Fans waited 13 years for this show after the last “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” movie, and now the wait is finally over with the newly animated show, “Scott Pilgrim Takes Off” that was released on Nov. 17. Executive producer and creator of Scott Pilgrim Bryan Lee O’Malley along with BenDavid Grabinski and Edgar Wright, who directed the live-action film, created this series. This animated show has fans pumped and excited to see their dumb 23 year old come back in an all new style.
It wasn’t O’Malley’s idea to do an anime adaptation. He first contacted Wright about starting a new Scott Pilgrim project back in 2018, then Science Saru Studios joined the project as the main animation studio for the show, but when they asked O’Malley about the project, he was uninterested. But, when O’Malley pitched the idea of taking the story to a different path, it was greenlit by both Universal Content Productions and Netflix and that’s what started the production of “Scott Pilgrim Takes Off.”
Fans are excited for this show as they brought back the whole cast that played in the live-action movie, including Micheal Cera who played Scott Pilgrim and Mary Elizabeth Winstead who played Ramona Flowers. Audiences were excited to hear Science Saru Studios was going to be animating the show, mainly known for utilizing a combination of traditional hand drawn and digital animation to create beautiful scenes, and it shows.
This show takes off as any other Scott Pilgrim story does: Scott Pilgrim dates a high-schooler. He meets the girl of his dreams and has to fight her seven evil ex-boyfriends to be with her. This show still follows that same premise, but takes an interesting turn on how the exes are handled. It keeps the viewers interested and guessing what might happen next, even to old fans of the series.
The movie still holds the message that you should learn and grow as a person and not hurt the people around you. But O’ Malley and Grabinski expand on that idea in different kinds of ways and people of many age groups. Science Saru does a good job displaying that message by how the characters interact with each other and how they deal with their problems they created in the past.
The show has a lot of references to ‘90s video game titles like 1991 “Super Mario Bros” and “Street Fighter 2” and video games consoles like Nintendo’s Virtual Boy and GameBoy. That’s just the tip of the iceberg of the references in the show as well as sound effects, running gags and jokes that have transferred over from the comics and movie to the show and they are funny even to this day.
“Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” has been both a treat and a joyful experience for Scott Pilgrim fans out there who have anxiously waited this show. Sadly, this might be the last content that will be produced of Scott Pilgrim. It’s definitely a 9/10 and a must watch if you have the time while it is still burning bright.
