Scott Pilgrim Takes Off: Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life Books Included

November 17, 2023 6:38 AM - Season 1, Episode 1

Scott Pilgrim is a 23-year-old Canadian slacker living in a video-game-style Toronto with his cool gay roommate, Wallace Wells. Scott dreams about a girl on rollerblades whom he has never met before.

Well, this seems like yet another straightforward adaptation of the comic—wait a minute, WHAT THE FUCK???

posted by 1970s Antihero (24 comments total)

I found out this was happening last night from a friend and that was probably the shortest gap between SQUUUUUEEEEEEE and fulfillment I’ve ever had.

It’s funny to have the same voice actors at a more chill pace (both dialogue and plot).

The music’s great so far but I do hope we get a cameo track from Beck. Garbage Truck or Ramona, maybe?

Also, ditto whaaaaaaatttt??
posted by sixswitch at 8:16 AM on November 17, 2023

I haven't seen anything about this yet, so... what's the WHAAAAAT? about?

I recently re-watched the film with my GF, and her reaction was, "Why the fuck would anyone want to date this spoiled asshole?" I couldn't disagree. Still, a fun flick, especially visually.
posted by Saxon Kane at 2:45 PM on November 17, 2023 [1 favorite]

It would be a pretty major spoiler to answer that question but you won’t have to wait too far into it to find out!
posted by sixswitch at 3:53 PM on November 17, 2023 [3 favorites]

Kind of cute that they gave Ramona a job delivering Netflix instead of Amazon in this version, although also kind of ironic considering that it came out just after Netflix shut down their DVD delivery service.
posted by baf at 2:46 AM on November 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

kind of ironic considering that it came out just after Netflix shut down their DVD delivery service.

Also ironic as we never had the Netflix DVD service in Canada.
posted by Ashwagandha at 12:50 PM on November 18, 2023 [7 favorites]

It would be a pretty major spoiler to answer that question but you won’t have to wait too far into it to find out!

Fair point ;)
posted by Saxon Kane at 2:40 PM on November 18, 2023

Also ironic as we never had the Netflix DVD service in Canada.

Ha, yeah, it should have been zip.ca
posted by fimbulvetr at 3:21 PM on November 19, 2023 [1 favorite]

I’m amazed at what they accomplished here. Lots of fun, no notes.
posted by Servo5678 at 3:47 PM on November 19, 2023

All right, as an elder millennial who knows the whole Scott Pilgrim deal but has not seen the movie or read the original comic (I had an allergy in my early thirties to media that seemed too directly targeted at me)—am I able to jump into this?

I do not care about spoilers, like, at all
posted by thecaddy at 4:12 PM on November 19, 2023 [1 favorite]

You can jump right the hell in!
posted by sixswitch at 5:46 PM on November 19, 2023 [1 favorite]

You can jump right in, but there's also some expectation defying going on here.
posted by whuppy at 4:58 AM on November 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

Honestly, I think this show would be pretty weird to watch without having read the books (or at least seen the movie). Having the context of how things went in either the comics or movie is pretty important to understanding why the show is interesting.

I really liked the show, but it sure did feel like something created for an audience of one (me). Lucky me, though!
posted by joelhunt at 8:38 AM on November 20, 2023 [4 favorites]

I'm going to go to my grave insisting that this would have been 10x better if each episode was released on a week-to-week basis. The amount of theory crafting and fan arguments about what was going to happen next would have been very, very entertaining. But still, this was a triumph. (And this is an aside for a longer and off-topic discussion, but we really are living through a new golden age for animation.)

And thecaddy, I think you could just jump in and enjoy - there's so much amazing work on display. The animation is superb, music's fantastic, voice acting is top-notch (especially Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Ramona), etc., but really this show is a gutsy re-examination of 15-20 years of fandom and what made it popular and entertaining in the first place.

I mean, how easy would it have been to just make the anime version of the comic/movie? Just take the money and run! But they took the high-risk high-reward path to make something throughly unique and true to itself.
posted by ssmith at 10:20 AM on November 20, 2023 [5 favorites]

I read the comic way back when but never saw the movie. I'm a bit further along in the show but haven't finished it yet but I will check out the movie because I want to see the voice actors acting out the parts now.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 12:05 PM on November 21, 2023

whaaaaaaaaaaaaat
posted by praemunire at 6:45 PM on November 22, 2023

I bounced off the books. The first volume had some cute stuff mixed with some really icky stuff that was meant to be cute (the 17-year-old girlfriend, "winning" Ramona as a prize, etc). I didn't bother continuing.

Since it's been a few days and this is "books included" it might be nice to actually discuss how this differs from the books explicitly rather than just referring obliquely to it. It seems like people want to talk about it but are afraid to spoil it (spoilers are allowed here).
posted by rikschell at 7:21 PM on November 22, 2023

Suffice it to say re: “books included” that uhhh even so much as obliquely acknowledging any part of the second episode at all constitutes a major spoiler even if you have read the original comics
posted by DoctorFedora at 3:05 AM on November 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

the 17-year-old girlfriend

This was never meant to be cute. It was supposed to show that Scott is an immature loser. Bryan Lee O'Malley has said that, when he first wrote it, he assumed people would take for granted that it was a bad thing that "Scott Pilgrim is dating a high schooler."

The inappropriateness of this is made more explicit in the anime, I think.
posted by asnider at 2:13 PM on November 23, 2023 [6 favorites]

yeah Brian Lee O'Malley mentioned in an interview that he has learned that nowadays, he can no longer trust the audience to understand that he's depicting Scott dating a high schooler as being a Bad Thing without making it explicit

so that's a fun thing to think about, regarding the general state of media literacy in the year 2023
posted by DoctorFedora at 6:57 PM on November 23, 2023 [4 favorites]

(or potentially the process of meeting more and more people the older you get, and adjusting your overall impressions of "people" as a whole based on that growing database.) (Plus he's probably been exposed to a lot more of the "what's wrong with dating a highschooler?" contingent than most just by virtue of the book he wrote.)
posted by trig at 8:07 AM on November 24, 2023

I mean it's clear from the book's perspective that the underage dating is meant to be read as inappropriate and immature, but also that it's not meant to be so gross and toxic that we see Scott as an unredeemable sex criminal. I feel like the latter reading is more likely default now and so it has to be clearly stated that they never kissed and only held hands once and it's more a matter of Scott wanting to avoid navigating the uncomfortable process of letting Knives down easy than of him actively participating in "dating" her.
posted by rikschell at 12:28 PM on November 24, 2023

I mean it's clear from the book's perspective that the underage dating is meant to be read as inappropriate and immature, but also that it's not meant to be so gross and toxic that we see Scott as an unredeemable sex criminal.

I think that's right. Even several of his friends are like, "Jesus, Scott."

so it has to be clearly stated that they never kissed and only held hands once

Pretty sure that's explicitly stated in the graphic novels, too, but I'm traveling so can't check.
posted by praemunire at 7:27 PM on November 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

Pretty sure that's explicitly stated in the graphic novels, too, but I'm traveling so can't check.

I either sold or gave my copies to a friend years ago, but I am fairly confident that yes, this comes directly from the original text and wasn't a new addition to the movie or anime.
posted by asnider at 11:26 AM on November 27, 2023

In the movie, Scott and Knives kiss on-screen (right before the first Battle Of The Bands).
posted by mbrubeck at 3:40 PM on December 4, 2023