LET’S BRING IN FIRST WARNING METEOROLOGIST ERIC BURRIS DRY RIGHT NOW. WE WILL SEE A COUPLE OF POCKETS OF SHOWERS LATER ON TODAY. YOU KNOW, IT’S STILL WE’RE STILL FLORIDA. WE’RE STILL WATERS ON THREE SIDES OF US. YEAH, BUT LOOK AT THE SEVEN DAY FORECAST. BECAUSE HERE’S ONE THING. WE DON’T HAVE 90S. IT’S ALL UPPER 80S FOR HIGHS. AND WHILE YES, THIS WEEKEND THERE’S A FEW SHOWERS, WE GO EVEN DRIER MONDAY, TUESDAY, WEDNESDAY. AND THEN BY LATE NEXT WEEK, MODELS ARE SAYING WE’LL KIND OF RETURN TO A BIT OF A SUMMER PATTERN. SO SHOWERS AND THUNDERSHOWERS GET GOING. BUT AT THIS HOUR, LET’S JUST TALK ABOUT THE LACK OF MUGGINESS. WE’RE IN A COMFY TERRITORY AND TEMPERATURES AROUND TOWN LOOKING ABSOLUTELY DYNAMITE. 71. THIS IS THE COOLEST. ORLANDO HAS BEEN OFFICIALLY AT LEAST SINCE JULY 1ST. 66 DEGREES IN OCALA. YOU WERE AT ABOUT 66 YESTERDAY, BUT IT DOESN’T MAKE IT FEEL ANY LESS INCREDIBLE. AND IT’S A SATURDAY 69 OUTSIDE IN LEESBURG AND EVEN ALONG THE COASTLINE, THINGS FEEL FANTASTIC, AT LEAST INLAND A BIT, RIGHT? IT’S 77 FOR PORT CANAVERAL, BUT 74 ON MERRITT ISLAND, 72 IN PORT SAINT JOHN. SO YOU HEAD INLAND. IT FEELS GREAT. VOLUSIA COUNTY, GOOD MORNING TO YOU. 69 DEGREES IN CHESTER, 70 DEGREES FOR VICTORIA GARDENS, DELAND. AND THEN BEACHSIDE, RIGHT. 79 AT THE INLET, 80 DEGREES BEACH SAFETY HQ, WHICH IS BEACHSIDE NEAR DAYTONA BEACH. RIGHT. SO OUTSIDE IT’S BEAUTIFUL. BUT THAT BREEZE COMING IN OFF THE OCEAN IS AT LEAST INFLUENCING US JUST A LITTLE BIT. AND LATER TODAY, THAT BREEZE COMING IN OFF THE OCEAN WILL INFLUENCE US. BRINGING IN COASTAL SHOWERS. FOR NOW, THEY’RE STAYING PUT OFF THE SHORELINE, BUT THAT WILL CHANGE. MOST OF THE MOISTURE IS OVER SOUTH FLORIDA, BUT YOU CAN SEE THAT ENERGY OFFSHORE. AND LATER TODAY WE’LL TAP INTO SOME OF THAT AND BRING IT ON IN HIGHS TODAY MID 80S. BEACHSIDE, UPPER 80S ACROSS THE INTERIOR, LOWER THAN THE AVERAGE OF 90. BUT IT’S A FRESH BREEZE TEN, 15, 20 MILES AN HOUR. SO THERE’S THAT BREEZE KIND OF PICKING UP ON SOME OF THAT MOISTURE, BRINGING IN SOME SHOWERS. SAME IDEA FOR US TOMORROW. BUT IS THIS STORM SYSTEM AND COLD FRONT PULL AWAY FROM US? WE’RE ACTUALLY GOING TO GRAB SOME DRIER AIR AND PULL THAT ON DOWN. SO THAT’S WHERE OUR WORKWEEK DRIES OUT A BIT. EITHER WAY THOUGH, MAKING PLANS FOR SATURDAY LOOKS GREAT. SEAWORLD. ASIDE FROM WATCHING SOME OF THOSE COASTAL SHOWERS TRY TO WORK IN, IT’S A COMFY BREEZE FOR US TODAY. EPIC UNIVERSE, IF YOU’RE HEADING OUT TO ENJOY, OPENS UP 10 A.M., STAYS OPEN UNTIL TEN. WE’LL BE WATCHING THE RADAR FOR A FEW SHOWERS THIS AFTERNOON. OTHERWISE WE’RE LOOKING GOOD. 40% COVERAGE EAST OF TOWN. REALLY? SAME IDEA TOMORROW. DRIER. MONDAY, TUESDAY, WEDNESDAY AND THEN THUNDERSTORMS RETURN THURSDAY. FRIDAY. COASTAL SEVEN-DAY FORECAST LOOKING GREAT AS WELL WI
Burned the **** out, girl is stressing me the **** out and blaming me for everything, unable to take personal accountability unsurprisingly. So I’m taking off for the middle of nowhere without cell service to sleep in my hammock and float in the river and get **** faced for a while. Might just not come back and become one with the trees.
Me just ranting. Well my day has been a complete **** show. A ******* tourists rat bastard dog just killed 7 of my lambs and tore off the faces of three ewes. And now I have to get more ******* paperwork and legal **** to get compensation from the owner for the cost of the dead lambs. **** MY LIFE.
On the first official weekend of farmers market season in Logan Square, a report about food and produce vendors being shunned in favor of non-food vendors has many questioning the direction organizers are taking the massively popular event which returns Sunday, May 12 at a new site.
In years past, many non-licensed non-food vendors, or vintage sellers, have set up shop outside the boundaries of the market, capitalizing on the crowds without paying the Logan Square chamber vendor fees. Police fielded complaints about these unsanctioned vendors, as neighbors cited traffic and safety concerns. Quietly, many farmers market vendors questioned if it was fair for them to pay fees while the vintage vendors — selling goods like clothes and art — took advantage.
Block Club Chicago’s story from earlier in the week shared publicly what many Logan Square vendors had thought for years, that market organizers cared more about creating a summer festival vibe. This distorts the focus of a traditional farmers market. For example, Green City, the not-for-profit organization that holds markets in Lincoln Park, West Loop, and Avondale (in the winter), has a mission statement in which they pledge to secure “the future of food by deepening support for sustainable farmers, educating our community, and expanding access to locally-grown food.”
But not every shopping mall is upscale with a Coach store. The neighborhood often defines a shopping center or farmers market. That philosophy is consistent with responses from the Logan Square chamber. Eater sent questions to Nilda Esparza, executive director of the chamber — she also organizes the market. Esparza, with the aid of the chamber’s board, emailed responses.
