English Dub Review: Saint Seiya: Knights of the Zodiac Season Two

Compared to the CGI anime trends of say, Ajin or the Godzilla anime, this was perfectly watchable. I’ve watched both seasons and it’s a perfectly passable watch. Maybe the shift to 3D at all was a little jarring, but in terms of how the 3D was executed, it looks fine.

Considering that last season already had a training arc, this one focused more on the results of things. It was mostly fights, with the Silver Knights being tasked to dispatch Athena, and also the struggle against Guraad. How each character manages to struggle against the Knights, as well as their teamwork to beat back Guraad’s forces, was pretty straightforward, which is something I can say about this show.

It’s not particularly deep– it feels a lot like a kid’s show. Maybe that’s the point, I don’t really know the target audience for this, but the plots are very straightforward and simple, there isn’t a lot of nuance, and they largely pull from basic shonen story beats. Of course, that could simply be that this is a remake from a very old show, so a lot of the story beats from back then weren’t as common. Still, it’s not really something that requires a lot of thinking, the most goes into Athena and how she deals with the prophecy, but not really with Seiya himself. Most of Seiya is finding the determination to power up, but he remains largely static. This felt a little surprising, since I thought Seiya would be confronted with something that would make him shift, but no, he remained largely consistent throughout.

Also, I will say that this is an incredibly over the top show in just about everything, and I would have liked to have the voice actors be incredibly dramatic too. They deliver the normal dialogue just fine, but in terms of the fight scenes, especially yelling out the attack names, I’d like to have seen some more bombast. Be full ham, scream out those attack names. That it’s so silly is part of the fun of it, and I’d like to have that in the VA delivery.

There’s definitely going to be a season three, since it ends with the cliffhanger of Athena getting shot out of a wormhole, and will she be okay? (She’ll be fine, but how do they save her? Who is the culprit? What does the Grandmaster look like underneath that mask, anyway?) There’s a lot to set up and a lot to cover, so I can see there being more of this. It is a pretty beloved series after all!

All in all, I think it’s fine. It’s a little simple, but it’s watchable. Also Marin’s pretty great.