Knights of the Zodiac

I've never seen or read any of Saint Seiya. Not for any real reason other than there being only so many shounen shows that any one person can watch. I was certainly intrigued after seeing a trailer last year for the Western live action remake involving Sean Bean though, so when I spotted it on Amazon Prime I knew it was time to dip my toes into the franchise.

Long ago in the time of gods, the goddess Athena and her knights fought to protect the world. Upon her death, Athena was reincarnated into the body of a mortal girl who was adopted by Alman Kido who seeks out those who have inherited the powers of her legendary knights. One such knight might just be Seiya, a young man making his living as a cage fighter whilst seeking his long lost sister, until events conspire to reveal him as the legendary Pegasus Knight.

Hollywood adaptations of anime generally fall into two camps. You have adaptations like Ghost in the Shell and Death Note which are pretty decent but could have been better and those like Dragonball, Cowboy Bebop and One Piece which are embarrassingly bad. Knights of the Zodiac…… falls more into the later category. 

The script is laughably bad and you can practically hear Sean Bean rolling his eyes as he spouts dialogue about ‘unlocking your cosmo’. Added to this is the bizarre decision to copy the shounen trait of making the lead character by far the worst thing in the show. Seiya comes off as a dull, entitled brat who gets his way by whingeing until he gets what he wants whilst the rest of the characters swap personalities mid-scene in order to accommodate him i.e.  the lady who refuses to train him unless he can break a rock with his bare hands….and then immediately decides to train him anyway even though he can’t. Even the title doesn't really make much sense as neither the pegasus nor the phoenix (the only knights shown) are part of the zodiac - perhaps the manga addresses this at some point?

It's a real shame as most of the rest of the cast seem to be trying to act in a different and vastly more interesting movie with Sean Bean, Madison Iseman and Famke Janssen all doing their best with the poor material they’ve been given to work with.

Elsewhere the special effects range from decent to PS2 cutscene quality and the sets seem to have been pieced together from a variety of other films and rely on the cinematography to try and compensate for it. The costume design for the combat armour is hilariously bad too and looks like someone just went to the nearest fancy dress shop - Seiya's helmet clearly doesn't even fit him properly.

This certainly isn't going to win any new fans to the franchise or help the cause of anime adaptations in the West and it hopefully goes without saying at this point that this film is not worth any of your time. One to avoid.