Saint Seiya Episode.G

Saint Seiya: Episode.G (聖闘士星矢 EPISODE.G) is an ongoing manga published in the Champion Red magazine since December 2002. A side-story and a derivative work of the original Saint Seiya manga, which was created, written and illustrated by Masami Kurumada. Episode.G is set 7 years before the events at the beginning of the original Saint Seiya Manga, and 6 years after the death of the Gold Saint Sagittarius Aioros. Unlike the original series it is written and illustrated by Megumu Okada.

Plot introduction
In ancient times, the Titan Cronus (son of Uranus the sky and Gaia the earth) and his wife Rhea gave birth to six children. Five of them were swallowed by Cronus, and only one was saved, Zeus, hidden from Cronus by Rhea. Upon reaching adulthood, Zeus forced his father to vomit the other five gods. Zeus, along with his brothers and sisters, decided to battle the Titans for control of the universe. Cronus and the other eleven Titans lost the battle and were sent to Tartarus.

Thousands of years later, in Greece, the Pope visited the room of the recently reincarnated infant Athena, with a golden dagger.

Before he can kill her, the Gold Saint Saggitarius Aiolos saved her, and unmasked the Pope. Aiolos, horrified, fled. The Pope then declared him a traitor to the Sanctuary, and had Capricorn Shura murder him.

This caused his younger brother, Leo Aiolia, to grow under the shadow of his "traitor" brother, suffering from all manner of abuse and scorn.

It left him with a grudge against the Gold Saints and Sanctuary as a whole, which caused the Pope and most of the Sanctuary to distrust him.

To make things worse, the enemies of Zeus, the Titans, were revived and began to seek vengeance against him and the Sanctuary. This marked the start of Aiolia's story and the battle of the Gold Saints against the Titans.

Gaiden
The tankōbon usually contain short gaiden, which tell the stories of other characters. Some have little relevance to the overall plot of Episode.G, with characters that play no part in the main story.

In October 2007, a new Gaiden series started being published with Episode G. This new Gaiden series is situated a few years before the main plot, and details the exploits of Sagittarius Aiolos in Egypt. A younger Aiolia and Garan also appear in this story. The story about Aiolos will appear in special volume of Episode G called "Volume 0" that is set to be released on May 20 from 2008. The "Volume 0" will also contain an encyclopedia of all the manga from Episode.G.

Style
Saint Seiya Episode.G is different than its predecessor in that is drawn and written by Megumu Okada (岡田芽武). Masami Kurumada (車田正美) gave the original idea of the "Gold Saints' youth" to Okada.

Megumu Okada draws his characters much more stylized than Kurumada, with thin and slender bodies, big eyes, and little noses. One noteworthy thing about Okada's style is the amount of tone and detail he puts into his characters; everything is toned in some shape or form. Comedy scenes are seen more than in the original manga and in these scenes the characters are drawn in a super deformed state. Although he was blond in Kurumada's original work, Leo Aiolia's hair is red in this manga (though there is a plot-related explanation), so as to differentiate him from his older brother, Sagittarius Aiolos.

Mythological adaptation
Episode.G is not entirely faithful to the mythological details it is based on, many alterations have been made in order to pit the all the twelve first generation Titans against the Sanctuary. This include the fact that Oceanus and all female titans openly warred against the Olympians, and consequently earned them the same punishment as the other six Titans. Though there is a plot-relate explanation given by Pontus.

Episode G also portrays Titans as almost human. Most of the Titans are the very structures of the world itself and their sizes were, therefore, described as geographically large in mythology. However, Episode.G humanizes them, and depicts them in totally human appearances. Although, in the adaptation, their diminished divine forms and physical strength seemed to be compensated by their enormous black Cosmo, and their virtually unbreakable armors, given by Gaia, serving as both destructive weapons and almost impregnable defenses, called Somas (Soma, or σώμα, literally means body in Greek).

In Hesiod's Theogony, Erebus and Eros was born from Chaos alone, however, in Episode.G, adaptations were made and they became children of Gaia instead, along with Uranus and Pontus. And Ourea, the other of Gaia's first generation children, is omitted from the story.

Chapter guide
This is the list of manga chapters of Saint Seiya Episode.G. In Japan, there are two versions of the Saint Seiya Episode.G volumes. One is the normal version while the other is a Limited Edition. The Limited Edition has different covers than the normal edition, and packaged with the comic books are various products.

Saint Seiya: Episode.G
Non collected releases:
 * 74. The One Who
 * 75. The One Who
 * 76. The One Who is in the Mist