Saint Seiya Lost canvas is one of the best in the Saint Seiya series but unfortunately it never made it past episode 26.
This anime has its own manga series apart from the original with Seiya, Hyoga, Shun, Shiryu and Ikki. Saint Seiya Lost Canvas takes place about 200 or so years before the events of the original Saint Seiya. It was called the holy war with Hades and his other sub gods.
In Lost Canvas we did not get Seiya but we got his preincarnation named Tenma. The great thing about this anime is that it maintained the same art style with modern animation and beautiful aesthetics. The animation was absolutely beautiful with the Lost Canvas and the story was ever so breath taking especially with the fan favorite, Manigoldo the Cancer Saint.
So why was Saint Seiya Lost Canvas discontinued if it was so popular. There are many reasons why an anime show is cancelled. Unlike Netflix, Japanese companies have their own reasons why they cancelled an anime midway, without finishing the story.
According to Wikipedia, In May 2013, TMS had announced on their twitter account that there was no third season of Lost Canvas being planned because it was not getting enough engagement in Japan. Some people that are reading this article might be thinking “but what about the western audience, we love the show.” Yes and TMS Entertainment knows that but what you have to understand is that Japanese anime companies think of their Japanese fandom first and then they think of other countries.
Most manga sales still come from Japan. A good example would be Demon Slayer. In the beginning of 2020, the Demon Slayer manga has reached over 26 million copies sold in Japan alone, then during the pandemic it reached over 100 million sold. In American the Demon Slayer manga does not reach over a million. It surely sells more than American comic books but still you wont see eight figure numbers of manga volumes sold in America like in Japan despite of the fact that Americans have a higher population and more consumers.
Since Saint Seiya Lost Canvas was not getting a lot of attention in Japan, TMS decided that they were going to discontinue the anime. That is why we never got a third season or episode 27. The funny thing is that the Saint Seiya franchise is super popular in the west especially in Mexico and other South American countries. However, If its not popular in Japan then the creators wont continue to promote it.
That is how Japanese companies make decisions. They promote anime in the west but they don’t make decisions based on western statistics unless there are other benefits involve.
The funny thing is that the following series called Saint Seiya Omega did very well and it had 2 seasons with a total of 97 episodes. So what’s the difference between Omega and Lost Canvas of the Saint Seiya series. For some reason the Japanese did not like the Lost Canvas despite of its animation quality. It is very strange.
To conclude, there will definitely be more Saint Seiya series in the future however, Lost Canvas will not be continued despite of it being so desired in the west. There was a petition for the continuation of the Lost Canvas but that didn’t go anywhere. Best we can do is forget about it.
