Scott Pilgrim Takes Off

★★★★★

Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is a weird cartoon. In a lot of good ways.

It’s sort of a combination of the movie and the original comics, combining the art style (now animated!) with the movie’s voice cast and a longer run time (eight episodes on Netflix) that makes it possible to actually dig into the characters and story. It’s sort of a reunion show, sort of a remake, and sort of a “What If…”

Because at the end of the anime’s* first episode it, well, takes off into a totally new direction, telling a new story focusing this time on Ramona Flowers and her relationships with her various “evil exes,” reacting to, bouncing off of and critiquing the comics and movie. (Several characters actually start filming the movie during the show…which goes off the rails in yet another direction.)

The craziness is dialed up to 11, with video game, comic book and anime tropes used to reexamine who these characters are. Scott could easily have become the next Evil Ex, and he had a tendency to rewrite his own backstory to make him look better. And Ramona wasn’t entirely blameless in her past relationships either, and she has to come to terms with that. By the end, you even have a better handle on most of her exes as people who made some really bad choices after their breakups.

And an over-the-top super-hero/villain team-up against Scott’s real arch-enemy. Who isn’t Gideon Graves. (For that matter, Gideon Graves isn’t really Gideon Graves either.)

It’s both wackier and more introspective than the source material, brings to the surface some of the themes that tended to get glossed over, and makes it clear that yes, those character flaws are character flaws.

Bryan Lee O’Malley made a remark in an interview about how he started the comics in his mid-20s, finished them at 31, and came back to the story in his 40s with a new perspective. (Huh, in some ways it’s the Tehanu of Scott Pilgrim, only with extra hijinks instead of depression.)

Lots of fun, highly recommended, and ultimately a better story than the movie (which is still a lot of fun, just highly condensed and shallow).