Last week we had the first trailer for the live-action of The Knights of the Zodiac, by director Tomasz Baginski and Mexican actor Diego Tinoco, and many fans did not like it due to the fact that it has a rather austere CGI at the time of taking brief glimpses. to Seiya (Mackenyu), Athena (Madison Iseman) and the golden knights. But, Did you know that America had a bigger abomination in the 90’s? A remake that, fortunately, was cancelled!
Yesterday, Ray Mona’s YouTube channel shared a rather interesting finding: the opening of Guardians of the cosmos, the US version of the anime we all love, Knights of the Zodiac. The video is property of the historical archive of television in the United States, so it can only be consulted in their catalogs. But she got it and shared it for all the fans.
As you can imagine, the gringos they changed the Asian features to the bronze knights for the classic Caucasian ones. The opening song is not bad, it is quite catchy as usual in cartoons like Captain Planet, Transformers; even the music from Batman and Spider-Man the animated series, to mention a couple of gringo examples. But nothing to do with the unbeatable Japanese, Latin and even Spanish “Pegasus fantasy”.
ray mona The name for the American continent
The advance, as if it were He-Man or the thundercatsintroduces us to the bronze knights as protectors of the earth, the universe and, as the name says, of the cosmos. Seiya, Shiryu, Shun, Hyoga, Ikki and Saori appear accompanied by the Patriarch. One of the biggest changes was made to Andromedawhose sexuality has always been called into question because of his feminine features and effete behavior.
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Shun doesn’t have feminine features.
Obviously, as this series is produced by Renaissance-Atlantic, the bridge company between Toei Animation (the same behind Dragon Ball Super) and the West, eradicated all femininity from Andromeda, a fact that annoyed Masami Kurumada, the creator of the mangawho celebrated that this version was abruptly canceled without even seeing the light of the first episode in 1993, the date on which its premiere was scheduled.
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They lost their Asian features
The documentary Secret stories of Saint Seiyaavailable on YouTube, narrates that they also tried to americanize sailor Moon and it didn’t prosper either. The United States was very interested in introducing the Japanese market, but very censored. If it had been fulfilled, perhaps all animations such as Demon Slayer, Attack on Titan or Tokyo Revengers, among many others, would have been westernized for our consumption.
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Americanized Sailor Moon
According to the research done and the opening theme that Ray Mona got, the anime was going to go straight to the saga of the sanctuary because we have the appearance of the golden knights, the interior of the house of Taurus, the horned knight himself, Aldebaraan, among others. It’s scary what producers and distributors like 4Kids wanted to do like our childhood, just remember that Yu-Gi-Oh! and Pokémon are some of the most censored anime on this continent, courtesy of the aforementioned company.
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This is how Taurus was going to look