In winter of '90, after the serialization of Saint Seiya ended in the magazine Jump Weekly, and with the last episode of Saint Seiya appearing in the first issue of the special magazine, V Jump, the curtain fell on the nearly five year history of Saint Seiya.

[The last issue of Saint Seiya in Jump Weekly 49 was where Seiya does a Comet Punch on Hades and then a final page which had a background of the five constellations of the main characters and lines of words that said the battle is not over. At the time, I borrowed the issue from my Japanese friend, I was quite confused when reading it, this is how Seiya ends? And then a while later, I brought the chinese tranlation of the last epsiode of Seiya in V Jump. Wow! Athena's Cloth!! After buying Vol. 28, I understood everything that happened. In Vol. 28, on page 184-185 were the background of constellations and the words on these pages, "The Hades Ende" was actually on the pages 182-183 originally with the heads of Seiya. Furthermore, it seems the cover of Vol 28, was orginially drawn for V Jump.]

    At the time, many fans speculated as to why that last episode was published in a different magazine, but the truth was quite simple. The truth was that the Hades War was heated beyond expectation, and the last episode couldn't be included in the issue that was planned, so with no lapse of time, on that same issue which published the end of the serialization, V Jump was designated as the magazine that had already secured the pages of the last episode and that this magazine would publish the One-Shot Works[Yomikiri Sakuhin] of Masami Kurumada Sensei.

    But, what was a matter of dispute was the content of the proposed, 'One-Shot Works' that was to be printed in V Jump. Although the end of the serialization of 'Seiya' was already decided, at that time when it was decided the Work of Kurumada would appear in V Jump, the popularity of 'Seiya' was still very high, so, this 'One-Shot Works' was going to be the Side Works[Gaiden] of 'Seiya' which would feature the activity of the Gold Saints in the past. But it was known early on that the climax of Hades Chapter could not be included in Jump Weekly, so the *Storybroad and the Conceptual Drawings of the Side Works were never done so this existed only as a work in the imagination.

[*Ne-mu, a Japanese word in the manga world that is like a layout, where there are rough drawings, dialogue and the like.]

    And, in an article in that first issue of V Jump, it announced the project of Saint Paradise. This project was aimed at the younger viewers of the TV Series, and it would relaunch 'Seiya' with SD Characters like it was done at the time where the head would be double the size.
    Although the magazine ended in a short time after it was launched, V Jump at the end of the third issue was renewed, centering its publication on game news, between the summer of '91 and autumn of '92, many products from Bandai were sold.
    Furthermore, the announcement of the initial Hades anime was also in the first issue of V Jump. At that time, it was headed by the producer of TV Series at Toei Animation, Yoshibumi Hatano, he wanted to animate the 'Hades Chapter' as a Original Video Animation Series, but, the OVA market at the time was low, so this projected ended in standstill.

[This initial project was called, 'Modern Myth Saint Seiya(Gendai Shinwa Seitoushi Seiya)']

    Hatano had an unusual love for Seiya and he wanted to resurrect Seiya as a TV Series or OVA whenever he had a chance to, but unfortunately, he passed away in '95 without realizing that dream.
    The one who inherited Hatano's dream was Kouzou Morishita, the inital director of the TV Series, and later produced 'Seiya' with Hatano together at Toei Animation.
    Morishita had an unusual love for Seiya just like Hatano. Because he also worked as a producer for Dragon Ball Z and Doctor Slump Arare Chan, even after Seiya ended, he had many chances to work with Shueisha, so, he was in the prime position to push the Hades Chapter to be turn into an animation.
    Of course, inside Shueisha, there were no ceasing of voices who wanted Seiya to be animated again. Finally in '01, a voice that almost did it came.
    Because the start of the serialization of Kurumada Sensei's Ring ni Kakero 2 in the magazine Super Jump was a big hit, Shueisha set about to truly resurrect Kurumada Sensei's other big work, Saint Seiya, with the publication of a detailed explanatory book, Saint Seiya Encyclopedia[Taizen]
    This publication was printed by the subsidiary publisher, Home Sha, intended to bring back the memories and appeal of the once crazed fans of 'Seiya'.
    Furthermore, this publisher also released a 5 issue Extra-Large Monthly series, Saint Seiya Digest,  which printed a re-compilation of the manga featuring the main characters, the 5 Bronze Saints.
    Any one of these publication had good sales records, so the possibility of the actualization of the Hades anime progressed in one stroke.