SCOTT PILGRIM TAKES OFF
SCOTT PILGRIM RETURNS
- BUT NOT AS YOU KNOW HIM. THE SHOWRUNNERS BEHIND NETFLIX’S NEW ANIME SERIES TALK EVIL EXES, FANDOM WORRIES, AND THEIR ALL-STAR CAST
SCOTT PILGRIM TAKES OFF STARTS inside a dream. The eponymous dorky 23-year-old’s sleep has been intruded by a mysterious woman with colourful hair skating through subspace. He wakes up next to his cooler roommate Wallace Wells, who wants Scott to move out or find a job. Scott instead goes to band practice, where his girlfriend, Knives Chau, watches him play bass in awe.
Later, at a party, he meets Ramona Flowers, the skater girl from his dreams, and the next day orders DVDs from Netflix because Ramona’s a delivery person for them. The two go on a date, sparks fly, and Ramona goes to watch Scott’s band Sex Bob-Omb play a concert; the whole thing’s ruined when one of Ramona’s seven evil ex-boyfriends, Matthew Patel, crashes the gig.
So far, as expected. The first episode of Netflix’s new anime adaptation of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s graphic novels sticks faithfully to the source material (apart from the added inclusion of Netflix DVDs). But then, something happens at the end of the series’ opener – something that no one familiar with the novels or Edgar Wright’s cult classic film or the videogames will expect.
While SFX has been barred from going into specifics about what this climactic, surprising moment entails, we can say that this single event upends the series in a shocking, viscerally exciting way. This isn’t Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life any more.
For co-showrunner BenDavid Grabinski, who previously wrote episodes of the Are You Afraid Of The Dark? revival and directed Happily, remixing the core Scott Pilgrim story was “99% of the appeal” of working on the project. “Having people not know that we were doing something mostly new, and then just really embracing that while trying to stay within the same voice and tone of the other Scott stuff, that was the whole fun,” he says.
Indeed, the opening episode is something of a Trojan horse, luring in long-time fans and then completely upending things. It’s a startling creative choice, compounded by the fact that Scott Pilgrim’s creator, O’Malley, serves as the other showrunner. In essence, the author is deconstructing and rebuilding his own story – and if it hadn’t been for this approach, it’s unlikely another Scott Pilgrim adventure would have ever taken off.
“One day, late 2018, early 2019, Netflix approached me saying, ‘Would you like to revisit Scott Pilgrim in anime form?’ They said the amazing animation studio Science Saru might