“We love our farmers, and we serve more and more farmers every year,” a portion of the chamber’s emails reads. “While there may be a broad-based understanding of what farmers markets are supposed to do in general, the Logan Square Farmers Markets specifically is organized by the Logan Square Chamber of Commerce.”
The chamber also argues that having more non-food stalls better serves the community.
“The Chamber supports farmers by connecting them to the city dwellers in Logan Square — and many other Chicago neighborhoods — because it believes that this in turn supports businesses and residents in our community,” the chamber’s email continues. “The inclusion of non-food vendors serves the dual purpose of bringing more business to farmers and exposing more people to all that Logan Square and Avondale have to offer.”
While acknowledging the effort to put on the market, vendors feel Logan Square could still be better organized. Vendors tell Eater they feared retaliation for criticizing Esparza’s decisions, including seemingly being arbitrarily moved around the market to give up prime space to non-food stalls. Hunting around for a stall is hard in a crowd, which impacts sales: “It’s hard to scramble last minute,” one food vendor says.
Several vendors shared frustration with Esparza about erratic scheduling and said she should take cues from what other markets do. A vendor mentioned they’d like to trade dates with other vendors, but felt they couldn’t even propose the idea thanks to Esparza’s demeanor. Vendors echoed Block Club’s report, that vendors were told not to speak with the media with any concerns. They weren’t threatened with retaliation, but say it was implied.
The loss of the nearby Discount Megamall, razed in 2016 to make room for a building that includes Andros Taverna and Target along Milwaukee Avenue, may have impacted the farmers market. “Vintage sellers,” or as the chamber calls them, “bazaar vendors,” lost space to sell their wares. Some who might have found a home at the Megamall set up shop in the park next to the market.
The chamber found itself in a tricky position with safety and traffic concerns mounting. The market was already congested enough. The city’s licensing departments, often criticized in the restaurant world for being slow in recognizing a problem, aren’t helping.
“We believe that the safest and most productive way to operate the farmers market in the neighborhood, in which we all live and work, is by including non-food vendors under the Logan Square Farmers Market umbrella,” the chamber board responds. “We intend to do this at least until the city provides a licensing rubric for these informal economies.”
Chef Sarah Stegner is a co-founder of Green City and recalls the story of Judy Schad, who founded Capriole Goat Cheese. Schad sold goat cheese at Green City Lincoln Park about seven years ago but found a home at Dom’s — customers can also find the cheese at Whole Foods and other retailers. The farmers market served as an incubator for Capriole.
The role of incubator is one that Logan Square’s farmers market wants to play, but not just for food vendors. One vendor disparagingly compared the market to a “glorified food hall.”
Back in 2008, legendary chef and writer Alice Waters visited Chicago and heaped praise on Green City’s mission. Chef Art Smith remembers Waters’ words, particularly her mention of Paris, and the impact the moving of its massive outdoor market, Les Helles, had on the city and its food culture. American dynamics are different, but he sees a similar transformation taking place in Fulton Market, where development has long displaced the meatpacking industry. There’s danger in rupturing connections with foodways in favor of so-called neighborhood revitalization.
The Logan Square chamber, in a news release, said it’s thankful for Block Club’s report and tried to save face with the public.
“We can’t comment on the accuracy of peoples’ feelings,’’ a portion of the chamber board’s emailed response to Eater reads. “We trust that they feel and believe that the market is fundamentally unfair. While this saddens us, we remain optimistic. We do know that while we strive constantly for both fairness and transparency in pursuit of our mission to support the business and community of Logan Square and Avondale, we will inevitably disappoint some people along the way.”
Star Wars:The Phantom Menace is 25 years old and back in theaters for Star Wars Day (“May the 4th be with you”), inevitably setting off a new round of debate about the movie, the prequel trilogy as a whole, and the current, sometimes frustrating, state of Star Wars media. Though The Phantom Menace has been heavily criticized, it’s also been re-examined and even embraced over the past few decades. There are memes that celebrate the highly dramatic dialogue and direct references in tentpoles like Solo. The kids who grew up with the prequels as their main Star Wars movies have spoken up to defend them.
But arguably, what really vindicated the prequel trilogy was the spin-off culture. The animated series, books, comics, and everything else tying into the expanded canon made good on the promises delivered in the prequels’ seven hours of CG-filled adventure. The Phantom Menace, and later Attack of the Clones,introduced a political conspiracy that spanned every corner of the Star Wars universe, a corrupt government meshing with a somewhat clueless Jedi Order. In an attempt at reasonable runtimes, the movies don’t go that deep with the Jedi’s request for a clone army, or interesting characters like Darth Maul, Mace Windu, and Count Dooku, who all meet early demises. But the genius of Lucas’ plans — anticipated or accidental — is that the movies sparked creativity in other creators.
Del Rey
In 2014, shortly after the acquisition of Lucasfilm, Disney rebranded most “Expanded Universe” media as “Legends” content, with only a handful of stories and lore from outside of the movies surviving the purge. Still, both departed and surviving EU enhance the prequels.
One notable book that didn’t survive the new post-Disney canon is James Luceno’s Darth Plagueis, which took one of the most important yet unknown figures of the prequels and gave us a complete story that fills plenty of the blanks. The novel dealt with the Sith lord Darth Plagueis, hinted in Revenge of the Sith to be Darth Sidious’ master, and a being who could manipulate midichlorians to create life. The novel tells the story of Plagueis’ training of a teenage Palpatine, his arc to become a politician, and how the duo planned the creation of a clone army, and with that the Clone Wars itself.
Though the novel is no longer canon, the idea that Palpatine and his master planned everything about the Clone Wars in order to gain power has been explored in other comics and novels, like Luceno’s own Tarkin from 2014. Palpatine in the movies was meant to be this mastermind who was ten steps ahead of everyone, but we didn’t really see him do that much until Revenge of the Sith. Likewise, we are told vague statements about corruption and the “bureaucrats” in charge of the Senate, but in books we finally started to see how much the senator from Naboo changed the course of history in the galaxy. Tarkin illustrated the damaged political system, and how easy it was for Palpatine to manipulate it to his favor, something that fleshed out the hooded figure formerly known just as “The Emperor” into a cunning man everyone underestimated until it was too late.
The expanded canon also shines a new light on the Jedi Order better than the movies ever could. We knew from the original trilogy that the Jedi had all but disappeared; the prequels showed them to be a naïve, strict organization that was unable to prevent its downfall.
