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Netflix announces Scott Pilgrim Anime Series

I'm slightly concerned because, when I went back to watch Scott Pilgrim a year or two ago, it hadn't aged terribly well.

By which I mean that a lot of the jokes read less as "Hah! Scott really is an awful person!" and more like "Ooof, Scott really is an awful person..."
 
It was clear to me when for the anniversary the cast did the zoom script read of it that they really did like making this movie, but I'm still happy to see them all come back for this.

I'm slightly concerned because, when I went back to watch Scott Pilgrim a year or two ago, it hadn't aged terribly well.

By which I mean that a lot of the jokes read less as "Hah! Scott really is an awful person!" and more like "Ooof, Scott really is an awful person..."

I can see that, but also the comic invests a lot more time in to Scott realising that he's an awful person and trying to fix that. So I can see this show making it more of a complete arc.
 
Which is why I'm hoping this goes more along the lines of the comic, because yes Scott is an awful person but he does realize it and gets a redemption arc, and it focuses a bit more on the people he hurt, and why
 
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Well that would be nice.
 
That clip reminds me that there is soooo much good plot that never made it into the movie and I have to read it again
 
So the fun way that the comic, movie and game were all kind of completed at the same time and thus have some differences are probably going to be amalgamated in to the anime? Because that's kind of funny.

Also, while I do love Anamanaguchi and their soundtrack to the game was great, the Beck songs in the film are kind of iconic to Scott Pilgrim in my head now, I wonder if they'll be able to use them.
 
The way these announcements drop in day by day I wouldn't even be shocked anymore if Beck just tweeted out over the weekend that he's in too and is already recording a couple more Sex Bob-Omb songs (just... not tomorrow please)
 
Yeah, I'm on board with this.
 
Huh.

This has taken an unexpected left turn.
 
Okay now I've finished it and there are definitely spoiler discussions to be had.

It took me a few episodes to get over the initial shock of having the rug swept from under my feet. I did end up really liking it in the end once I embraced it for what it was. Bryan Lee O'Malley definitely played FFVII Remake for inspiration.

It was a lot of fun, playing with expectations to make something new that still felt true to the world and characters.

Okay let me nitpick.

Firstly, while I am happy that they took the risk to make this story, I would still be very happy if they just adapted the comics faithfully. Maybe one day.

Next, while I love that the cast are returning and clearly enjoying themselves it feels like it loses a bit in translation because they don't have the small quirks that are part of their physical performances. For instance Mary Elizabeth Winstead is playing Ramona the same way with an often deadpan voice but it's missing the body language to go along with it and comes off as flat at times.

In general it takes a few episodes for the voice performances and getting to get a better flow. Often it felt like there would be weird pauses in dialogue that made things stilted. I think it's a regular Vs voice actor thing that shows.

I was very happy to see that Anamanaguchi did the music for the series, after all they did the music for the game and it's a great soundtrack. It was a shame to not have any of Beck's music from the film but I wasn't surprised to see it missing.

But the audio mix was weird? Music is always at the heart of Scott Pilgrim, his name is literally a song! So why was the music so quiet throughout the entire show, I want there to be bangers that I can hear.

Anyway, these are all minor complaints, I did watch most of it in one sitting so I did have a good time and I was smiling for a lot of it.

P.S. Knives is still an angel and great character.
 
I agree with everything.

Looks like we got a Scott Pilgrim Multiverse now.

I watched with the gf. She never read the graphic novel and just saw the movie, like... way back, so I explained to her the thing we'd been talking about, how the movie misses key elements in Scott's character development and that I'd hope the show would go and do better, and well... they didn't go and do better but literally addressed that on a meta level. And the way they did it makes so much sense.

Like, we got comics Scott who went through character growth, who healed and addressed his own mistakes and found closure for him and those he hurt, but... Ramona never did.
Both comics Ramona and movie Ramona only got her past pushed away by way of her new bf beating her exes to death. She never found closure, and never worked to heal and get better, she just... got a new start, with her past just being compartmentalised away... never mention movie Scott, who heavily suffers from Nice Guy Syndrome and works through nothing really.
So now we got a version of Scott and a version of Ramona who went though character growth and learned how to heal and face the pain they caused others... while also giving closure to those they hurt.

When Lucas started to befriend G-Man I had kinda hoped they'd end up creating a League of Friendship or something, also taking Scott under their wings, but well, we can't have it all.

Still kinda missing Lisa - I feel like they could have used her well for this type of plot - and I think they did Envy dirty in this version.


Also, at some points I like how this all was filled to the brim with cameos and references, at others it felt a bit much. Like, yeah we get it, Edgar Wright plays the director Edgar Wrong here, it was fun, but... he doesn't have to get like 15 minutes of screen time in this episode, it doesn't really add anything.
Speaking of Edgar Wright, at some points I actually said out loud "That must have been a cameo!", and one of those was when the studio guards appeared. And I went "Wait are those Simon Pegg and Nick Frost?", all the way from "They did sound British right?" to explaining their connection to the movie via Edgar Wright, actually throwing my arms up in victory after reading their names in the credits.


