Scott Pilgrim Takes Off

Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is an 8 episode original anime based on the comic book Scott Pilgrim by Bryan Lee O'Malley.  The series was released on Netflix in November of 2023 and was produced by Science SARU.

 

    Scott Pilgrim is an unemployed slacker living in Toronto Canada.  He is part of an aspiring indie garage band called Sex Bob-omb of which his fake high school girlfriend, Knives Chau, is completely obsessed with.  Scott has been having dreams of a girl with short, multi colored hair, roller-blading through a desolate landscape.  He believes the mystery girl is the woman of his dreams and is becoming obsessed with her, much to his cool gay roommate, Wallace Well's, annoyance.  He and his band mates go to a house party after practicing and Scott see's the girl from his dream standing against the wall.  He can't believe his eyes and does his best to impress her, with obscure video game trivia.  After embarrassing himself, he slinks away in self disgust.  He runs into the woman throwing the party, Julie Powers, who hates his guts more than anything else.  He ignores her verbal attacks and pries the mystery woman's name from her.  He learns her name is Ramona Flowers and she recently moved to the great white north from New York City and is working for Netflix, delivering movies.

    With confirmation that she is real and a clue to meeting her again, Scott uses Wallace's Netflix account to order a movie, expecting her to deliver it, and awaits her arrival at the front door, not moving for a number of days.  Ramona eventually comes calling with the ordered movie.  Scott uses this opportunity to try to ask her out again.  His tenacity pays off and she agrees to a date.  Skip to the evening and the two are casually wandering the empty Toronto streets, enjoying the Spring calm.  They ask each other basic questions only to learn they have pasts they would rather leave in the past.  A sudden blizzard arrives and they seek refuge in Ramona's apartment, taking a subspace highway to get there.  The reason Ramona continued to appear in Scott's dreams was through using a convenience subspace highway that happened to run through his brain, making travel quick and easy.

 

    One thing leads to another and the two end up in her bed, but they both decide not to have sex, instead enjoying their company while they get to know each other.  Scott takes this as the start of a relationship  Desperate to see her again soon he invites her to see a concert his band is performing later that night.  Ramona, unsure about how she feels, but interested non-the less, agrees.  Before the concert Scott gets a letter from a man named Matthew Patel.  Matthew is part of a mysterious organization called the League of Evil Exes, comprised of 7 people Ramona has dated and broken up with in the past.  The League is run by a powerful musical mogul named Gideon Graves and he has decided to send Matthew to deal with Ramona's new boyfriend.  Scott, disinterested in the letter, ignores the bulk of the details and heads off to the concert.  The League of Evil Exes isn't the only thing he has to contend with though as he see's his fake high school girlfriend, Knives, has come to see them perform as well.  Wallace warned him that he needed to break up with her if he is going to date Ramona but Scott struggles with understanding why and tries to avoid it.

    Just as Ramona and Knives are about to share information that might make this problematic, Sex Bob-omb blasts into their first song, causing Knives, who is easily overcome with emotion, pass out from excitement.  The performance is cut short with the appearance of Matthew, who challenges Scott to a duel.  Scott accepts the challenge, after Matthew summarizes his letter to him and the intent of the League.  Much to everyone's surprise, Scott is defeated by Matthew in the first punch.  A punch that hits him so hard it kills him, leaving only change in his place.  Matthew has achieved victory and can now try to win Ramona's love again.  She outright rejects him among every ones shock as to what transpired.  After the bar has closed Knives regains consciousness to find out her fake boyfriend Scott was punched to death.

    At this point, the end of the first episode, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off diverges entirely from the source material and the 2010 live action movie Scott Pilgrim vs the World.  In those stories Scott defeats Matthew and moves on to face Ramona's other evil exes, while avoiding the real struggles he needs to overcome.  The battles are distractions and Scott uses them to ignore the unresolved feelings for his ex, the pretend relationship with Knives and his complexes about Ramona's past and how that will be projected on his relationship with her.  Instead, he just beats up a series of individuals in order to win her heart without really learning from his errors.  Ramona on the other hand goes along for the ride, more a reluctant guide through the process than a participant in convincing him he is doing the right thing.  She is willing to sit on the sidelines to see how things pan out, ultimately not being committed one way or the other.