The novels Master & Apprentice by Claudia Gray and the audiobook Dooku: Jedi Lost by Cavan Scott focus on why some Jedi in the galaxy became disillusioned by the Order, and its close ties to the Republic. Master & Apprentice follows Qui-Gon Jinn as he welcomes Obi-Wan Kenobi as his apprentice, fleshing out some themes from the movies, like slavery in the galaxy and the Jedi Order’s role in galactic politics. The novel shows that Qui-Gon was constantly questioning whether the Jedi were more than the chancellor’s police force, and the nature of “balance” in the Force.
The Phantom Menace introduced the idea of Jedi as something akin to the United Nations’ Peacekeeping Forces, unable to intervene without full authority from the Republic, and expected to always be neutral. But how are they supposed to protect the light side of the Force, which lives inside all living creatures, if they can’t intervene in wars or end slavery? The current EU books confront the contradictions that pushed away members like Count Dooku and, eventually, Anakin.
Marvel Comics
When it comes to the comic books, the anthology run Age of Republic shines new light on the characters we know from the prequels. The Qui-Gon issue expands on the story from Master & Apprentice where the Jedi master was becoming obsessed with prophecies and finding true balance in the force, which he thinks the Jedi Order can’t achieve if they stay so rigid.
There’s also Obi-Wan and Anakin, written by Charles Soule, which explores the relationship between Obi-Wan and Anakin and the 10 years between Episodes I and II, carving out the brotherly bond that formed between the two Jedi. The Darth Maul miniseries focuses on Maul’s insatiable hunger to kill of Jedi, and his frustration over being forbidden to engage in combat before the events of The Phantom Menace, something that further sends him to the dark side of the Force, even if he wonders what the light has to offer.
Then there’s The Clone Wars, one of the few bits of media that wasn’t de-canonized before The Force Awakens was released. What made the animated series special from the get-go is that it seemed like everyone involved knew that viewers were pretty negative about most of the characters in the prequels, so they took it to heart to flesh them out and give them enough depth to make us love them just as much as Luke, Leia, and Han.
From the first season, The Clone Wars showed us the impact the conflict had on the entire Star Warsuniverse. We meet kids who were orphaned by the war, see how the criminal underworld thrived in a war setting, and note why most planetary populations hesitated to join the war effort — which kicked off rebellions in some regions. While the series was primarily aimed at kids, there was some dark and mature material at display that showed the horrors of war and the human cost of it.
Cartoon Network
One of the best parts of the series was getting to know the faceless clone army that was introduced in the movies. We first meet Domino Squad in training, then follow them through their trials and tribulations in the field of battle. The Umbara arc best exemplifies what made The Clone Wars so good. The four-episode story follows the Domino Squad and the larger 501st Legion as they embark on a deadly mission to take the capital of Umbara, and watches as tension rises between the clones and their new and reckless commander, Jedi Pong Krell. Gritty and frank about the casualties of war, the series still found room to give the clones personalities, despite all looking the same.
The animated series also did a better job of tying up loose ends. Remember that deleted scene from Revenge of the Sith where Padmé basically founds the Rebel Alliance? The Clone Wars shows there was resistance in several worlds that opposed the war, and what the Republic was doing. This included the introduction of Saw Gerrera, who played a key part in the live-action Rogue One. There was also the re-introduction of Darth Maul, who came back to life in the series, with much more than three lines of dialogue.
When it came to filling in the gaps from the prequels, The Clone Wars also gave fans their first canonical look at the infamous Sifo-Dyas in the episode “The Lost One,” which dealt with the conspiracy surrounding the creation of the clone army. In that same last season, the series showed how the Emperor was able to control the clones with Order 66, giving us a backstory for the devastating order.
In the end, for many fans, The Clone Wars succeeded where the prequels did not by making the audience care about Anakin Skywalker’s journey. The arrogant, bratty Jedi was given more dimension, and his story became that of a man caught between the light and dark sides of the Force. We witnessed his constant struggles with the dark side, his fear of loss, his anger and resentment toward the world, the pressures of being a Jedi, and how it all made him the perfect target for Palpatine’s manipulation. The series provided a deeper, more complex look at the character and made his shift into Darth Vader logical, with much more impact.
The Phantom Menace is 25 years old, but the prequel era feels fresher than ever. The gripes mounted over two decades have been challenged, inverted, and matured by the ever-expanding EU. Fear over the prequels leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering — but most of that could be alleviated by picking up the right book.
Electronic Arts is laying off 5% of its workforce, or around 670 of the company’s workers. EA employed around 13,400 people by the end of last March, according to a regulatory filing. Sixty-five percent of those employees are located outside the U.S., it said at the time. Notifying impacted employees “has already begun and will be largely completed by early next quarter,” EA CEO Andrew Wilson wrote in a note to staff published Wednesday.
Wilson also said EA is “moving away from development of future licensed IP that we do not believe will be successful in our changing industry.” Instead, it’ll focus on “owned IP, sports, and massive online communities.”
“We are also leading through an accelerating industry transformation where player needs and motivations have changed significantly,” Wilson wrote. “Fans are increasingly engaging with the largest IP, and looking to us for broader experiences where they can play, watch, create content, and forge deeper connections. Our industry exists at the cutting edge of entertainment, and in today’s dynamic environment, we are advancing the way we work and continuing to evolve our business.”
No specific games were mentioned in Wilson’s note, although EA is currently developing several games based on licensed properties, like a reported third Star Wars Jedi game, along with Marvel’s Black Panther and Iron Man. EA announced in 2022 that Respawn was developing three separate Star Wars games, one of which was Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. The two others were unannounced; one of those games, a first-person action game, has been canceled, according to Video Games Chronicle. “As we’ve looked at Respawn’s portfolio over the last few months, what’s clear is the games our players are most excited about are Jedi and Respawn’s rich library of owned brands,” EA entertainment and technology present Laura Miele said in a statement to the publication.
The cuts come almost one year after EA laid off around 700 people, or 6% of its staff, in March 2023. Earlier in February of this year, The company also laid off “a small number of staff” earlier this week as it ceased operations on EA Sports MLB Tap Sports and F1 Mobile Racing. (These layoffs may be included in the 670 number announced Wednesday.) Those games are presumably part of the company’s plan to “sunset” several games, as Wilson noted in the letter to staff.
