Judithkayakat

Saint SEIYA is basically my childhood and probably my favorite anime still to date.

For the new Netflix reboot Shun is being genderswapped because the creators want to be more ‘woke’ and include more women

Here’s my problem with this.

Though female saints were not that common they were there and they were all prominent strong women

As a female myself these strong female saints were my role models.

The main character SEIYA, his teacher was a female. The person who taught him everything was a women! How unheard of is that?

How about instead of swapping Shun’s gender they could have made Juné a much more prominent character. Juné was always an amazing character but very underused. Had they done that I would have loved and applauded that change. It would have been new, interesting and innovative.

Though the original saint seiya may not have had many women all the women it had were very prominent characters. They were all shown to be strong women who fought hard in a male centered world. Yet somehow these women don’t matter anymore to the people adapting this for Netflix.

Making Shun a woman because you want to be more ‘woke’ devaluates all these strong prominent female saints

But most of all my main problem is this:

Shun was a sensitive yet strong male character which was unseen for its time and extremely interesting. He showed that you can be male but not a be a stereotype

As one of the main saints or knights he was always the heart of the team. Despite being one of the strongest fighters he disliked violence and only ever used it as a last resort

This was a character who looked frail and feminine, who was sensitive and kind and yet was so strong.

His character’s armor was of the andromeda constellation. A very female constellation. In fact his armor even had breasts And he wore that armor with pride even though he was male.

Despite him being more feminine and a little bit of a crybaby he was well liked and respected among everyone.

All of these traits are extraordinary and rarely ever seen in male protagonist. This character was decades ahead of its time.

And they want to genderswap him to be more ‘woke’

I say they are genderswapping him to create controversy to cash in by claiming they are being ‘woke’ when in all reality they are doing the exact opposite.

They are adhering to gender stereotypes that only girls can like pink and be sensitive.

Had it been ANY other character this genderswap would not have been a big deal. They could have made Ikki a badass older sister. They could even have made Seiya a girl, any of the other male knights and it would have been new and innovative.

But choosing to make the one knight that’s a bit more feminine a girl is just lazy writing and diminishes this character and everything this character fights for and goes trough as a whole.

This makes it all the worse when the writers go on social media and say they don’t know how to write women. I say maybe you don’t know how to write men either, When the one man that’s seen as a little girly is turned into a women.

Not to mention the blatant disrespect to fans/toei and the original creator when the writers for the new Netflix saint seiya show post a picture of someone smoking with caption to bad I’m doing this. Basically telling everyone to suck it. And expecting people not to be upset when not only is a beloved innovative character being destroyed but the writers show no love for the original works or the thousands if not millions of fans it already has.

I refuse to condemn something without watching it so regardless I will give the show a try but I wanted to like this new adaptation. No I wanted to love it. Instead I go in with zero expectations and maybe even a wish that it gets cancelled sooner rather than later.