The decision made to change Shun’s gender in Netflix’s Saint Seiya series might be more sinister than you think

Lately, the Netflix anime trailer for the Saint Seiya remake dropped, and people aren’t happy. The CG animation looks way too clean for a series known for its glorious shounen violence and the tone gives off the vibe of a western series for children. Perhaps, the biggest news of all is Andromeda Shun’s gender swap, who’s now a girl instead of a boy unlike the original. Now, this is isn’t new with the series since the 2014 Saint Seiya CG movie, Legend of Sanctuary also turned Scorpion Milo into a woman.

But Shun is part of the main cast, not a one-off villain, so the fans went livid over this. He’s a beloved character for 3 decades across the globe, and changing his gender was a slap to the face of the majority of Saint Seiya fans. In an attempt to calm them down, the writer on the series, Eugene Son explained his decision. His tweets are long on the subject, and you can take it as you will. But essentially, he wanted more female representation in the main cast of Saint Seiya. He acknowledges that there were strong female characters already like Marin and Shaina but they didn’t go on adventures together with the rest of the male-dominated group.

So why not create another character then instead of ruining one that existed already? His answer is quite baffling. He thought he couldn’t write a new female character that would have meshed well with the main cast.

Fan outrage has reached critical levels as the Netflix trailer received more downvotes than upvotes. Naturally for many, this just reinforces a trend of social justice warriors ruining everything they touch.

However, thanks to a French YouTuber who spoke on the subject, this is probably not the whole story. Take what I say here with a grain of salt, as we’ll probably never know, but the SJW narrative just doesn’t make sense. Shun in the original series and manga was an effeminate man who was soft, compassionate and didn’t want to hurt anyone, not even his enemies. He defied male stereotypes way ahead of his time when everyone else in his team would bash their enemies’ head in. I’m pretty sure the writer must have known this, and yet went ahead and changed his gender anyway.

The cold sinister truth might be that they didn’t want an effeminate man as part of the main cast, especially if this new series is aiming for North America, a country where some of the world’s greatest anime hits like Saint Seiya and Captain Tsubasa never caught on. Think about it, American kids wouldn’t want to buy toys of an effeminate boy, but a strong fighting woman? It’s a far easier pill to swallow and sell. For all the progressive posturing we hear from the American media these days, another part of the country is pretty damn conservative, and this reboot was probably an attempt to appeal to them.

So, is Eugene Son lying? Maybe it was a compromise between him and some execs? If what I said turned out to be true, then this would probably be really sad and sinister move on their part. It would mean that they were scapegoating the political left for commercial purposes.

I would like to believe this was just a misguided attempt at progressivism in media and that Eugene Son is a daft writer, but the possible alternative is even worse, that it was some coward’s exec attempt at commercialising the series further and that the writer was simply shielding himself with the progressive label to hide an even uglier corporate truth.