EA expects to spend $125 million to $165 million on these layoffs and other cost-cutting measures. Office space reductions will cost roughly $50 million to $60 million, while $35 million to $45 million is expected to go toward “costs associated with licensor commitments,” according to a securities document filed Wednesday. EA said it’ll spend $40 to $55 million on employee severance, which is on top of the $170 million to $200 million EA spent last year on its reorganization cost-cutting plan. (EA, at that time last year, expected to finish the actions related to those costs by Sept. 30, 2023. This time around, it expects to be finished by Dec. 31, 2024.)
Image: Respawn Entertainment/Electronic Arts via Polygon
In late January, EA released its recent financial results where it reported earning $7.6 billion in the past 12 months before Dec. 31, 2023. Of that, EA made $5.8 billion in gross profit. EA reported that its net bookings are up by 1% year-over-year — part of that is related to its live service success, where it earned a “record $1.712 billion,” 3% more than last year. “On a trailing twelve-month basis, live services were 73% of our business,” EA wrote. In particular, EA called out EA Sports FC for “outperforming expectations.”
“I understand this will create uncertainty and be challenging for many who have worked with such dedication and passion and have made important contributions to our company,” Wilson said in the letter, adding that the company will do its best to help affected workers find “new roles or paths to transition to other projects.” “While not every team will be impacted, this is the hardest part of these changes, and we have deeply considered every option to try and limit impacts to our teams.”
EA is, unfortunately, not alone in the worrying trend of increasing video game industry layoffs. On Tuesday, Sony Interactive Entertainment announced it was laying off 900 people, or 8% of staff. Insomniac Games, Naughty Dog, Guerrilla Games, and Sony’s Technology, Creative, and Support divisions were all impacted. This week alone, people have been laid off from studios like Deck Nine Games, Supermassive Games, and esports company ESL; there was also a production halt at Die Gute Fabrik as funding ran dry.
Roughly 8,000 people have been laid off in the first two months of the year in a worrying trend that’s quickly outpacing 2023, where around 11,000 people were laid off, per industry trackers. Why are these layoffs happening? A comedown after the pandemic is part of it, but not the whole story that includes increasing interest rates on loans, how expensive it is to make games, and a shift in video game industry business models. One important failure to consider is that executive leadership expected the engagement built during the pandemic to continue and grow; executives expanded their companies recklessly without a realistic long-term plan.
True confession: while I admire and enjoy the heck out of Undertale, the hugely influential 2015 indie RPG that rewards a peaceful approach to conflict, I’ve never actually managed to complete a pacifist run of the game. That’s because I stink at its bullet-hell combat, which demands lightning reflexes and near-perfect memorization throughout its lengthy and brutal boss battles. So you can imagine my delight when I happened upon an adorable RPG that swaps twitchy, rage-quit-inducing challenges for gentle word puzzles.
6 Things To Know Before Starting Persona 5 Tactica
Leximan, from developer Knights of Borria, immediately caught my eye among the many booths at December 8’s Day of the Devs indie showcase. That was largely due to its monochromatic pixel art style, which is interspersed with trippy splashes of color. You play as a pointy-hatted wizard with a slinky, gliding stride, navigating your way through a variety of colorful dungeons and puzzles.
As is the case in any worthwhile dungeon, you’ll encounter baddies to dispatch, and Leximan puts a unique spin on the genre’s familiar turn-based combat. When you enter battle, you’ll see a swirling cloud of word fragments on the bottom half of the screen, which you can then use to create mystical incantations. There’s a variety of solutions to any given situation, and the most obvious word may not be the correct option—or the most interesting one. You might have a pretty clear idea of what will happen if you cast “Fireball,” but aren’t you the slightest bit curious about what might happen if you chose “Hairball” instead?
Leximan | Announcement Trailer
Once you’ve landed on your approach, the ensuing dialogue will dance and shimmer on the screen, often in vibrant contrast to the game’s mostly black-and-white aesthetic. On occasion, the game’s entire interface will transform or change color—as when I cast “yellow” in response to a foe wielding a green shield. These inventive riffs on the familiar combat system combine to allow each encounter to feel distinct and memorable in its own right. At least during my brief demo, there wasn’t any hint of the kind of spammy, repetitive encounters that often plague retro-styled role-playing games.
With its full-hearted embrace of punny turns of phrase, I wasn’t surprised to discover that the team behind Leximan is based in the UK (Cornwall, to be more precise). There’s a distinct dryness and Python-esque sensibility in the writing here that feels distinct from Undertale—and its many imitators—in a welcome way. If you’re a fan of an offbeat RPG with oodles of personality, this is one to watch.
Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, the anime adaptation of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s hit comic series by studio Science Saru, premiered on Netflix last friday. Produced and written by O’Malley and co-creator BenDavid Grabinski, Scott Pilgrim Takes Offdiverges significantly from the source material, morphing into an adaptation that at once functions as both a sequel and a remake of O’Malley’s original comic.
If you’re new to anime, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off might be your very first introduction to the work of Science Saru, the Japanese animation studio co-founded by Masaaki Yuasa and Eunyoung Choi. In recent years, Science Saru has garnered a reputation as one of the most memorable anime production houses of the past decade, thanks to a wildly idiosyncratic body of films and TV series and Yuasa’s flair for expressive, comically-inclined animation.
If you’ve already watched through the entirety of Scott Pilgrim Takes Off and are looking for something else to watch as you puzzle over what exactly that ending might mean for Scott and his friends, not to worry: We’ve got just the list in mind.
We’ve pulled together our favorite Science Saru anime for you watch, from freewheeling romantic comedies, to macabre supernatural action dramas, and more.
Adventure Time, “Food Chain”
Image: Science Saru/Cartoon Network
Run time: 11m Where to watch: Max
What better place to start on a journey through the weird and wild animation of Science Saru than the studio’s first production? Directed by studio co-founder Yuasa, this 11-minute episode of the beloved show Adventure Time follows Finn the Human and Jake the Dog supervising a field trip to the Candy Kingdom’s Natural History Museum. After being transformed into birds by the mischievous Magic Man, the pair experience the circle of life firsthand as they transform into bacteria, plants, and eventually caterpillars which eat and are subsequently eaten by bigger birds.
It’s a beautiful and trippy short that hones in on Adventure Time’s distinctive brand of surreal humor while coming across as a great sampler for Yuasa’s particular approach to animated comedy and storytelling.
The Night Is Short, Walk On Girl
Image: Science Saru/GKIDS
Run time: 1h 32m Where to watch: Max
The 2010 anime The Tatami Galaxy is commonly regarded as Masaaki Yuasa’s magnum opus and one of the best anime to come out of Science Saru. Adapted from Tomihiko Morimi’s 2004 novel, the 11-episode anime follows the story of an unnamed college student who, paralyzed with indecision, is bounced between multiple parallel universes as he re-experiences his freshman year over and over again. Unfortunately, at this time of writing, The Tatami Galaxy is not available to stream. But The Night is Short, Walk on Girl, the standalone spiritual sequel to the series, is just as good a place to start if you’ve never watched a Science Saru anime before.
