Do you like pretty guys? Do you like to watch them horribly mutilate themselves and each other? Then this is the manga for you! Lost Canvas is a prequel to the original Saint Seiya manga, and if you know anything about the original Saint Seiya series, then you pretty much know the entire plot and outcome of Lost Canvas. How do I put this delicately... stay away if you can't handle characters dying! The death toll is hiiiiiiiigh!! Aside from that, I think the brainstorming session for Lost Canvas went something like this: Person A: so what should we make this about? Person B: well, people really seemto like watching the Gold Saints fight.
Person C: yeah!!

And so Lost Canvas was born! I'd say about 90% of it is nonstop fighting. Relentless, brutal fighting, mainly among the Gold Saints. Now, this is pure Heaven for me, but if you like some plot to go with your action, you might be disappointed. There is a plot, of course, but it's so straightforward it may as well be negligible. You basically get dropped in the middle of a Holy War and plot progression takes place through battles between the Specters of Hades and the Saints of Athena. Beautifully bloody fun!!

The art of Lost Canvas is much, much prettier than the original Saint Seiya manga. Tenma and Sasha are also a lot less annoying than Seiya and Saori. There's several Gold Saints that are more fleshed out in Lost Canvas, but there's also Gold Saints that are more fleshed out in the original, so it's kinda a draw there. But overall, I'd say character development is better in the original. Lost Canvas doesn't quite have the stable, balanced team dynamic that existed between Seiya, Shiryu, Hyoga, Shun, and Ikki in the original.