Knights of the Zodiac, Vol. 2: The Fight for the Gold Cloth (1986)
Review by Dindrane
Film:
DVD:

Written by Masami Kurumada and Takao Koyama
Directed by Chris Hawley, David Del Rio, and Tadao Kubota
Character Designs by Shingo Araki and Michi Himeno

Features:

• Trading card
  

Dindrane's Anime Warnings:

• Scary manly chests
• Sibling rivalry
• Mild violence
• Whininess
• Seriously bad manners

Released by: ADV with DiC
Region: 1
Rating: NR
Anamorphic: N/A; appears in its original 1.33:1 format.

My Advice: Skip it unless you're a sucker for Yu-Gi-Oh or Pokémon.

Knights of the Zodiac continues here in volume two with the end of the bare-fisted, armor-less battle between Seiya the Pegasus and Draco. Seiya finds himself not only in the position of victor, but also in the position of having to be the one to revive Draco's defeated fighting spirit, landing Draco in the hospital where some male bonding happens. Soon thereafter, Phoenix (aka Ikki), Andromeda's brother, arrives at the stadium to steal the gold cloth with the help of several of his equally rotten friends. Andromeda doesn't want to use his Nebula Chains against his own brother, but the Pegasus Knight and his allies, Andromeda and Swan, must retrieve the gold cloth at all costs. Meanwhile, Andromeda and the others hope to find out what horrible things happened to Phoenix during his training on the Island of Doom to turn him against all they hold dear. The rest of the disc turns to providing some backstory about each of the knights and how they grew up.

If you liked the first volume of this series, then you'll be happy with this second volume, as it's more of the same--battles, little character development other than a few new battle tricks, and vague hinting about some coming evil that might or might not mean Phoenix (an odd name choice for a bad guy, to be sure). The character revelations do a little to advance character development, but there seems to be not much there to reveal. If you're into deeply planned characters and tense, multi-faceted plots, you will disappointed here.

The sound is nicely balanced between music, sound effects, and dialogue, but that dialogue has a few problems that it needs to fix or risk alienating the top end of their target demographic. The only language track we get on this disc is the English, and the voice actors are just phoning it in for the most part. Perhaps they were rushed and had no rehearsal time or maybe the script really is as bad as it seems, but either way, the characters not only lack exposition to make them live for viewers, they're played like dolls by the actors.

The visuals are nice enough, though why Andromeda was given pink armor, I have no idea. Then again, maybe we shouldn't be so sexist; I guess there's no non-sexist reason he shouldn't have pink armor. The armor designs are rather clever and all different. The helmets are the only way you can tell to which constellation the armor belongs; it's too bad that the weapons and so forth aren't also on theme. There are no special features, save a trading card for the card game.

In short, this series reminds me a bit of what people say about porn: there's really no need for a plot or real people, as we all know why we're there. In this case, we're here for action and battle scenes using cool armor and special techniques; we supposedly don't need any of those fripperies like "characterization" or "plot." But if you're any older than, say, nine, you probably do want those fripperies and can get them easily enough with any of one hundred better-done anime titles. So unless you have a young child in your household and want to indoctrinate them into anime or if you just worked one-hundred and twenty hours of overtime and just want some pretty colors (which you will get here), then I suggest you give this one a miss.