Mythical landscapes and historical landscapes of Ancient Greece in the manga-anime Saint Seiya

Abstract

From an interdisciplinary analysis, this article examines the using of the Greek archaeolog-ical landscapes in the manga-anime Saint Seiya of Masami Kurumada for building its fic-tional spaces. On the basis of the notion of landscape, as a representation of the reading-sighting on a territory, this work considers that representation under a society’s way of seeing and ordering its world: the scopic regime. Thus, the scopic regime explains the Western ideas about the Ancient Greece, its mythology and its historical landscapes. Alt-hough those sights have been reproduced and modified historically, according to the po-litical and economic interests, but also the social and cultural inquisitiveness in each pe-riod and place. In the context of globalisation, and as a Japanese cultural product, Saint Seiya has produced new ways of seeing the Greek archaeological landscapes; from histori-cal disclosure, cinema, and touristic marketing in the West taught to the author as An-cient Greece. That is the reason that Western Saint Seiya fans assimilate other ways of seeing and meanings those landscapes and face them during tourist visits or consulting historical material.