The Night Is Short, Walk On Girl follows a hapless senior student at Kyoto University who plans to confess his feelings to his classmate at the school’s yearly night festival. Unfortunately, the two are separated while taking in the local nightlife, creating two parallel storylines of a comedic bar crawl and an over-the-top series of mishaps and shenanigans. If there’s one anime on this list that feels the closest to Scott Pilgrim Takes Off in terms of comedy and premise, it’s this one.
Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!
Image: Science Saru/Crunchyroll
Number of episodes: 12 Where to watch: Crunchyroll
Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! won its way into our hearts, and onto our list of the best anime of the year, back when it first aired in 2020. Based on Sumito Ōwara’s manga, the 12-episode anime follows a trio of high school girls who form a bond over their mutual love of animation. The series follows the girls’ journey through the wild world of amateur animation, first establishing a “film club” to circumvent the resistance of their teachers and parents, before creating a short film to sell their first commercial anime project.
Aside from being a delightful anime in its own right, Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! is a passionate tribute to the craft and dedication of traditional cel animation that puts an unsparing focus on the struggle that goes into taking a creative vision from an idea to reality. Filled with brilliant fourth wall-breaking sequences and charismatic characters, Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! is as entertaining as it is educational.
Devilman Crybaby
Image: Science Saru/Netflix
Number of episodes: 10 Where to watch: Netflix
Long before Scott Pilgrim Takes Off was even announced, Yuasa’s adaptation of Go Nagai’s apocalyptic superhero manga Devilman was a breakthrough success for both Science Saru and Netflix when it debuted back in 2018. An alternate modern retelling of the original story, Devilman Crybaby centers on Akira Fudo, a lonely high school student who is transformed into a powerful human-demon hybrid shortly after reuniting with his childhood friend Ryo Asuka. A hyper violent dark fantasy with intense action sequences and an ambiguous ending that borders the line between implicitly hopeful and explicitly nihilistic, Devilman Crybaby is a modern classic that’s strongly recommended for fans of anime like Neon Genesis Evangelion, Chainsaw Man, and the supernatural thriller anime X.
Inu-Oh
Image: Science Saru/GKIDS
Run time: 1h 38m Where to watch: Max
Masaaki Yuasa’s latest film is also, as of this writing, his final production with Science Saru, having announced his retirement from the company shortly before the movie’s premiere in 2021. That doesn’t necessarily mean Yuasa won’t ever direct another project at the studio again, but if it is, Inu-Oh is one hell of a way to cap off his time there. As critic Kambole Campbell noted in his review for Polygon, the film is, “a psychedelic, bombastic rock opera [that] ponders what stories have been lost as society’s more controlling elements attempt to control how art is made and distributed.” Music has always been a large part of Yuasa’s animation, and here, that love for the tightly wound relationship between the visual and the musical erupts into a howling display of breathtaking scenes and foot-stomping musical numbers. If you’re looking for an anime that matches Scott Pilgrim Takes Off’s energetic beat, Inu-Oh is an easy recommendation.
The Heike Story
Image: Science Saru
Number of episodes: 11 Where to watch: Crunchyroll
The Heike Story is an undersung entry in Science Saru’s body of work. That’s a shame, because it’s an achingly beautiful series that more than deserves appreciation.
Directed by Naoko Yamada (K-On!, A Silent Voice), this adaptation of the classic Japanese epic follows Biwa, a traveling orphan who is brought into the home of lord Shigemori, a powerful lord whose servants killed Biwa’s father. Framed as a classic tragedy, the series follows the members of Shigemori’s family as his empire crumbles from the inside out, with Biwa documenting the various twists and turns of their destruction while playing her lute. The Heike Story was one of the best anime of 2021, and for good reason: It’s a beautiful, complex story of power undone by hubris with a delicate and beautiful art style and an evocative musical score.
Ping Pong the Animation
Image: Science Saru/Funimation
Number of episodes: 11 Where to watch: Crunchyroll
Ping Pong the Animation is one of the best anime of the past decade. Based on Taiyō Matsumoto’s (Tekkonkinkreet) original manga, it follows the story of two young men: Yutaka “Peco” Hoshino, a cocky self-assured high school student who’s a local Ping Pong whiz, and Makoto “Smile” Tsukimoto, his reserved childhood friend.
The series follows the diverging lives of Peco and Smile, as the former is humbled and eventually forced to grapple with the limitations of coasting on sheer talent alone, and the latter is coaxed out of his shell to live up to his own potential as a ping pong player. Animated entirely in Flash, the series is one of the most unique productions of its era: A coming-of-age psychological drama, brought to life with idiosnycratic blend of misshapen lines and odd proportions that coalesce into an inspired display of visual and emotional storytelling.
Jess, Jomi, and Steve are back to conquer the ghosts of their failed relationships and celebrate the latest in Scott Pilgrim lore, the Netflix animated series Scott Pilgrim Takes Off. Along the way, the Mint Edition discuss their first time watching Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, how the animated show differs from its predecessors, and their favorite characters of the series.
Hosts: Jessica Clemons, Jomi Adeniran, and Steve Ahlman Producer: Jonathan Kermah Additional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopal
If you’ve been waiting for a Black Friday price cut on the Xbox Series X or Series S, Best Buy, GameStop, and Target have knocked $50 off the standard price of either console, discounting the Series X to $449.99, and the Series S to $249.99. The Diablo 4 Xbox Series X bundle at Walmart and Microsoft is even cheaper at $439.99.
But before you buy, take note that some retailers have better bonuses than others. At Best Buy, the discounted Series X comes with a $50 Best Buy gift card. And, if you happen to be a member of My Best Buy Plus (a $50 annual service), you can get another $50 off the total, resulting in a final cost of just $399.99 for the console.
Target is offering a slightly sweeter deal on top of the $50 discount. If you buy any Xbox Series X that it has in stock, you’ll also get a $75 Target gift card.
Let’s get it out of the way: This is not a spoiler-free review of Scott Pilgrim Takes Off. Netflix’s anime take on Brian Lee O’Malley’s video game reference-ridden romantic comedy graphic novels and their subsequent live-action movie adaptation is impossible to talk about while tiptoeing around specifics. I’m not going to tell you how it all ends, but I do have to set the stage in a way that will give away a great moment in the first episode if I’m going to talk about this show with any sort of conviction.
