Dave Fleischer was responsible for many gems. Ones that were amusing and charming, though over-cuteness did come through in some efforts and the stories were always pretty thin, with appealing characters, outstanding music and visuals that were inventive and with innovative animation techniques.
Ko-Ko similarly was an always amiable character to watch and among the better recurring characters in Fleischer's early work. Likewise, his series of Out of the Inkwell cartoons were among the best early efforts of Fleischer and silent cartoons in general. As said a couple of times before with other Ko-Ko cartoons, Fleischer may not be at his very finest with 'Ko-Ko the Knight' and 'Ko-Ko the Knight' may not be quite one of his gems. For so early on though, like most Ko-Ko cartoons, it is mighty impressive and one doesn't expect material this wild and entertaining at this stage in animation history when much later cartoons didn't do it as well, with a fair share of obvious exceptions.
In terms of the basic story, 'Ko-Ko the Knight' is not much special, the hero vs villain fighting over a love interest concept is an old and done to death one that anybody familiar with it from seeing other cartoons before this that follow this story will have no trouble figuring out what happens story-wise.
But actually, there is very little to criticise here in 'Ko-Ko the Knight'. Everything else is done very well.
One expects the animation to be primitive and very low quality. While Fleischer became more refined and inventive later certainly, the animation is surprisingly pretty good with some nice visual wackiness and wit. Much of 'Ko-Ko the Knight' is lively and with a wonderfully bizarre and sharp sense of humour, even for early Fleischer, and inventiveness.
Everything with Max is a lot of fun and imaginatively done, while the logic is not hard at all to take at face value. Ko-Ko as always is amiable and amusing.
In conclusion, impressive early effort for Fleischer while not a career high point. 8/10 Bethany Cox