Development
Shiori Teshirogi always wanted to draw manga, ever since her childhood where she mainly followed Rumiko Takahashi's works. What sparked her desire to become a professional was when his little brother bought Saint Seiya manga when she was in elementary school. Teshirogi liked the manga as well as the comments at the end of the volume by Masami Kurumada, as he she could really feel the passion the author put into his world. She was impressed by the work and wanted to become a character designer. She particularly enjoyed the Sanctuary arc for Gemini Saga and Acquarius Camus' battles against Pegasus Seiya and Cygnus Hyoga but ended favoriting Libra Dohko. The Saint Seiya manga made her want to read works on Greek mythology. A few years later, when the publisher Square Enix organized a competition called the game fantasy manga grand prize, she participated and was selected. Teshirogi then participated in a second Square Enix competition which was called the 21st Century Manga Grand Prize. Here again she was selected and awarded. From there, Teshirogi had a publisher who supported me and allowed me to make her debut in the manga industry.[4] Teshirogi's fame within Square Enix nearly made her write a Final Fantasy VII manga until meeting Kurumada.
Teshirogi met Kurumada in a public event she once visited during the time she was a new manga author. In such event, Teshirogi sent Kurumada the first manga she made as well as a letter which made Kurumada ask her to write The Lost Canvas. Although she was happy with such proposal due to the fact Saint Seiya has always been her favourite manga, she found troubles writing it since she used to write shōjo and Lost Canvas was meant to be from the genre shōnen. In order to do that, Teshirogi had to change various things from her style such as the narration and getting used to how to draw fights. Before the manga started, Kurumada sent Teshirogi a general version of the manga's story, but as long as the series continued, she started changing some parts after discussing with people from Akita Shoten. Additionally, the characters designs and Cloths were based on the second season from the Saint Seiya anime adaptation (known as Asgard), but she combined them with her own style.[5] When Teshirogi was purposed to start The Lost Canvas she was informed that the series would last a few volumes. However, when the tenth volume was published, she was surprised by the series' length which she found amazing.[6] Every time Teshirogi met Kurumada see each other, they talked for a long time, and exchange ideas, and sent each other emails.[4] The author found challenging properly displaying the characters' armors and fists while remaining true to her own style. In retrospect, Teshirogi believes Lost Canvas changed the way she herself did illustrations and thus thanked Kurumada for giving the opportunity to give her this work.[7] Alone's design originated from Kurumada's ideas but still gave her freedom. Lost Canvas started as a story about Tenma and Alone's relationship but advices from her editor resulted in further writing the Holy War, especially the popular Gold Saints which shocked the audience. Tenma's father concept of a man who is responsible for most of the Holy War conflicts was created as a major plot twist Teshirogi used to further surprise the readers. For this she researched Greek mythology, resulting in the inclusion of Chronos' brother, Kairos. Scorpio Kardia was noted to be highly popular by Teshirogi due to the dynamic she gave to his personality as well as the contrast she gives Sasha. The latter was written to contrast Kurumada's take on Athena's reincarnation, Saori Kido, as both have different personalities as a result of being born and raised in different places. Meanwhile, Pandora was written to be more feminine than Kurumada's take.
Although Kurumada gave Teshirogi freedom with what to write, Teshirogi had problems across the entire serialization with one of her first three editors; She cited demands of more pages per chapters and ideas to make battles more interesting she found difficult like a Buddha statue fighting Athena's when the narrative involved the Gold Saint Virgo Asmita or how the Bat Specter could defeat Taurus Aldebaran. In regards to the characters' names, Teshirogi never tried to canonize elements from the original Saint Seiya like all Taurus Saints sharing the same name as Rasgado uses the alias Aldebaran like Kurumada's Taurus Saint. The other editors gave Teshirogi more freedom with her writing since not much was known about Saint Seiya by them. The only reason such name was written was because the author wanted to make an emotional scene with his student Teneo. Ever since the series began, Teshirogi always had two assistants. Among Hades' Specters, Wyvern Rhadamathys stood out as one of the strongest in the manga. As the manga artist liked his character, she found it sad killing him.[8] Méphistophélès Yoma remained as one of the hardest characters to write. It was also awful to kill the characters since the fans loved them. Furthermore, this affected Teshirogi's health, leading to times of depression was horrible because I went through phases of ups and downs: when I killed one of the characters, she was plunged into depths of depression. This improved when Teshirogi started taking a liking to a new important character but once again had to kill him.[4]
In the making of the series, emotions are what Teshirogi pays attention the most when she is drawing which makes remake several of the illustrations she makes. In both Saint Seiya and Lost Canvas, her favorite character is the Pegasus Saint, who has become the one she likes drawing the most.[5] When creating Tenma, Lost Canvas's Pegasus Saint, Teshirogi checked if Tenma's words would be like the ones from Seiya, but she realized that both characters had different personalities.[9] The Cancer, Pisces and Taurus Gold Saints were developed with Teshirogi's idea of what she could do with the ones from the original series. When she received comments that these three Lost Canvas Gold Saints are more interesting than the ones from the original series, she answered that she did not mean to give them any special treatment. The characters' names are created according to their origins and constellation such as Pisces Albafica whose "Alba" portion of his name was developed when Teshirogi was thinking of roses' names.[5] After the manga ended, Teshirogi started writing the prequel manga Saint Seiya The Lost Canvas: Gaiden. As she reached the end, she also sought to start her own series and while she dealt with Gaiden at the same time.[8] When the Gaiden moved to a monthly serialization, Teshirogi believed that her way of writing stories improved due to the time she was given with each chapter but had problems with portraying bishonen archetypes like Albafica's design. The Gaiden primarily involved character relationships and she avoided repetition. Once the series ended, Teshirogi felt a sense of emptiness and expressed a desire to explore Yuzuriha and Yato's characters more as well as that Tenma did not have too many appearances despite being the hero.
