Finally got around to watching these episodes. At first I thought, though rushed, they were doing a pretty good job adapting the fights against Misty, and the whale and hound guys. The mind reading hound guy being fooled by Marin's illusions to the point of carrying around the fakes and burying them was odd, but whatever. Given the rushed pacing, going through the effort of introducing Tiki was also odd. Still, the fights were more or less adapted beat for beat.
Then with episodes 3 and 4, it ran into issues where they just kept adapting Seiya's fights but cut out Hyoga and Shun's fights, made Ikki's fight lame, and condensed Shiryu's fight into basically nothing. Saori's scenes with her bonding with Seiya were fine in a vacuum, but we've seen so little of her it's difficult to connect to Seiya insisting she's a good person and such. From the original anime, I really liked the moment where she turned the crow guy's crows against him, so I was disappointed that wasn't adapted. Also, the absence of flowers from the scene where she recovers from the fall goes to show how aren't bothering to recreate the use of beautiful backgrounds from the original.
Out of those two, episode 4 especially shows how insane the pacing can be. So we have the entirety of Shiryu vs. the Medusa shield guy, along with him taking out all the other knights, then Aiolius's proper introduction along with Scorpio and the first appearance of the Pope / Grand Master in evil mode in this series to my knowledge. Then Seiya wanders back to his orphanage because that city is right next to their secret base (???). Then Shaina suddenly decides she's on Seiya's side, without even a flashback to explain, because prophecy. Then Aiolius appears and wounds Shaina, then he and Seiya fight, then the Sagittarius Armor protects him, then Saori appears and convinces Aiolius to support her, then Aiolius goes back to Sanctuary, and then Shaka starts fighting him. And that's all one episode.
And then we spend two episodes on the fucking military story. For this of all things they decide to slow down the pacing, and a big chunk of episode 5 is exposition for things we already knew. Funniest part is that Seiya and Saori go right back to the place where Aiolius attacked them, and they're attacked again, but this time a single Black Knight attack is enough to knock both of them out, letting Saori get captured. The Black Knights are really lame enemies, doing nothing but punch attacks, and the heroes do nothing to them but weak looking punches and kicks.
This is weird thematically too. The general guy wants humans to take destiny in their own hands and kill the gods, but is unwilling to see that Saori herself is human and is willing and able to go against the prophecy too. Sure, fine. General gets in a super suit ranting about how he'll kill the gods with his power, then while the knights can't beat him, Saori stands up to him, telling him to just try and kill her. Lame that the knights can beat silver knights but not this guy, but sure, I can see where this is going. General proceeds to kick Saori's ass and then Seiya powers up and wrecks him. Ugh. Though even if they went through with Saori being the one to beat him, it being immediately followed by an arrow through her chest to set up the Sanctuary arc would have undermined that.
Besides being a weak story in general, a problem with the military story is that it has basically no ties with the silver knight and gold knight stories. These two episodes could have been last season and there would have been no way to tell it was out of place, minus the arrow. Seiya certainly doesn't feel like he has any of the power he demonstrated during his silver knight fights. Well, there is the fact that Shiryu is blind, but they barely acknowledge that these episodes.
In general, the biggest victim of the changes this season is Shaun. Her fight gets cut and she's also absolutely useless against the Black Knights. She goes for their old weak points twice, gets blocked, and then is knocked to the ground. I'm baffled how much they botched this. Plus, after Shaun, none of the other knights were adapted as women. Making Misty a woman would have gotten side eye, but one out of the whale, hound, and crow guys could have been a woman. I imagine all of the gold knights will remain the same too; if they wanted to show otherwise, Scorpio was right there. And yes, I'm sure some fans would have gotten upset, but they already changed Shun knowing people would be upset, so if their goal was to include more female characters, surely they could have fully committed.
As a positive, the gold knights look great, with their detailed armors and they give off a real sense of power with their effects work.
I'm left confused what this adaptation is actually trying to do. Its original stuff is thematically confused, it rushes through the events of the source material, it seems like it will modernize the characters and story but half asses it, it gives the characters little to do and tells us the characters are friends and devoted to Athena without showing us this and why.