FEATURE: The Scott Pilgrim Anime Has Some Serious Industry Heavyweights Behind It
Have you all heard about the upcoming Scott Pilgrim anime? Having announced the project was in development a year ago, last month saw Netflix drop the bombshell that the entire cast of Edgar Wright’s 2010 film adaptation would be reprising their roles, reassembling a cast that seemed like a fever dream of talent even 10 years ago. That this talent could be reassembled speaks to their enduring fondness for the project, a fondness anyone who’s gotten deeply into Scott Pilgrim must clearly understand.
But that’s far from the only reason to be excited about this production — in fact, from the unique talents of the production staff to the nature of Scott Pilgrim’s original comic books, there are quite a number of reasons to get hyped for this new adaptation. Let’s break them down!
First off, the project could not have landed at a better studio: Science SARU, the endlessly inventive collaborative founded by Eunyoung Choi and Masaaki Yuasa. Yuasa and Choi were two of the most creative and ambitious directors in animation even before the foundation of Science SARU, and since then, the studio has been responsible for many of the best anime of the past decade. Ping Pong the Animation, Devilman Crybaby, Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!, and The Heike Story all count among their marvelous creations, and that’s before you even get to their film catalog.
SARU’s works impress in both craft and concept, foregoing both standard genre work and staid stylistic assumptions regarding what anime should look like, making it no wonder that they’ve collaborated with similarly far-sighted directors like Naoko Yamada and Shingo Natsume. If you’re looking for ambitious projects that stretch beyond the industry’s usual conventions, Science SARU is the place to find them.
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Of course, anime productions are made by individual people, not by impersonal studios, which is why I’m also excited to see Scott Pilgrim will be the full-length directorial debut of animator Abel Góngora. As a Spanish animator who worked with a variety of European studios before joining Science SARU, Góngora embodies the studio’s global approach to anime creation and has assembled a striking array of credits as SARU’s head of digital animation.
Yuasa’s recent film projects demonstrate an absolute trust in Góngora’s work, with the signature water effects of films like Lu Over the Wall or Ride Your Wave revealing the essentiality of SARU’s digital animation to its overall team’s ambitions. Góngora is exploring the cutting edge of digital animation, and recent directorial accomplishments like Eizouken’s opening sequence and SARU’s Star Wars: Visions contribution prove he is ready for such a major project.
Alongside the assets provided by Science SARU’s incomparable team, the Scott Pilgrim anime will undoubtedly also benefit from the basic structural assumptions of seasonal productions. Cramming the entirety of the Scott Pilgrim comic book into a film was essentially an impossible task, meaning Edgar Wright’s adaptation fundamentally missed Scott’s full journey of initial triumph, crushing failure, and eventual maturation.
Many of the comic’s best moments were the quiet, melancholy scenes the film simply lacked time for, as Scott came to terms with the harm he’d caused and the scars he’d left in his wake. The Scott Pilgrim comic is a fatigued yet optimistic character study, and with the added running time of a seasonal anime, I look forward to Science SARU capturing more of the nuance.
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This longer runtime and episodic structure will also allow the show to take some of its focus off Scott himself, exploring the lives and feelings of the people surrounding him. The fact that Scott was so oblivious to the desires of his companions was actually a major point in the comic, a truth conveyed both through overt dramatic actions and through the audience’s unique role as observer to his life.
While Scott might not notice a clear call for help, we readers could see the way his self-absorption harmed the people he loved, having spent significant time getting to know and appreciate Scott’s friends. I’m hoping a full anime series will give Kim, Wallace, Envy, and all of the comic’s other richly realized characters their own time to shine.
Finally, as much as I’m excited to see the Scott Pilgrim I first fell in love with brought to life, I’m perhaps even more eager to see how this team changes the material and imbues it with a new anime-specific essence. The original Scott Pilgrim was in large part an homage to Japanese games and anime, combining their tropes with Brian Lee O’Malley’s own experiences and perspective.
That style of global aesthetic collage is precisely what Science SARU excels at and I can’t imagine Góngora’s team will settle for mere imitation of their source material. More than anything else, I’m expecting Science SARU’s approach to surprise me, and can’t wait to find out how.
Nick Creamer has been writing about cartoons for too many years now and is always ready to cry about Madoka. You can find more of his work at his blog Wrong Every Time or follow him on Twitter.
