Trivia / Scott Pilgrim Takes Off

• Acting for Two
  • Scott is the only character with a Time-Shifted Actor. Middle school Kim, and future Wallace, Ramona, and Katayanagi twins are voiced by the same actors who voice them in the present.
  • Julian Cihi voices both the Katayanagi twins.
• Awesome, Dear Boy: The returning cast members were said to have been very eager to reprise their roles. Edgar Wright claimed that Chris Evans apparently said yes within twenty minutes of receiving the email.
• Billing Displacement: Owing to everyone sans Michael Cera and Mary Elizabeth Winstead being listed in alphabetical order, the opening credits list Anna Kendrick in front of Chris Evans and Brie Larson, despite Stacey Pilgrim having less than a dozen lines in the whole show. Ellen Wong, who plays Knives, gets billed dead last.
• The Cast Showoff: Like in the film, Satya Bhabha gets to flex his singing chops here. He sings "Agony" from Into the Woods (as a one-man duet) and a few songs for the Scott Pilgrim musical.
• Celebrity Voice Actor: As a result of the cast from the movie reprising their roles, the original English version contains a few big name actors like Michael Cera, Brandon Routh, Chris Evans, Brie Larson, and Kieran Culkin (Evans and Larson are now much more popular due to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Routh found fame again as "The Atom" in the Arrowverse, and Culkin, while already brothers with a famous child actor, became much more widely known for his charismatic performance as Roman Roy on Succession). Though a few members of the cast (like Cera and Evans) already had voice acting experience. In addition, the show also adds some big names that were not present in the original film, including Kal Penn, Finn Wolfhard (young Scott Pilgrim), Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Kevin McDonald, "Weird Al" Yankovic, Will Forte, and Stephen Root.
• Content Leak: The opening was leaked onto YouTube two weeks before it was officially shown on Netflix's channel.
• Cross-Regional Voice Acting: The series' cast in the English track primarily comprises of a mix between LA^note Most of the main cast, plus Courtney Lin as two of the Demon Girls and the "Additional Voices" actors (including Kaiji Tang and Lucien Dodge) and Toronto talent^note including Cal Dodd as the Threatening Paparazzi Guy and Cory Doran as Mobile; with Japanese voice actors Seiichirō Yamashita and Haruka Shiraishi, and UK actors Nick Frost and Simon Pegg making guest appearances.
• Descended Creator: Voice director Tony Oliver also voices the First A.D. on Young Neil's movie, who makes a couple minor appearances across multiple episodes.
• Fake Nationality: Canadian Scott Pilgrim’s future self is voiced by American actor Will Forte.
• In Memoriam: The first credit of the final episode is "To our friend, Doug Sherwood". Doug Sherwood was a comic book artist who worked as a production assistant for Bryan Lee O'Malley in the two volumes of the original comic who passed away in January 2023.
• Incidental Multilingual Wordplay: In Japanese, the term for "never waver" is "迷わない/mayowanai". As such, Todd's Bad Liar speech of "vegans never wafer" simply becomes "Vegans never mayo. We don't eat mayonnaise."
• Irony as She Is Cast: Both Todd Ingram and Envy Adams claim to have never acted before; both Brie Larson and Brandon Routh have very long resumes, which includes the MCU for Larson and Superman for Routh.
• Lying Creator: Bryan Lee O'Malley assured the audience on his initial Twitch stream that the anime would closely follow the comics' storyline. Instead, Scott dies in the first fight with Matthew Patel and the plot goes in a completely different direction. Presumably, this was to preserve that twist.
• Non-Singing Voice: Brie Larson provides Envy's speaking voice while Metric vocalist Emily Haines provides her singing voice.
• The Other Darrin:
  • In the original English version, Julian Cihi replaces both Keita and Shouta Saitou as the Katayanagi twins, due to the latter two not being native English speakers. However, Bryan Lee O’Malley noted he and the team were trying to get them to reprise the roles for the Japanese language dub. Ultimately, the two were recast with Shunsuke Takeuchi.
  • In the Japanese dub, none of the dub voice cast from Scott Pilgrim vs. The World returned here. To note, Hiro Shimono replaces Takahiro Mizushima as Scott Pilgrim. However, in this particular case, the change is justified since Shimono is the regular dub voice of Michael Cera in Japan.
  • In the film, the Demon Hipster Chicks were all played by Christine Watson. Here, they are voiced by Courtney Lin and Angie Sarkisyan.
• Production Posse: In addition to almost all of the 2010 film’s cast returning and original director Edgar Wright and co-writer Michael Bacall returning as executive producers, frequent Wright collaborators Simon Pegg and Nick Frost make appearances.
• Promoted Fanboy: Two cases so far!
  • Finn Wolfhard was obsessed with the live action film as a child. He provides the voice for Young Scott in this series, which he describes as fulfilling "a childhood dream".
  • Ramona's Japanese voice actress, Fairouz Ai, was a huge fan of the series in high school. She's stated to not only have watched the 2010 film countless times, but to have also styled her hair in a similar fashion to Ramona's for some time!
• Queer Character, Queer Actor: Pansexual actress Mae Whitman voices Roxy Richter, who was in a lesbian relationship with Ramona.
• Reality Subtext: Bryan Lee O’Malley's divorce from Hope Larson in 2014 no doubt played a big role in the updated plot of Takes Off. The original comic series was semi-autobiographical with Scott and Ramona partly based on himself and Larson and the formative years of their relationship and social circle. Scott and Ramona's marriage, according to Older Scott even lasted 10 years, about the same length of time O’Malley and Larson's did in real life.
• Release Date Change: Originally scheduled for a 2024 release, it was moved up for November 2023.
• Role Reprise:
  • Most of the speaking cast from the live-action film reprised their roles for the English dub. In fact, the first trailer was dedicated solely to this fact.
  • The Latin American Spanish, Italian and French dubs of the live-action film have their complete voice casts reprising their roles in the series.
• Self-Adaptation: This time around, Bryan Lee O’Malley co-writes the series.
• Sequel in Another Medium: The anime series is rather quickly revealed to be a Stealth Sequel to the original comic (or at least some version of it) rather than a straight adaptation.
• Time-Shifted Actor: While Michael Cera reprises his role of Scott in the present, Finn Wolfhard voices his younger self, and Will Forte voices Future/Even Older Scott.
• Word of God: Bryan Lee O'Malley did a Twitch stream a few days after the anime's official announcement, sharing certain details about the anime and his in-depth involvement with it. Among them:
  • He was directly approached by Netflix on behalf of Science Saru (who were big fans of the comic and film) with the offer of making the anime back in 2018 (noting this happened not long after DEVILMAN crybaby came out, which he is a fan of).
  • He has no direct involvement in making the anime's art style or character designs but assures that it will closely match his work in the comics.
  • Getting the film cast back was difficult, which is why it took so long for the anime to be formally announced, since he was unsure of just how many of them would return, but everyone approached said yes on day 1 and then it was simply a matter of dealing with the red tape, like the actors' agents and lawyers.
  • The anime is still set within the 2000s rather than being updated to a modern day setting.
  • The English version is the original language track (as the scripts are originally in English) but a Japanese dub was produced directly after the English dub.
  • A few days after the show came out, Bryan Lee O'Malley confirmed on Instagram that the anime is its own separate timeline inspired by the comics and the movie, rather than directly continuing off of them or replacing them due to time travel shenanigans. This is also noticeable in show via some key differences.
• Working Title: The series was initially announced under the title Scott Pilgrim: The Anime.

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