    But that's the source material and its live action remake.  This time around everything is different.  Scott is dead at the hands of evil ex number one, Matthew Patel, and Ramona has to reconcile her emotions about everything.  She keeps running from one relationship to the other, many only lasting a week or so, not really satisfied with her part in them.  Yet this time something is different, she feels an urge to put in the effort.  She begins to investigate what actually happened, not convinced that Matthew actually killed Scott.  She has to start confronting her past to understand what effect it is having on a future she desires.  Against all odds and everyone approval she wants to reconnect with Scott Pilgrim.  The vast majority of the anime follows that journey.  Where originally the narrative was from Scott Pilgrim's point of view, who is coasting through his existence and only concerned with things on the surface.  It's Ramona's turn in the spot light as she approaches the situation, completely different than the original, reluctantly facing the things she continues to leave behind, hoping to make enough amends to make her desires come to fruition.

    I have been a mega fan of the Scott Pilgrim media franchise since the movie came out.  Obsessing over it, the source comic and the fantastic video game.  When news of a new anime based on the property was announced I was ecstatic.  When it was announced that almost every member of the live action movie was returning to provide their voices and the director of the movie was also involved in the production, I was floored.  All that was left was the wait.  I never have a problem revisiting the story, I greatly enjoy it and made a check list of things that the movie did not cover hoping to see in the anime.  I was a bit skeptical with the first episode.  I wasn't sure if I liked some of the voice acting an the script seemed a little lackluster.  They hit a lot of the important beats and kept some of the quirky charm that was present in both the comic and the live action, but some things just felt off.  There was a very prominent choice to incorporate point of reference focusing in the anime.  Things in the foreground will go out of focus to draw your attention to the back ground and vice a versa.  It seemed unnatural, particularly in an environment such as anime were everything is usually crisp and clean.  It felt like a distraction and a questionable choice in directing.  I was concerned that the script was giving weak lip service to the source material, given how much was being left out over the course of the first episode.  Then Scott died and everything changed.

    The moment when this series takes the original and its replica and throws it out the window you are hooked and in for whatever comes next.  It could be anything and suddenly you are faced with a new set of plot lines for a world that you love.  A set of plot lines that run counter/parallel to what you have obsessed over for years and years and it is amazing.  Suddenly the criticisms go away, criticisms that arose from approaching the well know material.  Criticisms that were not exactly justified.  Sure the continued use of focus perspective can be off putting but you grow into the charm of the idea and accept it as a good call on the direction.  The voice acting smooths out and it's great to enjoy everyone saying new lines as their characters, except for Scott, because he's dead.  You start to notice that the anime is paying homage to details found in the comic, the live action and the video game...lots of references to the video game!!  The creation of the show dug deep into the world of Scott Pilgrim and stuffed a plethora of nods and references to that across all of its formats.  Suddenly you're seeing new stories and recognizing aspects that you are familiar with in the old story and the video game and it makes the world of Scott Pilgrim feel even more loved and comfortable.

    If it isn't obvious, I am incredibly happy with this series.  I went into it expecting a redo of the comic, adding in the side plots that were understandably cut from the movie.  I anticipated it being a different teams look at this beloved story with all of the actors returning to provide the voices.  It was going to be comfortable and well understood.  Instead we are lulled into complacency and knocked off our feet with a twist that no one saw coming,  Suddenly the story of Scott Pilgrim wasn't actually even about Scott Pilgrim any more.  Instead it was about Ramona Flowers and she is a much better character than Scott.  Scott is a terrible person but we love him, or at least root for him to win, because we love Ramona.  Now we get to see a more fleshed version of her along with other sideline characters.  She isn't just Scott's success in life.  She is her own success, she has her own goal and has her own adventures she needs to go through to try and get to her desired end.  And the Scott Pilgrim story is in a much better place because of it.  I miss that some of the fun sub plots of the comic were again left to the realm of the comic but the new stories we got in their place was well worth the loss.  But not everything was omitted, the keen eyed viewer will pick up on subtle nods to plots from the comic.  Now if we can get a new video game based on the events of this new story....that would be perfect!

     The series was released in its completed form on Netflix and is available in a variety of countries in a variety of languages.  So far, I have watched it twice and will probably watch it again shortly.  Could there be more in the future.  Probably not, but time will tell, we had to wait thirteen years for this new material.