A Scott Pilgrim Summer: Part 1

Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour, the sixth and final installment of the Scott Pilgrim series. I took it home, devoured it, and since then have been trying to decide how I feel about the ending.

Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life (Vol. 1) was released in 2004, but I personally have only been reading since about 2006. Still, it seems like a long time since I first discovered the manga-rock-video-game world, which most mind-blowing of all turned out to be Canadian.

Set in Toronto and written by Ontario-born Bryan Lee O’Malley, the Scott Pilgrim series tells the tale of how twenty-something Scott Pilgrim must defeated the seven evil exes of Ramona Flowers so that he can go out with her. Which of course only really explains the main premise and fails to explore the more realistic obstacles that Scott and his friends must overcome. But you really just have to read it for yourself.

On that note, if you have not read it yet and don’t want me spoiling things for you, you might want to jump down to the second asterisks.

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When any long running series comes to an end, be it Lost, Harry Potter or Y the Last Man, the main question every fan grapples with is “Am I satisfied with the ending?” And I have definitely been working through this question with Scott Pilgrim.

The ending of the main storyline, in which Scott defeats Gideon and ends up with Ramona, is pretty satisfying. I mean I kind of saw it coming, but for this story I think I would have felt pretty cheated if O’Malley had pulled some plot twist where Ramona and Scott decided to just be friends. It’s the ending to the epilogue that has me pondering.

At the very end of the book (spoilerrama here) Scott and Ramona both leap through a door and disappear into subspace. Which I’ll admit ties things up pretty nicely, the Scott Pilgrim equivalent of riding into the sunset. But a large part of the story centers around the fact that Scott and Ramona both have this bad habit of running away from their problems. Ramona doing so quiet literally through subspace. So it seems a bit contradictory to just have them both disappear into a little dot at the end. But maybe that’s just me. I would appreciate hearing what other people thought of the conclusion.

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Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game as a tie-in for the Scott Pilgrim vs. The World movie, which starts in theatres August 13th 2010. 

The movie should be interesting: production started before Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour was complete, so it’s my understanding that a different, Bryan Lee O’Malley approved, ending was written. I’m also still a little unsure about Michael Cera pulling off the Scott Pilgrim character. I’m so use to seeing him play the shy, awkward boy (have yet to see Youth in Revolt), it’s hard to imagine him playing the hyper-active, oblivious boy. But I’m hoping he pulls it off.