A Lost Piece of Anime History Found After More Than 20 Years. Infamous Pilot Episode of Live-Action Saint Seiya Finally Sees the Light of Day
Years ago, an attempt was made to create an American live-action Saint Seiya series. The pilot episode that was filmed was thought to be lost, but it was finally found.
In the world of movies and TV shows, many projects end up in the bin at the early stages of work. There were also many that no one outside of the studio's inner circles had a chance to find out about, but there were some that the public could hear about, or even had the opportunity to get a glimpse of. And such is the case with the Saint Seiya live-action series - so far, the world has only had the chance to see 20 seconds of footage from the completed pilot episode.
In the 1990s the producers of Power Rangers, Renaissance Atlantic, wanted to make an American version of Saint Seiya , whose working title was StarStorm. They even made a short pilot episode, which was supposed to help them present their vision to decision-makers - so it was not the final product that the general audience was supposed to see, but a working proof of concept, which would have been improved if funds were granted. Unfortunately, the team from Renaissance Atlantic did not receive them and the project was abandoned. Only the short pilot remained, and even that considered lost media until just recently.
However, his trail was picked up by Ray Mona, who specializes in searching for anime-related lost media. Last year, thanks to her, we were able to see a full episode of the American animated Saint Seiya show, titled Guardians of the Cosmos. Now she had found the lost pilot of the live-action version of Saint Seiya from the 90s, StarStorm. The episode she found can be watched below and on the Internet Archive page.
This version of Saint Seiya introduced changes to the story, which led Masami Kurumada, the creator of the original, to state that the essence of his story had been diluted and in this version StarStorm was closer to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles than to Saint Seiya. The project ultimately did not get any traction, and another attempt to create a live-action version of this show in Hollywood was attempted only years later. With the growing popularity of live-action anime adaptations, 2023 saw the debut of Knights of the Zodiac, directed by Tomek Baginski.
