Scott Pilgrim Stuff

Starting off the year, I ended up reading some actual physical books.

Comic

(This probably isn't a super unique experience but) I went into this series expecting a very bombastic, non-serious story, but to my surprise it's in large part a grounded, heartfelt story about learning from the past, for the sake of self improvement. I was pleasantly surprised by the more grounded side of this series, as I read it I found myself looking forward to the sappy stuff moreso than the fighting. I can see how it could've been novel for the time, and I guess in some sense it still might be, but the video gamey stuff didn't really elevate my connection to the comic. I think the video gamey stuff negatively clashes with the mostly grounded setting, but I guess that stuff made the fights a litte more fun i guess. My favorite fight was the one against Todd Ingrim (particularly the part in Honest Ed's).

The artsyle is also pretty memorably great. I see why every adaptation tries to mimic it at least to some extent. I love the subtitles used throughout the volumes. "Vs The World" is a phrase that's been a stuck in my head for years, and I think "Precious Little Life" is gonna stay in there as well. I'm not an obsessive girlfriend over this comic, but I could see it growing on me with time, it feels like something that'd be nice to revisit.

Movie

This is definitely what formed the reputation Scott Pilgrim had in my mind. Reading the comic, I pretty quickly realized there was no way the movie wasn't gonna be very heavily abridged, and it sure was abridged. Despite gutting so much of the story, it's able still to work by holding onto a bunch of the fun. The video game elements feel especially strange since this movie's live action, but they, alongside this movie's very fast pacing, end up giving some moments a uniquely ethereal feeling which I found neat. There's also some jokes from the movie that I found particularly memorable. With that stuff said, I still came out of the movie thinking about how I prefer the comic. In particular I miss the parts of Scott's love life that were cut from the movie. Similarly to the comic though, I could see this growing on me with revisits.

Game

I actually played this years ago, back when it was rereleased, and didn't bother going back to ot for this post. I'm not into a lot of beat'em-ups, but I found this one pretty fun, so much so that I beat 7 times (once per character). I get that this is leaning the hardest into the retro video game vibe, but even before reading the comic I thought it was really weird how this game has barely any plot. You don't really get to know like any of the characters.

 

Anecdote: I created my current email just so I could unlock some DLC in this game. Thanks Ubisoft for locking stuff in a game's "Complete Edition" behind Uplay (sarcasm). It was just supposed to be a throwaway email, but ran into some roadblock when trying to create a proper email for myself, so I just started using the trowaway one.

 

Anecdote 2: Back before I got the rerelease, my beloved way of experiencing this game was through ClementJ64's let's plays. Clement's was one of my favorite youtubers (I still like 'em), and that's a series of his that I have nostalgia over.

 

Anecdote 3: If I end up playing that Scott Pilgrim EX game this year, I'll probably add that to this post. It looks like it could be pretty good.

Show

I wasn't a fan of the performances in this, nor in the movie. I think the voices are more bothersome in animated form since the animated characters' facial expressions occasionally don't line up. I guess that could be blamed on the animation, but I think the animation matches the dialogue better than the voices. The animation looks great in general, and the artstyle looks like an extra flashy version of the comic. The far more extravagant lighting does feel a little weird to me since I think it'd be out of place in the comic, but it looks cool so I'm cool with it. Another feeling I share between this and the movie is not liking some of the characterization as much as the comic. Wallace feels especially different in this show compared to the comic (granted he gets moments that I found pretty funny). On the flipside, both the movie and show directly adapt a ton of lines from the comic, which is cool as a way of being faithful, but kinda mind melting for me since I watched these directly after reading the comic. It felt especially weird when lines were only slightly changed, or if the line was something I specifically didn't even like in the original comic.

Sure I guess fanfiction authors have been writing "what if" scenarios for decades, but it's cool to see a highly produced piece of media experiment with its source material in the ways this show does. It added a lot of sides to characters that didn't recieve much depth in the comic. I also found the in-universe Scott Pilgrim film plotline to be hilarious, especially after hearing this in a video about the franchise's development. While I like the finale as a reflection of the original story's themes, it feels unusually depressing how Scott ended up. Scott's character development, and his relationship with Ramona in general also felt especially shortcut.

 

Overall I was very pleased with this show. Watching it was the most consistently engaged I had been throughout any of this Scott Pilgrim Stuff (namedrop 💥).

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