While the first teaser for Netflix’s anime Scott Pilgrim adaptation looked super charming, it left me with one major question: Are we just doing Scott Pilgrim vs. the World again? Same story, same seven evil exes? The same take on Bryan Lee O’Malley’s original graphic novel series?
The answer, thankfully, is no. O’Malley and his co-showrunner/writer/executive producer BenDavid Grabinski recently spoke to the L.A. Times about the series, and they were very clear: This isn’t the Scott Pilgrim you already know and love.
“If you think you know what you’re going to see, you don’t,” Grabinski told the paper. Tracy Brown writes:
With Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, O’Malley and Grabinski open up the story so it’s not just limited to Scott’s emotional point of view and how he perceives the world. … “We’re trying to get into people’s heads more,” said O’Malley. “Because when I was 25 years old, I didn’t know what these people were feeling necessarily. But I’ve seen a lot more life and I have more context for those characters now.”
Grabinski points out that the new series allows for more insight into the characters “outside of their relationship to [Scott],” especially Ramona Flowers (voiced by Mary Elizabeth Winstead), and O’Malley adds that they’ve gotten more time to develop the evil exes. In general, both seem excited to expand the world of Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) beyond, well, Scott Pilgrim, which feels right: The original series was very Scott-centric, but as its creator has grown, so has the potential for what the story can explore.
The article also gets into how Scott Pilgrim has really come full circle: It was initially inspired by anime and manga, and now it’s finding a new life as an anime series. According to the Times, “Scott Pilgrim Takes Off also embraces that it’s an anime — not just a show with American sensibilities that is being animated by a studio in Japan. O’Malley and Grabinski tease hallmarks like over-the-top action scenes, big villain moments and even a level of sincerity that is possible only because it’s an anime series.”
It’s going to be good, right? I’ve definitely got my hopes up. We’ll find out when Scott Pilgrim Takes Off debuts on Netflix on November 17th.
This post was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the series being covered here wouldn’t exist.
