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

Knights of the Zodiac: Saint Seiya desperately wants to be a good anime.

Too bad it is everything but a good anime.

I will admit, seeing CGI animation in a series not intended for small children is….cringey. I won’t lie, I had very low expectations for this series when I began watching it. But I never thought for a moment that Toei Animation would do me dirty as it did. I mean, Toei Animation has produced reputed series such as Dragon Ball, Sailor Moon, and One Piece. My only suspicion for this series’ conception was to be a quick money grab milking on a beloved franchise.

Knights of the Zodiac: Saint Seiya is based off the Saint Seiya manga series by Masami Kurumada. Interestingly, the manga was quite popular when it was initially published in the 1980s. Hell, it even had clout throughout the last three decades, spawning quite a few feature films and spin-off anime series. Tragically, Knights of the Zodiac feels less like a tribute to a beloved series and more like a half-assed attempt to introduce a new generation of anime fans to the franchise.

The series follows a young man named Seiya as he is chosen to become a Bronze Knight. Which in this universe amounts to a Hellenic Power Ranger. Anyway, the Bronze Knights are tasked with protecting the Greek goddess Athena as she battles her fellow deities to keep humanity safe. Oh, and Seiya is trying to find his long lost sister, a tidbit that’s often overlooked by the larger narrative. For the sake of convenience (for the writers), Seiya’s quest to become a Bronze Knight is largely driven by the fact that he wants to find his sister.

Oh, where to begin with this one. I guess I’ll start by addressing the most obvious flaw in the series: the animation. Was anyone really begging to see Saint Seiya in CGI? Did the director lock a group of animators in a room and forced them to churn out this abomination? The series could’ve been perfectly conveyed in traditional 2D animation. In fact, some of the flashbacks scenes are depicted with 2D images that, quite frankly, look far superior to the animation in the actual series. Sure, I guess the crew was being inventive with this series and they probably had a low budget to begin with, but that isn’t an excuse to produce a poor quality anime. If anything, they could’ve allotted their resources to better use. Had they had stuck to traditional animation, the series probably would’ve received a well-needed facelift.

That said, it isn’t that the animation is terrible. It’s not sh*post quality, but it’s very dull. The characters don’t even look like people, they just look like anime characters. And this would’ve been perfectly fine if it were a 2D anime, but watching this my suspension of disbelief was continually pushed to its breaking point. At least when studios such as Pixar make a film, the character designs are unique and are designed to specifically look good in their 3D environments. With Knights of the Zodiac, the characters just look stiff and generic. Cutscenes in video games are probably more lively than anything going on in this series.

The plot is dumb. It’s very uninspired and typical of a shonen series. The character development, however, is somehow worse. For example, in the pilot episode, Seiya is reluctant to become a Bronze Knight. By the beginning of the second episode, he’s totally accepted the idea. Yes, there was a time skip (which viewers would have no idea about unless they were paying close attention to the dialogue), but was it absolutely necessary? Due to this, Seiya goes from a cheeky young teen into a preachy Gary Sue who’s been totally brainwashed by whatever propaganda he’s been fed by his instructors during his training to become a knight.

Speaking of preachy, this series is the antithesis of subtle. It shoves its theme straight into your throat and expects you to swallow it like a guppy being fed. Honestly, the series is so campy with its “friendship is magic” lesson that it makes you wonder if it was really made for adults or children. (Unfortunately, the former due to the characters’ occasional use of profanity and the presence of firearms).

The voice acting…well, haha. I feel like the VAs knew what they were getting themselves into when they committed to this project. Seiya’s voice is so whiny that he could give Morty Smith a run for his money. And for the villainous characters, their voices sound so deliberately edgy that you can’t help but laugh from sheer pity to whoever had to voice them. The cast roster is alright. Luci Christian is the only voice actor/actress that really stuck out to me, and you could just tell that she really wasn’t putting in any effort with her character’s voice. All in all, very mediocre.

I’d also like to mention that the dub localizes the character’s original Japanese names in favor of more western-sounding ones. It’s not a big deal, but if that sort of thing makes you nitpicky, I’d tread carefully with this one.

Honestly, avoid Knights of the Zodiac: Saint Seiya if you can. Aside from subpar animation (which I guess could be worse), there’s nothing really going in this series’ favor. Like, you can’t even watch it ironically to point out all of its glaring flaws. That’s because the series is so convinced that it’s a good anime that they didn’t leave any room for lighthearted self-deprecation.