Hydra Ichi

Hydra Ichi is one of the characters in the manga Saint Seiya.

He is one of the Bronze Saints of Athena.

Childhood
Ichi is one of the 100 orphans that were brought into Graude Foundation to fulfill a project -- to be trained into becoming future saints for the goddess Athena. Only 10 of the children survived the entire process, and they grew up to become bronze saints.

In the original manga, it is was revealed that all 100 orphans were actually half brothers, with their father being Mitsumasa Kido, the man they have grown to despise for tearing them from their happy homes.

After some time living and training at the orphanage, the orphans were selected to different places all over the world and sent by Mitsumasa Kido to train and bring back the saint cloth in order to protect his foster granddaughter, Saori.

Ichi went to train at Finland where he managed to get the Hydra Bronze Cloth after six years.

Galaxian Wars
Ichi returned to Japan to participate in the tournament for the Sagittarius Cloth. His first fight was against Hyoga. At first he got the upperhand and it looked like he'd beat Hyoga. He even used his Hydra Fangs on him. Then Hyoga explains the similarity of the monster Hydra and the Hydra Cloth. He froze Ichi's right hand but Ichi attacked him using his knees and to everyone's surprise, his knees also have fangs. But Hyoga remained unharmed, and explained that the Cygnus Cloth repelled the poison of Hydra Fangs. Ichi was surprised and he was defeated by Hyoga's Diamond Dust.

The Twelve Temples
After his loss he returned to Finland to train. He later came back with the other bronze saints Ban, Geki, Nachi and Jabu and headed to the Sanctuary to save Tatsumi and the comatose Athena. They stayed there until Saga's defeat.

Hades Arc
Ichi and Nachi were appointed as Sanctuary guards but as the dead Silver Saints started to appear they realized that their attacks will be useless and they were saved by Jabu. Later he appeared and tried to protect Seika from Thanatos, which act put his life at risk.

Powers and Cloth
The Hydra cloth is based on the Greek mythological monster, Hydra. But due to its minor power it currently only has one head. Yet it is Ichi's main and only know form of attack and defense.

According to him, poisonous claws come from every part of his cloth: the target hit by them becomes paralyzed and slowly dies.

Once they hit the target, the claws come out of the cloth, but new claws grow very fast, giving an infinite supply - exactly as the mythological monster, who if any of the heads were removed, two would grow in its place.

The Anime version differs slightly from the manga original, were as a pelvis armor and leg armor has been added.

The Hydra Cloth represents the constellation Hydra, which is associated to the myth of the Lernaean Hydra, from Greek mythology.



Previous incarnations
In the still non-canonical sidestory Saint Seiya Lost Canvas, Ichi's incarnation in the 18th century appeared briefly in a panel. His name was Curtis. His physical appearance was the same and he also wore the Hydra Bronze Cloth and bore the Hydra constellation.

As Saint Seiya Lost Canvas is not authored by Masami Kurumada, but only supervised by him, its status as a canonical work is to date unknown.