Scott Pil­grim Takes Off – leav­ing behind an unex­pect­ed reinvention

Not far into Scott Pil­grim Takes Off, Scott Pil­grim, well, takes off. In this new, loos­er adap­ta­tion, cre­at­ed and writ­ten by Bryan Lee O’Malley and Ben­David Gra­bin­s­ki, the title char­ac­ter is de-cen­tred, leav­ing his sup­port­ing cast to get their own com­ing-of-age moments in his absence – we see their growth from their per­spec­tive and not Scott’s blink­ered one. Because of this, Takes Off is less a revis­i­ta­tion than anoth­er rein­ven­tion of O’Malley’s pop­u­lar com­ic book series, in con­ver­sa­tion with both the books and the movie with­in its ener­getic, wind­ing new sto­ry. The showrun­ners refuse to sim­ply play the hits, main­tain­ing the same slack­er vibes and ref­er­ence-packed rom-com-meets-bat­tle-shon­en hybrid, but in a dif­fer­ent key this time.

Its set­up as a series, the art style’s direct lift from the comics, the fact that the Eng­lish dub of the ani­mé series fea­tures the entire return­ing cast of Edgar Wright’s movie – this all points towards a sort of do-over that’s ​“more faith­ful” to the comics, an expan­sion on sub­plots that a fea­ture film doesn’t have band­width to cov­er, but Scott Pil­grim Takes Off is bet­ter than that. The series pre-empts such expec­ta­tions in a myr­i­ad of clever ways – the fran­chise has always been cute about its meta-nar­ra­tives and gags but it’s played up even fur­ther here: Wright’s movie itself becomes part of the show’s con­ver­sa­tion with and remix of Scott Pil­grim lore. That might sound too much like navel-gaz­ing to some, but Takes Off main­tains the comic’s play­ful spir­it, nev­er feel­ing self-important.

At the cen­tre of this renewed take on O’Malley’s series is Ramona, dream girl of many a shel­tered dork in the 2000s through the 2010s – here even more self-pos­sessed and grant­ed the same soul-search­ing jour­ney that Scott Pil­grim has bum­bled through twice now. It’s now more ​“Ramona Flow­ers Ver­sus the World”, but with a gumshoe PI style, when the show isn’t try­ing on dif­fer­ent gen­res as often as the char­ac­ter re-dyes her hair (in one love­ly touch, each episode opens with a gor­geous sequence of her going through that process).

As she works on solv­ing the mys­tery cen­tral to the season’s arc, the show unpacks the Evil Exes’ neu­roses rather than sim­ply pit­ting them against Scott (because Scott is gone). Ramona reflects on the com­pul­sions that Wright’s movie only had a moment to unpack, about her own inabil­i­ty to grow. Even Gideon Graves takes a back­seat to the rest of the exes, the two main dri­ving forces of the movie left behind for less trod­den ground, look­ing into dif­fer­ent aspects of its enter­tain­ing sta­ble of weirdos rather than the worst ver­sions of them, as Scott saw them. That approach goes a long way to mak­ing Takes Off feel like a more mature spin on these char­ac­ters: the ​“evil” exes still main­tain their taste for the the­atri­cal, but also go through their own moments of intro­spec­tion and growth, in the absence of a sim­pler uni­fy­ing pur­pose (killing Scott). 

Char­ac­ters who nev­er crossed paths in the film or bare­ly inter­act­ed in the comics have entire­ly new and often hilar­i­ous arcs togeth­er, while oth­ers get chances for more earnest heart-to-hearts. Some (Knives) sim­ply get to be cool­er, now they’ve stepped out of Scott’s shad­ow. Case in point: Roxy and Ramona, whose rela­tion­ship is tak­en a lit­tle more seri­ous­ly here.

If there’s any one prob­lem with the series, it’s that a size­able por­tion of the return­ing cast doesn’t always seem suit­ed to voice act­ing – the ener­gy of the Eng­lish dub can often feel rather low and the rhythms of line deliv­er­ies awk­ward, espe­cial­ly when mea­sured against the sea­soned fig­ures in its Japan­ese dub. But this is cer­tain­ly not the case for Mae Whit­man, who keeps the absur­di­ty of her live-action per­for­mance and even finds room for pathos, as ridicu­lous as Roxy is. Mary Elis­a­beth Win­stead also com­pels as the calm cen­tre to the storm of the show, mak­ing for a decid­ed­ly dif­fer­ent dynam­ic – a straight woman (fig­u­ra­tive­ly) to all of the chaot­ic mani­acs and ego­tists from her past.