If you’re just looking for a quick thumbs up or thumbs down, then yes, you should watch Scott Pilgrim Takes Off if you are a fan of the original story and have also seen the film. Hell, throw the very good video game in there, too. The anime is in conversation with the source material, and despite still being about the titular dopey, irresponsible fuck-up and his enigmatic delivery girl love interest Ramona Flowers, it’s still best experienced when you know what this series is all about. And here’s why:
Scott Pilgrim Takes Off starts off similarly enough. Most of the first episode is a faithful retelling of Scott meeting Ramona, becoming infatuated with her, and then ordering a movie for her to deliver to his home so he can ask her out. Their date is sweet, their respective pasts are shrouded in mystery, and as things start to pick up between them, their budding romance is interrupted by Ramona’s ex Matthew Patel attacking Scott at a battle of the bands show. Anyone who’s seen the movie or read the books knows that Scott is supposed to win this fight. But this time, Matthew comes out victorious, seemingly killing Scott, and it becomes clear we’re on a completely different ride.
Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is not a retelling of Scott Pilgrim or its movie adaptation. It’s a third, alternate version of the story that examines the very premise all of this was built on. Think The Rebuild of Evangelion or Final Fantasy VII Remake. While the source material focuses on Scott facing Ramona’s Seven Evil Exes in a desire to win the “right” to date her (wow, that sounds incredibly loaded all these years later just typing it out), the anime’s title is pretty apt because, for several episodes, Scott Pilgrim is barely even in the show.
Image: Netflix
That’s because it’s not really about him this time around. Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is Ramona’s story, and after the live-action movie did her so goddamn dirty (A mind control chip? Really?) I was actually pleasantly surprised with this framing and exploration of the Scott Pilgrim story. Part of me is a little disappointed that we got all these incredible actors back from the film to voice these characters and didn’t get a chance to do better at re-telling that story, this time avoiding things like relegating Nega Scott to a bit, completely stripping Ramona’s story of nuance with the aforementioned mind control chip, and cutting out characters and relationships for time’s sake. But the second I realized what Scott Pilgrim Takes Off was actually about, I knew this was the right call and was glad to be on the ride.
Even if it’s not a direct retelling, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off still manages to pull some story beats off with more sincerity than the live-action film did. I bought into Scott and Ramona’s relationship more here thanks to better writing, pacing, and performances from both Michael Cera and Mary Elizabeth Winstead. Because I was enjoying that relationship much more this time around, I did have a brief moment of disappointment when it became clear this show wasn’t going to be telling the story I already knew, but that was quickly replaced by a heartwarming delight as I was drawn into the anime’s own intricacies and its willingness to examine the series’ blindspots.
The entire premise of Scott Pilgrim is that Ramona’s exes have formed a group of superpowered villains who are out to ruin her love life for the rest of eternity. As soon as a new paramour throws their hat into the ring, the exes swoop in to curb-stomp them so that Ramona will get back together with whoever wins the fight. That’s the idea, at least. It doesn’t seem like any of them actually stopped to think about whether or not Ramona would willingly go with any of them. But these exes are villains of the week who Scott and Ramona fight together and then move on from very quickly.
Image: Netflix
Even when Ramona talks about them, it’s often in a dismissive tone. Scott Pilgrim’s core conflict originates from ex-lovers who demonize each other while absolving themselves along the way. Ultimately, what makes Scott Pilgrim so great isn’t the stylized action, the witty quips, the nerdy references, but its insight into its surprisingly complex characters. And Scott Pilgrim Takes Off’s shifted perspective lets it examine characters who have often been left behind: the evil exes.
Ramona spends most of the eight-episode series begrudgingly reconnecting with her exes while investigating Scott’s mysterious disappearance at the beginning of the show. Sure, it’s got all the zany action sequences and over-the-top exaggeration long-time fans know and love, but at its core is something introspective and illuminating, lending new depth to characters who previously existed largely just to gesture at Ramona’s underlying issues. For example, take Roxy Richter, the sole woman in the League of Evil Exes, who is often dismissed by Ramona as a phase. Scott Pilgrim Takes Off starts off with the two confronting each other, and after the swords and giant hammers have stopped swinging, Ramona starts to reflect on how she is just as much an Evil Ex in Roxy’s story.
By focusing on Ramona and putting Scott on the back burner, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off critically re-examines the foundation it was built on nearly 20 years ago with the first book. Love is hard, and it’s only natural that even if we cared for someone at one point, we might start to resent them when things end. There are exceptions, of course, but more often than not the people who hurt us and the people we hurt in kind aren’t malicious; they’re flawed people just like us trying to figure it all out.
While the anime is all about unpacking the narrative baggage Scott Pilgrim has carried all these years, the characters remain as emotionally and psychologically complex as ever. Their thorny interpersonal dynamics are still core to the story—they just manifest in new, really effective and subversive ways.Subversion is the basis of Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, after all. Even as Ramona is making things right with the people she’s wronged and who have wronged her, that same demonizing of one’s old flames is still foundational to the story, and the show’s late-season twists are some of the best realizations of everything it seeks to explore. I won’t spoil them here, but suffice it to say that this show also takes time to make up for the film’s shortcomings instead of repeating them.
Image: Netflix
I’ve spent a lot of time talking about Scott Pilgrim Takes Off’s subversive elements because that’s where it excels, but the show also still presents a delectable recreation of the series’ best elements in this new framing. It’s gorgeously animated and colorful, with some excellent choreography to its over-the-top fights. The writing is just as sharp, witty, and full of pop culture references, but doesn’t feel so beholden to that tone that it’s just constantly winking at the camera. The show brings the kind of laugh-out-loud absurdist humor that made the original’s gags so memorable but doesn’t feel like it’s just playing the hits. That refreshing newness is well married with its comfortable familiarity and comes from its knowing subversion of what we’ve come to expect, and thankfully the new material gives the voice cast a lot to work with. Characters who barely interact in the books or movie get whole arcs together, and it’s all so fresh it retroactively makes the thought of a faithful adaptation less exciting.
But with all that newness comes trepidation. At first blush, I’m not thrilled that Scott Pilgrim Takes Off ends on a cliffhanger. Getting invested in anything Netflix does is just setting yourself up for pain because the streaming service cancels shows like I delete tweets that don’t pop off. An animated Scott Pilgrim series that brought back the entire movie cast seemed too good to be true when it was announced, and now that it seems Netflix is entertaining a second season, any unabashed glee I have toward this show feels like it’s on shakier ground.