But yeah, while I'm sure insufferable weird misogynistic nerds are already writing up manifestos about how much they hate it, I had fun and enjoyed it a lot!
 
At first I was very confused by the security guards being English, I didn't pick up on it being them at all so as soon as I saw the credits I did a facepalm. I did enjoy how they had Cornettos in the epilogue. Also I have no idea what part Weird Al did when I saw his name. And for some reason it wasn't Edgar Wright voicing the director, I have no idea why.

It being packed with references makes sense but I feel like we were actually had a more shallow version of it this time. A lot of them were repurposed from the comics/movie which is fine but it didn't add a lot of new stuff, it's part of the snappy character of the universe and it felt a bit thin in the ground.

Don't get me wrong there were some great bits like the stage being the same as Mario Bros 3 but I'm talking less about the references and more about the delivery and aesthetic of the comics and movie. It would have been good having Bill Hader back as The Voice for instance, that's one place where I feel the movie does a good job of translating comic narration.

Totally agree about Lisa and Envy, Lisa is once again completely ignored which is a shame but she's a big part of Scott's wilderness redemption story so I guess it's not as important here. And they give Envy a flat character here instead of her development that she gets in the comic, the scene in the comic where Scott apologies and she hugs him with the caption "CLOSURE" is iconic to me.

A couple of things that I thought they might have done, I was almost expecting them to reveal that Gideon/Gordon was actually the guy that Scott punched so hard he saw the curvature of the Earth when rescuing Kim. The other thing is that I was wondering if the glow/chip on Ramona was going to come back in some way but I guess not.

Anyway, they made something interesting and different which I do applaud, it's worth talking about. If it was boring or bad that would be much worse.
 
Also I have no idea what part Weird Al did when I saw his name.

I thought he was Straight Wallace, aka the actor playing Wallace before being replaced by Wallace, aka the guy on set that creeped on Ramona aka one of Wallace's stunt doubles.


That said I liked that they focused more on some of the "side" characters, like Wallace, or Julie, or Stephen, or Patel (who said his appearance in the movie was character assassination which is absolutely correct)
 
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To think Edgar Wright managed to coax visuals that were a lot more impressive out of a live action movie is quite sad.
Paired with animation on the lower end of frames just rubs me the wrong way.
 
Eh, I dunno if I want to complain about that

One was a Hollywood movie, the other is a glorified fan service cartoon. I'm very okay with the visuals as they were. I'd rather watch a fun but unpolished project like this than a CGI action fest lacking love for the medium or the story/universe
 
Watched the first three episodes.

That was not what I expected.

I get the impression it's more of a four-hour film in eight parts than it is eight 30-minute episodes of a tv show, so I'll hold my opinions until the end.
 
While none of the episodes are self contained, a few of the middle ones don't really flow well together in my opinion. Don't think it would work as a long film due to that.
 
I watched the end on my lunch break today.

I enjoyed it, and I'm really glad that they went for the "shaking things up" option.

I don't think it was perfect. I think the first episode had terrible pacing and will probably put off a lot of viewers. In the larger sense, I get why it was like that, but it felt bad while watching for the first time.

I think probably my biggest complaint is that, in a series which so openly embraces lampshading and meta comments and "yes, it's ridiculous and no, we aren't going to explain it", the character development is often very bland and/or understated, at least when it comes to Scott and Ramona. Even Super Ramona at the end left a bunch unsaid and her choosing herself was rather diluted by immediately making it about Scott; there was no "Ramona earned the power of self respect!" call out that I think would have been both appropriate and deserved. Equally, we realise that Scott is a hot mess and entirely to blame for everything, but we never see Scott realise it or actually make steps to change.

I wasn't 100% sold on the art style, but there's enough that I like and the rest kind of grew on me, so no real complaints there.

As Kris says, I think it suffered a bit from the "acting =/= voice acting" thing. I'm not sure how to express it, but some of the actors just didn't quite sound like themselves (or, at least, like the characters that they played), which gave things a slightly weird feeling at times. Some performances translated better than others, with I think Scott and Knives being the worst off.

Overall: Not perfect, but I liked it. I'd rate it a solid 8/10.
 
I think this is spoiler free enough to say but Science Saru are a fantastic studio with a lot of heavy hitters under their belt. It probably would have been one of the rare situations where having the voice lines done before the animations would have made sense given the cast.

It would have been a good way to to translate their performances which was maybe missing in the final product.

For reference the only film that I know did the voice lines first was The Emperor's New Groove.
 
There's a great story about how Disney wanted a copy of the script of archiving, it was delivered a couple of weeks after production wrapped because there was never a true script to begin with.
 
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