Understanding How a 1980s Manga Became a Media Empire
When I first started researching the Saint Seiya franchise back in 2019, I thought it was just another mecha anime with flashy costumes. That assumption cost me about three weeks of catching up on the manga and understanding why this property generates billions in revenue decades after its initial serialization. The key thing most people miss is that Saint Seiya was never just about the animation. The real money came from building something larger than any single medium. Here is what actually happened and how the business model works. Kurumada Masami started the manga in Weekly Shonen Jump in 1986. Toei Animation adapted it shortly after. That is standard for the era. What set this apart was the merchandising strategy. Bandai saw the potential in the cloth costumes and armored figures almost immediately. They invested heavily in the "Cloth" toy line, which became one of their most profitable product categories. The figure division alone has generated over 200 billion yen since the 1990s. The complication I ran into when trying to track actual revenue numbers is that Bandai Namco does not break out Saint Seiya as a separate segment. The company reports it under their "Figures and Model Kits" division. I had to cross-reference third-party market reports, convention attendance figures, and collector community data to get anywhere close to accurate estimates. My workaround was subscribing to two industry databases that cover Japanese toy market share, then manually compiling quarterly data from 2015 to 2024. It took about four months of work but gave me a reliable picture.
The media expansion followed a pattern you see with other successful Japanese franchises, but Saint Seiya did something different with timing. While many properties try to reboot everything simultaneously, Saint Seiya released direct-to-video sequels like "Hades Chapter" and "Next Dimension" between major theatrical releases. This stretched the lifecycle and kept the fanbase engaged without burning out the brand. The strategy works because it respects the existing audience while still attracting newcomers through the video releases. One thing nobody talks about is the music revenue. Joe Hisaishi and others composed scores that got licensed separately. The "Pegasus Fantasy" theme song alone has been remixed, covered, and licensed for events dozens of times. These micro-revenue streams add up to tens of millions of yen annually and are easy to overlook when you are only looking at box office and merchandise numbers. The franchise has faced real bottlenecks. Rights management between Toei, Bandai, and the original publisher created delays on several projects. The live-action Netflix film took over a decade to get made because of these disagreements. When projects finally launched, they sometimes underperformed because the timing felt wrong. The "Knights of the Zodiac" movie in 2023 made roughly 8 million dollars domestically against a reported 45 million dollar budget. That kind of misfire happens when studios treat the brand as a IP to extract rather than a property to steward.
If you are looking to understand this business model for your own work, start by mapping the revenue streams separately: manga sales, anime licensing, merchandise, video games, live events, and music. Each stream has different margin structures. Merchandise runs about 35 to 45 percent gross margin. Licensing deals vary wildly depending on territory and platform. Games typically generate the highest revenue per unit but require significantly more development investment. The franchise continues to expand with new games, mobile titles, and occasional stage adaptations. The core strategy remains consistent: keep the IP active across multiple formats without saturating any single one. That balance is what separates enduring properties from those that burn bright and fade quickly.
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