Knights of the Zodiac: Saint Seiya The Beginning Review – well, that was more entertaining than I thought

I’ve been a long-time Seiya fan, and when the live action was announced, I was both worried and excited for it. Movie adaptations of manga usually doesn’t fare too well (take Dragon Ball Evolution or Ghost in the Shell, for example. Only Alita: Battle Angel did pretty well as far as I’m aware), but I’m excited to see Seiya hit theaters.

I was the only one in the theater for that showing, which was not strange since I’ve had that experience with Violet Evergarden before lol.

One thing I enjoy about Saint Seiya is how different authors come up with different interpretations of the story that Kurumada-sensei wrote, so I gave the movie a go. I went in with no expectations, and to be honest, I actually quite liked it.

I am so pissed at WordPress since it didn’t backup the 2000++ word review that I wrote. Anyway, I’m hoping to write a more concise version here.

If you’re familiar with other Saint Seiya titles, KotZ is like the Netflix Saint Seiya with the 2014 adaptation, Legend of Sanctuary. Eighteen years ago, the reincarnation of the goddess Athena was saved by a knight in gold armor. Alman Kido found her, and together with his wife Vander Guraad, took her in as their kid “Sienna”, while recruiting a new generation of knights to aid her in future battles.

Our protagonist Seiya fought in an underground martial arts ring to provide for himself while searching for his sister, who was abducted when he was a child. He awakened the ‘cosmo’ inside him during one of the battles, and found himself being hunted down by Vander Guraad. Alman Kido, who broke up with her to protect Sienna, took Seiya in and sent him to Marin, who would train the clueless Seiya into the Pegasus Knight, Athena’s most loyal entourage, and in exchange, Alman will help Seiya locate his missing sister.

I will talk about what I like in this movie first.

I like some of the liberties that the movie took in exploring plot points that were not in the original.

One, Alman Kido actually tries to redeem himself for causing the death of so many kids, a point where the anime never addressed with Kido Mitsumasa sending a bunch of kids off to die.

Two, and this is something I thought about with the Netflix Saint Seiya but never got, was that we can actually see Athena grow into her role as a goddess. For many Seiya titles, we just kinda see Athena when she’s young, then fast forward to when she’s already a goddess. Saint Seiya the Lost Canvas patched this hole up in its Gaiden arc with Sasha and Kardia, but I don’t think we ever get that with the main story. Here, we see Athena as she grew to accept her role as a goddess.

Three, contrary to many reviews I saw online, I think the cast was amazing. I love Mackenyu-san and Diego-san’s interpretations of their respective characters. I was kinda anxious about seeing this new Athena but Madison Iseman did a great job with the character. The supporting cast did very good (especially Mylock) despite the script being kinda weird sometimes.

Four, the music was great. It has the vibes from the classic Saint Seiya, and a rearranged version of Pegasus Fantasy was also used in one of the scenes. My cosmo was burning when I heard it lol.

Five, again contrary to many reviews I saw, I friggin’ love the special effects. I love the sequence where they put the armor on, with their guardian constellation at the back and the armor snapping onto them piece by piece. It was so cool. I also love the neon colors of their cosmo and how flashy the moves were. Camera work was similar to what I like about 9Satra, lots of slow-mo and close-up shots. It has an anime feel but not too anime that it loses its charm.

Sixth, environment. I love Marin’s island so much. It’s not something I was expecting and it blew my mind. Although we got zero explanation on what that island was supposed to be, I still think it’s a visual feast.

A bunch of things bothered me, though. Let’s go from the beginning:

First thing that struck me was the gold knight’s helmet. This one.

This bird helmet. Bothered me. A lot. I can see that KotZ is going for the Legend of Sanctuary vibes with the cloths and helmets, but I don’t see why Sagittarius gold armor looks so much like a… humanoid bird thing. I have something against the helmets in this movie because despite liking the overall feel of new cloth/armor (and teasing the Pegasus cloth for looking like it came straight from Zilong of The Romance of Three Kingdoms) I don’t really like any of the helmets. Pegasus because, well, it looks like a warlord from The Romance of Three Kingdoms, the Phoenix because it looked really bulky like a Nespresso capsule, and the Sagittarius because, well, it looks like a bird. That’s just my personal opinion, though. I want to see the other gold armors because I think they’d look cool. Gahhh I wanna see their design of the Aries armor so much!

Second, and the biggest elephant in the room, is the script. There are many things that I like about this movie’s use of cosmo visions, but I think there are some things missing. For one, they never really use it to set up Nero’s motivations or identity, which I think they should do more of since he’s Seiya’s foil in this movie. It would make Nero (and Marin, his teacher) so much more interesting. (And man, they just had to tease us by using the Andromeda chain as Nero’s earring, huh?) Another thing is… the character motivation. I can see why Guraad changed her mind, but it didn’t feel so smooth. They also didn’t really tell us how she became so convinced that destroying her daughter is the only way to save the world. Seiya is kinda weird. Like, how did he get from finding his sister to protecting Athena? I don’t understand how his thought process worked, I just don’t see the development of him being a total clueless dude then swearing himself to protect Athena and how repeatedly seeing Patricia in his visions played into that change. Basically, it didn’t feel convincing to me. Probably just because time constraints.

I don’t really mind cheesy one-liners, though. I think that’s a charm of this movie.

Third is just how they introduced the universe. Yeah, it’s a generic fantasy that’s easy enough to understand, but I don’t think they gave new viewers enough intro. Yeah, pancakes are great, but give Seiya a proper explanation first. They did have Marin explain that cosmo is the power that people can use to shatter atoms, but later, we see Nero using it as a superpower to give people the illusion of their worst fears (in the anime, this is the Phoenix Phantom Fist which was used extensively to neutralize enemies, but in this movie, they only used it once for some reason and never mentioned it again). How did it go from a power for smashing rocks to giving people illusions? It would get confusing for some people. I won’t nitpick this point much because the anime went even further with the extent of what people can do with cosmo, but this next one:

They only introduced the knights very briefly. Too brief, I think. They only told us that knights protect Athena and the Pegasus knight is the main guy, but never really went into why they are gold and silver knights, and where the rest of these people are. And who are these people supposed to be, really? Why did one attack Athena while the other saved her?

Fourth, my man Aiolos. He just did a skydive and died in the opening scene. I wished Sienna would just say something like ‘I want to find out who the gold knight was so I can find where the rest of these knights come from’ and that’d tie in perfectly with her and Seiya’s mission at the end, but my man Aiolos laid forgotten in the pit of oblivion.

Fifth, and this is a really minor one, was their decision to dub Marin’s voice in. I’m not sure if they really dubbed her, but Marin wears a mask so I was expecting her voice to be a bit muffled. Either they dub her or stick a mic under her mask, I don’t know, but while watching, it appeared as if Marin was somehow talking inside Seiya’s head all the time. Her voice is just too clear and it felt kinda off.

Anyway, despite all those points, I walked out of the theater feeling satisfied with what I’ve watched. No, it’s not a perfect movie, but was it entertaining? Yes, to me, it was, and I’m not afraid to say so.

Browse my other Seiya posts here.

If you’re interested in other titles under Knights of the Zodiac/Saint Seiya umbrella, I listed and introduced the main ones here in this post.

Thanks for reading!