But the more some things change, the more oth­ers stay the same. Takes Off may be dif­fer­ent but it still has all the flavour of a Scott Pil­grim adap­ta­tion, ful­ly lever­ag­ing its trans­me­dia con­struc­tion between the books, live-action and video game adap­ta­tions, an amal­ga­ma­tion of all of the above. It’s not only riff­ing on the film but bring­ing in ele­ments of the cult video game, with its com­pos­er Ana­managuchi return­ing, accom­pa­nied by Joseph Tra­panese. Sex-Bob-Omb’s songs are still scrap­py but catchy, and the com­posers have oth­er delight­ful sur­pris­es in store.

The resul­tant sense of spon­tane­ity and play makes the ani­ma­tion pro­duc­ers Sci­ence Saru – their work most­ly cen­tred around the direc­tion of for­mer head Masaa­ki Yuasa – a rather ide­al fit: the stu­dio over­all known for its flex­i­ble and expres­sive visu­al ethos in films like the recent Inu-Oh.

The studio’s involve­ment in pro­duc­ing the ani­ma­tion might be the most excit­ing part of this reboot. It’s helmed by Abel Gón­go­ra (whose past efforts include ​“T0-B1” from Star Wars Visions, the infec­tious open­ing of Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!!), a long­time ani­ma­tor for the stu­dio in his series direc­to­r­i­al debut. Under the direc­tion of Gón­go­ra, the show redraws the time cap­sule aes­thet­ics and var­i­ous homages of O’Malley’s comics. It’s not as visu­al­ly out there as some of the studio’s or even just Góngora’s own efforts, but Takes Off is pleas­ing­ly car­toon­ish as it visu­al­ly echoes the comics. 

The show’s art style main­tains O’Malley’s quirks, such as its cos­tumes and cutesy char­ac­ter designs (via Shuhei Han­da) with their squared-off fin­gers and blocky sil­hou­ettes, the very lit­er­al ono­matopoeia (“leap”, ​“dash” etc). Takes Off is keen­ly inter­est­ed in the dif­fer­ent tex­tures and homages that ani­ma­tion is unique­ly equipped to under­take – like in an ear­ly Deza­ki-inspired ​“post­card mem­o­ry” shot, or through­out its incred­i­bly kinet­ic action sequences. An ear­ly high­light sees a fight in a video store cross into the videos them­selves, the scene evolv­ing with the genre of each new tape – bounc­ing from West­erns to war movies to samu­rai films. 

The show as a whole is steeped in Gen X cul­tur­al ephemera (Net­flix video rental exists with­in the world of the show, wink­ing but omi­nous giv­en the company’s role in killing that busi­ness). Its throw­back vibe is plas­tered all over its sur­face, the fad­ed edges and restrained ratio of its flash­backs harken­ing back to 90s ani­mé, some sequences framed like you dug out a dusty old video. In that same spir­it, the show is burst­ing with homages and pas­tich­es. The eagle-eyed will spot nods to Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken and Beck: Mon­go­lian Chop Squad before the open­ing even fin­ish­es rolling. The series gets its own Mor­tal Kom­bat theme. Even the ​“ani­mé-girl-is-late-for-school-so-she-runs-out-of-the-house-with-toast-in-her-mouth” trope makes an appear­ance in an extend­ed sequence, as two char­ac­ters watch ani­mé videos in a depressed stu­por. As it rewrites the sto­ry of Scott Pil­grim and Ramona, it’s the main source of nos­tal­gia that the show allows itself. 

By veer­ing so far off the beat­en path, Takes Off renews a grat­i­fy­ing sense of spon­tane­ity and unpre­dictabil­i­ty that made O’Malley’s comics so fun to fol­low. The voice per­for­mances may not be entire­ly up to scratch, but those rough spots are out­weighed by the show’s over­all ener­gy and sense of inven­tion. It’s not just nos­tal­gi­cal­ly cir­cling back to the begin­ning like so many fran­chis­es are wont to do (a new trail­er for a live-action remake of Avatar: The Last Air­ben­der just came out). The sta­tus quo is dif­fer­ent, the mis­sion of the sea­son is dif­fer­ent, and the rela­tion­ships between these char­ac­ters also go through a new kind of meta­mor­pho­sis as a result.

That doesn’t mean it throws every­thing out: O’Malley and Gra­bin­s­ki take the sto­ry on a new path before bring­ing it full cir­cle – it was first inspired by a song by Plumtree, and so the series ends with it too. The orig­i­nal comics were inspired by ani­mé and man­ga, and here it is as an ani­mé series. Scott Pil­grim Takes Off gets to have it both ways, as a vic­to­ry lap for a vast­ly beloved com­ic book, and as a chance for a com­ing-of-age series to come of age itself.