Japanese animation is very popular on both cable and broadcast TV in the US right now.  With shows like Shaman King, Big O, and SD Gundam being shown with great success, it's only natural that TV executives would go searching for other properties to license.  DIC has obtained the right to the long running Japanese cartoon Saint Seiya.  The original show was deemed a little too violent for American audiences, so it was slightly edited (mainly changing the color of blood to an off green) and broadcast as Knights of the Zodiac.  ADV has just put out the second volume  of these edited episodes.

Picking up where the pervious volume ended, the tournament for the Gold Cloth continues in these four shows.  This disc contains the following episodes:

Episode 5 – Miraculous Rebirth and Cosmic Friendship:  Seiya and Dragon continue their fight, but without their cloths (magical armor.)  At the end of the battle, both fighters collapse, but Dragon's mystical tattoo starts to fade, and with it, his powers.  Only Seiya's cosmic punch can restore Dragon's powers, but does Seiya have the strength?

Episode 6 – Return of Phoenix:  The tournament continues as Unicorn battles Andromeda and his Nebula Chains.  The chains are sentient weapons that protect Andromeda from any attack.  Unicorn is easily defeated, but the chains still sense danger.  Just then, the 10th Bronze Knight arrives, Phoenix.  Could he be the source of danger?

Episode 7 – Theft of the Gold Cloth:  Ikki returns from the Island of Doom, not as a kind child who left, but as the evil knight Phoenix.  After making an unprovoked attack on his younger brother, Phoenix has a tournament battle with The Wolf, with unexpected results.

Episode 8 – Battle for the Gold Cloth:  After the Gold Cloth has been stolen, the Knights split up to search for it.  If the thief puts it on, he will become a Gold Knight, with awesome powers and be almost unstoppable.  They must find him before that happens.

This volume improved on the first, though only slightly.  There are still too many battles and not enough plot for my tastes, but they have started to move in the right direction by stopping the seemingly never ending tournament and having the knights search for the gold cloth.  I'm not sure why only four knights went searching instead of all of them, but that's one of those errors you have to be willing to overlook in a children's show.

I have to admit that I found myself siding with the 'evil' Phoenix.  As an orphan, he was made to train constantly to be a fighter.  Then he was forcefully separated from his kid brother to train on the Island of Doom.  I can see why he's upset with the guy who did that to him.  I just wonder why no one else is.

The animation in this series is rather dated.  The show was created in the late 80's, so the crude movements can be forgiven, but the bad proportions can't.  I wonder if the animators had ever seen a real human before.  The forearms were incredibly long, sometime longer than the character's torso, and the heads were small.  Of course this isn't true all the time.  People's arms and legs routinely grown and shrink, according to the animator's whims.

The single audio track on this DVD was a stereo English dub.  The dub wasn't too bad, but it wasn't great either.  The best thing I can say about it was that there were no phony accents.  Surprisingly there was some limited use made of the sound stage.  The sound quality was about what you'd expect for a children's animated show.  It didn't sound full and dynamic, but it wasn't too flat either.

Video:

The show was presented in a 1.33:1 ratio, as it is shown here on TV. There were some digital artifacts present, but nothing that was too bothersome.   The print was from the 80's but it looked older.  The colors were muted a little making everything look like it was photographed through very light gauze.  There was some grain in the picture, and there were several instances of dirt or spots on the film.  Not anything horrible, but not a great print.

The Extras:

The only extra was trailers for other ADV children's shows.

Final Thoughts:

This show got a little better in the second volume.  There was more of a plot in these episodes, but it still seemed like an endless fight to me.  Hopefully the show will add some depth as it goes on, but I doubt it.  Fans of the show should pick it up, but everyone else should Rent It.