was able to climb to the top of it, so it was a perilous endeavor for a Silver Saint like Marin.

The Long Search
From that point on, Marin disappeared, but she reappeared in the last act of the 'Hades' arc, during the battle of the Bronze Saints against Hades. The reason of her vanishing was that she went looking for Seiya's lost sister, Seika, and finally found her. During Seiya's fight with the death god Thanatos, he was shown by the deity where his sister's whereabouts, and as Thanatos was tried to kill Seika to mock Seiya's human weakness, Marin, along with Shaina, Kiki and the rest of the Bronze Saints, jumped in and protected Seika with a barrier of Cosmo.

Anime Portrayal
Her story in the anime adaptation is very faithful to Kurumada's original manga, with a few slight modifications. She is depicted considerably weaker; she has problems beating some rankless soldiers from the Sanctuary, and a giant named Jaki, who appears only in the animation, who relied only in brute force. She also appears in the anime-only 'Asgard' arc to assist the Bronze Saints, but she is beaten by Megrez Delta Alberich.

Icaros Tōma
In the movie Heaven Chapter : Tenkai-Hen Jōso ~Overture~, it was revealed that the name of Marin's little brother was Tōma (斗馬), meaning "Horse of the North Star", and he was one of the Artemis Angels, because he wanted to become a god. Tōma didn't want to love his sister because he thought it was a feeling too human, but in the end he recognize her.

The movie was removed from the canon of the Saint Seiya universe by its author Masami Kurumada, although Marin's brother existence is one of the few elements depicted in the movie that still remain in the canon, as he was a pre-existing character, who is mentioned by Ophiuchus Shaina in vol.27 of Kurumada's original manga, during the 'Hades' arc.

Appearances in other media
Marin appears briefly in the alternate story Saint Seiya Episode G. She defeats some minions of the Titan Cronos, and later she fights against a giant, later being rescued by Leo Aiolia.

Eagle Silver Cloth
One of the 88 Cloths, the Eagle Cloth represents the Aquila. There are three ranks, and the Eagle Cloth belongs to the second one, the rank of the Silver Saints, along with other twenty-four Cloths. When not worn, it depicts an Eagle with open wings.

There are only minimal differences between manga and anime version. The headpiece of Kurumada's original design is shaped as a small eagle with open wings, the headpiece in the anime adaptation is a tiara with a small eagle in the forehead area. In the animation, the pelvic area is unprotected. As several Silver Cloths in the manga, it has the color of silver, in the anime it is also blue and white.

Aquila Myth and Constellation
The Eagle constellation is associated to various tales of classical Greek mythology, among them, the myth of the eagle which carried Zeus' thunderbolts and was sent by him to carry the shepherd boy Ganymede, whom he desired, represented by the neighbouring Aquarius, to Mount Olympus where he became the cupbearer of the gods. This is the origin of the name of the largest moon of Jupiter, Ganymede, Jupiter being the Roman name of Zeus.

Aquila, together with other constellations in the Zodiac sign of Sagittarius (specifically, Lyra, Cygnus), may be a significant part of the origin of the myth of the Stymphalian Birds, one of The Twelve Labours of Heracles.

For Constellation details, read Aquila