Knights of the Zodiac

 

Photo by Stage 6/Toei Animation

Photo: David Lukacs/Stage 6 and Toei Animation

Nothing in the ’80s anime is ever fed to the audience through such straightforward, clunky exposition, though. Viewers only get fragments of the story here and there, with some not coming into play until halfway through the series. The plot comes together over time into a fascinating whole. Mix that with brutal action and authentic character drama, and you have a show that was downright revolutionary when it first came out, and which still holds up nearly 40 years later.

The 2023 Knights of the Zodiac, on the other hand, just has characters flatly explaining the plot and their motivations out loud. The defanged action sequences don’t leave an impact, and what was once an engaging story about Greek myths and destiny has been downgraded into a cliched “battle” between technology and faith/magic.

To quickly sum it up: Knights of the Zodiac is about Sean Bean’s Alman Kido taking in Seiya, a young vagabond martial artist played by Mackenyu (son of Japanese cinema legend Sonny Chiba) and training him to use the mythical Pegasus armor to protect Kido’s daughter Sienna (Madison Iseman), the reincarnation of Athena. This all happens in a world mostly like our own, with a tiny sci-fi dystopian aftertaste to it, in the form of Guraad (Famke Janssen), a leader of a paramilitary organization who used a Saint armor to develop cyborg power suits and wants to kill Sienna because she believes the girl will destroy the world. Almost none of that plot comes from the original manga and anime — but it’s almost a note-for-note adaptation of the little-loved 2019 CGI series.