Scott Pilgrim anime

A classic revisited?

At this point, should we call Scott Pilgrim vs. the World a classic? It came out thirteen years ago and is one of the quirkiest, most enjoyable comic book adaptations—due in considerable part to its excellent cast.

Now, that cast — yes, including Captains Marvel and America — is reuniting, in full, for an anime Scott Pilgrim series that has original Scott Pilgrim creator Bryan Lee O’Malley as one of its showrunners.

I adored Edgar Wright’s live action adaptation, but I have to ask: why are they doing this? Is this anything more than Netflix getting their own version of the intellectual property while using their financial power to reassemble the original cast as a gimmick?

I find myself worrying whether this will prove as inessential as the Netflix live action take on Cowboy Bebop turned out to be.¹ At least with a different cast we could get to see different takes on the characters and their storylines, in the way that the Audible adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman - and the Netflix live-action adaptation, for that matter - did.

I can imagine an anime adaptation of Scott Pilgrim offering some different looks for some scenes, but it’ll take quite some doing to surpass the live-action version of the tale.

I look forward to being proved completely wrong about this, obviously. I’d like to think that executive producers Edgar Wright and Bryan Lee O’Malley have all sorts of fun ideas they’ve not yet revealed about why this will be worthwhile.