Netflix has been cutting jobs in its animation department while also relying on AI to do animation work due to what it calls a labor shortage. Scott Pilgrim Takes Off succeeds because the people at the heart of it love and understand it, and people loving something is what puts it on the chopping block at Netflix, it seems.
I leave Scott Pilgrim Takes Off with a mix of emotions because its complete re-examination of Scott and Ramona’s story convinced me everyone involved would do right by a second season, but I also just felt content with the remixed story it told. I felt satisfied revisiting this tale and looking at it from a different perspective and didn’t feel like I needed a second season. But hey, if Scott and his friends do go on more adventures, maybe there will be another chance to finally see Stephen Stills and Joseph smooch on screen.
Were we to outline the millennial canon—a collection of works that illuminate the generation’s character—then surely Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim would rank rather prominently. Scott Pilgrim is the story of a dweeby Canadian bassist who meet-cutes his mysterious American dream girl, Ramona Flowers, only to discover that in order to date Ramona, he must first defeat her “seven evil exes” in a series of boss fights across the mean streets and concert halls of Toronto.
These graphic novels, serialized in six volumes, released from 2004 through 2010, were a new sort of coming-of-age saga—a cute but also quite moody comic about love and video games and rock music. While O’Malley was still writing Scott Pilgrim, Edgar Wright directed a largely faithful live-action film adaptation, Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World, starring Michael Cera and Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Scott and Ramona, respectively, alongside a weirdly stacked cast of once and future stars: Chris Evans, Aubrey Plaza, Anna Kendrick, Brie Larson, Kieran Culkin. Scott Pilgrim Vs. theWorld was a box office flop in its opening weekend but then a weirdly resilient cultural object in the following decade, spawning so many GIFs on Peak Tumblr as the movie matured into a nerdy cult classic. Now, the acclaimed anime studio Science Saru, in conjunction with Netflix, has reimagined the comic as an eight-episode series, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off. O’Malley wrote this new series with BenDavid Grabinski, and he also made a point to recruit all of the actors from Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World for the voice cast of Scott Pilgrim Takes Off; Edgar Wright also returns as an executive producer.
But Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, rather unlike Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World, is a smorgasbord of creative liberties. O’Malley was still writing the comic while Wright’s live-action adaptation was in postproduction, and he’s recently talked about how the performances in Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World gave him a new perspective and new ideas for several characters—possibilities he now gets to pursue in the anime.
Scott Pilgrim Takes Off was billed as an adaptation but turns out to be a meta sort-of sequel or reboot. This is the story of Scott Pilgrim in fact losing that first fight with Ramona’s first boyfriend, Matthew Patel, at Club Rockit. In this version, Scott seemingly dies in battle before Ramona discovers that Scott hasn’t been killed, but rather kidnapped. Now, Ramona must confront her own exes and solve the mystery of Scott’s disappearance.
Accordingly, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off features a lot less Scott and a lot more Ramona, especially, but also everyone else in revised capacities. The League of Ramona’s Evil Exes is in disarray, as early on Matthew leads a coup against the group’s founder and the final boss of the original series, Gideon Graves. The other exes, absent any reason or opportunity to battle Scott, instead spend much of the series catching up with Ramona. Scott’s band, Sex Bob-Omb, is suddenly without a bassist, until drummer Kim Pine recruits Scott’s first girlfriend and Sex Bob-Omb’s no. 1 fan, Knives Chau. (Knives is surely the most improved characterization in Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, compared to her role in Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World, as Ellen Wong really leans into the new format and voices the character with yandere gusto.) As a reboot, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off gets to preserve these characters in adolescence but otherwise give them new glimpses and alternative arcs. The original premise is certainly more compelling for Scott’s intense and singular determination—beat the exes, win the girl—but Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is a refreshingly loose and playful take on these character dynamics.
The very fact of Scott Pilgrim enjoying a 2020s revival isn’t so surprising, given the unkillable nature of IP these days. And the revival coming in the form of a somewhat subversive reboot also isn’t so surprising, given the meta humor of the original comic. But why anime? And why would O’Malley and Grabinski go through the trouble of reuniting the actors from the live-action adaptation for the voice cast? The answer, in both cases, is nostalgia. Scott Pilgrim and O’Malley’s other works are chock-full of homages to video games, anime, and manga; in fact, Scott Pilgrim is in large part distinguished in balancing its more novelistic aspects with good ol’ fashioned superhero action.
Anime, if anything, ends up feeling like an inevitable format for Scott Pilgrim, even if the production is something of a fluke: this sort of crossover is pretty rare, and if Netflix didn’t have this particular relationship with Science Saru, then I can’t imagine this particular anime would’ve been made some other way. Which is doubly fortunate, really, as these days I can’t imagine many other studios tackling Scott Pilgrim as capably as Science Saru, a studio renowned for its saucy and surreal depictions of young adulthood.
Scott Pilgrim is in many ways a nostalgic tour of its author’s formative influences, e.g., Scott wears an Astro Boy tee, and he’s constantly talking about Sonic the Hedgehog. This explains the conspicuous effort to hire the old cast for the new series. Wright’s cast may not have been a part of O’Malley’s original vision for Scott Pilgrim, but the cast has, with the passage of time, added a new layer of nostalgia—not for Wright’s live-action adaptation per se, but for the whole cultural peak of Scott Pilgrim in 2010. O’Malley says he was prepared to produce a version of this anime with an original voice cast, in the event that he couldn’t get each and every one of the notable actors from Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World to return for Scott Pilgrim Takes Off. I’m sure his backup plan would’ve worked out well enough, but the returning cast really does bolster the series and create the illusion that not much has changed since the release of O’Malley’s final volume and Wright’s adaptation of the comic.
As I was watching an advance screener of the anime, I encountered some online speculation that its release might mark the beginning of a whole new era of Scott Pilgrim content from O’Malley—a Scott Pilgrim Cinematic Universe, even. It was an interesting thought, but also one that, if anything, underscored the limitations of these characters. Scott Pilgrim is such a distinctly adolescent saga, and it’s hard to imagine Scott and Ramona maturing into their 20s, out of their bombastic courtship and into a real relationship or, alternatively, to imagine Scott moving on from Ramona Flowers and wooing some other girl in some later phase of his life. Scott Pilgrim is these characters in this particular time in their lives.
