“I’m scared”. A few days after the launch of Saint Seiya – Time Odyssey (Kana), a comic that updates the adventures of Knights of the Zodiacthe designer Jérôme Alquié is not entirely calm.
The one who made a name for himself in the early 2000s by making an unofficial trailer for the famous Japanese license also known as Saint Seiya and imagined by Masami Kurumada in the 1980s, however, he is familiar with the exercise. He has already dabbled in the recovery game with captain harlock of leiji matsumoto in 2019. But with Saint Seiya – Time Odyssey, whose fan base is known for its intransigence, the designer admits that a few days before the launch he breaks out in a cold sweat. The first part of his five-volume comic comes out this Friday. He feverishly checked every detail before sending it to print.
“I don’t want to disappoint the fans. I want them to find their Proust cupcake again. We tried to do everything we could. We reread the entire manga. We had specialists reread everything. Kurumada himself and his editor reviewed everything. We put the odds of our side, but afterwards, we’re not immune to having made a little mistake somewhere. We made this album with all the passion and all the knowledge we have of this work.”
Neither a sequel nor a prequel
The story has also been designed to satisfy as many fans as possible: “Some people love the Sanctuary part, others prefer the Hades part, and finally there are those who are fans of the Asgard part. different levels of armor of the main characters. For this comic, I didn’t want to be fixed at one point in the original story and have only one armor for the Bronze Saints.”
To do this, Jérôme Alquié chose an antagonist capable of jumping: “Thus, we do neither a sequel nor a prequel, but an ‘interquel’, which comes to be located in different moments of the original story than we do”. everyone knows it by heart. We wanted to sneak in at different times to put the spotlight on different times in the series.”
Saint Seiya – Time Odyssey however, it begins at a very specific moment in the history of the license, after the narrative arc of the Silver Knights and just before the Pope decides to send the Golden Knights to Japan before the battle of the twelve houses and the raising of the twelve houses. “The second volume will take place after the battle of the 12 houses. It is a true odyssey!”
Exploring licensing gray areas
Jérôme Alquié’s ambition is above all to explore the gray areas left behind by Masami Kurumada. And thus take his leg to mythology while being perfectly respectful of the original work. The first volume will have reveals about the iconic Ikki: “It’s interesting to talk about what happened on the island of the Dead Queen, to talk about Ikki’s master. I know it will speak to the fans. These are gray areas that Master Kurumada never He had time to light up.”
“What interests me, when you appropriate well-known characters, is not their strength, but their weaknesses. What Ikki has experienced on this island, the guilt he may feel for not having risen to the occasion to prevent Esmeralda’s death, is fascinating to tell”, develops Jérôme Alquié.
Kurumada oversaw every step of the comic, from script to storyboard. The hardest thing for Alquié and his co-writer Antoine Dollen was writing the dialogue for The Mask of Death: “What we had put on him didn’t suit him. He didn’t exactly feel the psychology of the character. If we went into these kinds of comments, it means that he’s looked at everything right. And if he was really picky about it, it’s because there weren’t any comments elsewhere. It meant we got it right!”
Soon “Ulysses 31”?
Demanding, Jérôme Alquié was in the drawing, to distinguish himself from the inimitable styles of Kurumada in the manga and the animators Shingo Araki and Michi Himeno in the anime. “When I started, I thought that being the closest thing to Araki and Himeno’s style was the right thing to do. But that was a mistake. There is no point in redoing what has already been done. It took me a long time to understand. I am more proud than I have ever been.” made in time odysseythan what I did at the time.”
For Saint Seiya, Jérôme Alquié has pushed the limits of his style. “I have often been criticized that my drawings were not dynamic enough. I hope I have corrected that. Saint SeiyaIt must move!” When will the rest of his saga be released? The designer has just completed the first half of the second volume. The fifth will be released “at the latest” at the end of 2025. He already knows the license and dreamed of later adapting it into comics Ulysses 31.
Saint Seiya – Time Odyssey, Jérôme Alquié (drawing, script, color) and Arnaud Dollen (script), Kana, 64 pages, 13.50 euros. (A collector’s edition, limited to 15,000 copies, will also be on sale. Price: 34.90 euros)
Source: BFM TV
