Saint Seiya: Evil Goddess Eris

Synopsis

The first Saint Seiya theatrical film, released in July 1987 during the series' peak television broadcast, introduced the franchise's model for non-canonical theatrical storytelling: a supernatural threat originating outside the main manga's cosmological framework, requiring the Bronze Saints to confront adversaries whose connection to the established mythology is deliberately loose. The goddess of strife Eris — a figure from Greek mythology who appears in classical accounts of the Trojan War but has no role in Masami Kurumada's original manga — possesses the body of Saori Kido, forcing Seiya and his companions into a situation where their patron goddess is simultaneously their enemy and the person they must protect. The film's ghost warriors, drawn from the Bronze Saint class but corrupted by Eris's influence, allow the film to stage fights against opponents that mirror the protagonists' abilities without engaging the Gold Saint-level escalation the television series was building toward. Produced by Toei Animation to capitalize on the series' theatrical momentum and released at 45 minutes in a double-feature program, Eris performed well enough to establish that Saint Seiya could sustain annual theatrical releases alongside its television broadcast — laying the groundwork for four subsequent films over the following seventeen years.