Indeed, in Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, Scott and Ramona both confront much older versions of themselves. Older Scott is still rocking out in a ridiculous band, Older Ramona is still turning her hair purple and pink, but they’re both clearly the worse for wear, and they’re both still reeling from the later, harder work of trying—and for a period, failing—to build a life together. But O’Malley will only go so far in subverting the canonical love story of Scott Pilgrim and Ramona Flowers. It all ends with a kiss, and while O’Malley’s comic and Wright’s movie are both invaluable artifacts of the Tumblr Era, the anime makes for a fantastic epilogue.
Nearly three decades after it was first released on Super Nintendo — and despite a handsome remake for Switch, with completely redone visuals and rerecorded music — there’s still something strangely, but not unpleasantly, off about Super Mario RPG.
Mario looks all squat and cross-eyed; in fact, the whole Mushroom Kingdom and all its denizens have a sort of squashed, funhouse-mirror look, as if folding them into an isometric perspective has flattened them all out. Early in the game, Bowser’s castle gets run through by a giant, skyscraper-sized talking sword; when did you ever see a sword in a Mario game? Not long after, a Toad makes a joke about forgetting his bazooka at home. His what? Mario’s house is a wobbly, clapboard shack. Mario has a house. It’s all kinds of wrong.
This adventure, first released in 1996 as Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, was a collaboration between Nintendo and Square (now Square Enix) when both were in their mid-’90s pomp. Nintendo was winding down the SNES after an unbeatable run of in-house classics, from Super Mario World to Yoshi’s Island, while Square was months away from unleashing Final Fantasy 7 on the world. It was a meeting of near equals, and while the characters were Nintendo’s, the turf — turn-based role-playing games — was very much Square’s. The developer had the confidence to make its own tastes and personality felt in Mario RPG, in much the same way it later would with the Disney-crossover Kingdom Hearts games, and in a way few external developers working with Mario ever would again (with the recent exception of Ubisoft’s zany-but-cunning Mario + Rabbids games).
Image: Nintendo
So Mario RPG features many elements that feel like foreign bodies, even within the hallucinatory, anything-goes world of the Mushroom Kingdom. Square was allowed to create its own characters for the game — including Mallow, Mario’s first companion on his quest, who claims to be a frog but looks like a cross between a cloud and a cauliflower with stripy pants and a purple quiff. There’s a lovely score by the legendary Yoko Shimomura (Kingdom Hearts, Street Fighter 2) that has a lush, nostalgic quality that’s subtly but profoundly different from original Mario composer Koji Kondo’s folksy melodic playfulness.
It all adds up to a curio: a game that has long felt like it belongs in a parallel dimension. Released just months before the Nintendo 64’s debut, original SNES copies of Super Mario RPG command high prices on the used market, and it has had only basic and sparing reissues from Nintendo since (it didn’t come to Europe at all until the Wii Virtual Console version in 2008). But it was also influential, laying the foundations for Nintendo’s later (and more tonally controlled) Mario RPG series, Paper Mario and Mario & Luigi. It has the same streamlined RPG systems as those games, the rhythmic inputs that add immediacy to the turn-based combat, and a similar, mildly meta sense of humor.
Image: Nintendo
For whatever reason — perhaps a hunger for any and all Mario content in the wake of the Super Mario Bros. Movie phenomenon, perhaps a newfound willingness to take risks with its mascot — Nintendo is now finally ready to give Super Mario RPG its due and integrate it properly with the Mario catalog, via this full Switch remake. It’s strange to encounter this game (for the first time, in my case) in 2023 on Switch, and it’s great that Nintendo, Square Enix, and whoever developed the remake (which remains unclear, but I’ve asked Nintendo for clarification) have so carefully kept its wayward spirit alive.
The full 3D graphical overhaul retains the original’s bizarre rendered look, wisely refusing to homogenize or standardize the designs, and retaining its off-kilter character even as it smooths out the animations. Shimomura has completely reorchestrated her score, but you can switch to the chiptune originals, if you like. There are some modern creature comforts, like a frequent autosave, but most of Mario RPG’s archaic, 27-year-old design quirks remain intact. That said, on early evidence, Square’s expert simplification of traditional RPG mechanics seems bulletproof — and the game plays very swiftly, considering its age.
As smart as the new version is, playing Super Mario RPG feels like a portal to another time — or another timeline, perhaps. A timeline where Mario lives in a shack. I’m still not over it.
On Wednesday, Netflix released a teaser trailer for its upcoming anime adaptation of Scott Pilgrim,as well as announcing a release date for the hotly anticipated series.
Netflix’s One Piece Live-Action Trailer Has A Treasure Trove Of Anime Easter Eggs
We first caught wind of the anime project last January when it was reported that Bryan Lee O’Malley, writer and creator of the Scott Pilgrim comics, would write and executive produce the series with Are You Afraid of the Dark? showrunner BenDavid Grabinski. But the party didn’t stop there because we also learned that the stars of the 2010 live-action film, like Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and Chris Evans, would be reprising their roles in the anime, with Edgar Wright, director of the film, on board as executive producer.
Titled Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, the series (once again) follows the story of its titular character as he battles the seven deadly exes of a delivery girl named Ramona Flowers. Animation studio Science Saru (Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken, Devilman Crybaby) is handling animation duties. You can check out the trailer below.
What else can I say about the trailer other than it looks rad as hell? We’ve got Sex Bob-Omb singing what appears to be a brand new song, breathtaking shots of Ramona Flowers minding her own business while Scott looks on slack-jawed, and—most importantly—video game bleep-bloops and sound effects playing across the screen as Scott battles Flowers’ exes. Scott Pilgrim Takes Off seems poised to hit every exciting cinematic note that the 2010 film did. But what’s most exciting is that it looks like the anime will do something the film didn’t, adapting story arcs and battles Wright’s film omitted.
Based on the trailer, it would appear that Scott’s ex-girlfriend Envy Adams (Brie Larson) will play a more prominent role in the series. We also see snippets of a battle between Scott and Ramona’s ex-girlfriend Roxie Richter in a video store. I wager it’s the same store Kim Pine works at in the comics. I’ve got my fingers crossed that we’ll get to see Lisa Miller (who appeared in Scott Pilgrim vs. The Animation on Adult Swim in 2010) and Knives Chau’s awesome samurai dad, Mr. Chau, pop up in the Netflix anime as well.
Fans aren’t the only ones excited enough to punch a second hole in the moon over Scott Pilgrim Takes Off. In a recent interview with Decider, Cera shared his excitement about reprising his role as Scott while praising O’Malley’s script, saying “Every time I’ve recorded it, I have to send Brian an email saying, ‘I love this so much. I’m so excited about it.’”
Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is slated to premiere on the streamer on November 17.
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