Fans have to wait a bit longer for the next season of Rick and Morty, but Adult Swim is releasing Rick and Morty: The Anime, hoping it will tide them over. Although short films in the anime style have been pretty well-liked by the fanbase, this approach didn’t translate into long-form content as well as one would hope, as Rick and Morty: The Anime suffers from not being able to form its own identity.
Rick and Morty: The Anime Review
The show touts itself as a ten-episode anime based on Rick and Morty. It’s not a shot-for-shot remake of the original show in a different style, thankfully, but it also doesn’t have enough of its own style to make it feel distinct. Instead, what we get doesn’t feel entirely familiar but also doesn’t feel new.
The primary way The Anime seems to deviate from the main show is that it has much more of an overarching story rather than the self-contained episodic adventure format. To an extent, this serves to standardize the show’s quality, but that’s not necessarily a good thing. One of the most charming aspects of Rick and Morty is that you never know what you’re going to get. An episode could be one of the most creative things you’ve ever seen, or it could be a big swing and a miss. With The Anime, it seems destined to go safely down the middle.
As an IP, Rick and Morty seems like a perfect fit for a spin-off like this, as it can be written so that “Anime Rick” is a variant of the main franchise’s character. However, for something like this to work, there needs to be a difference in personality, and the Rick we see here feels too similar to the Rick we already know.
This version of the show also sorely lacks the quick wit and humor of the main show. It’s hard to tell if the lack of laughs is a purposeful omission to make something more serious or just that they aren’t funny, but either way, The Anime struggles to keep the viewer engaged, even with its sub-20-minute episode lengths.
The most disappointing thing about Rick and Morty: The Anime, though, is that it does not take full advantage of the unique animation style offered by the anime genre. The only discernable difference between the look of this series and the flagship show is the character design for the human characters. The non-human characters (for example, the Gromflomites) look almost exactly the same, as do the settings. The title sequence has a nice anime energy with an upbeat J-pop soundtrack, but this does not carry over into the show itself.
One would also hope that Rick and Morty: The Anime would offer the type of kinetic action the anime medium has become known for, complete with lots of effects and flair. Unfortunately, much of what is seen in the first two episodes is derivative of what we’ve seen in the main show. For this to work concurrently, we need to see something new here — a new approach, new opponents, new anything — and we haven’t seen that yet.
Is Rick and Morty: The Anime worth watching?
Granted, all of Rick and Morty: The Anime provided to critics before premiere was the first two episodes. For all we know, things could turn around massively in the back half of the season, allowing this show to stand better on its own; that has happened in the past with Rick and Morty, after all. But as it stands, the main question fans will be asking when they watch Rick and Morty: The Anime is “Why?” So far, there’s not a good reason.
Rick and Morty: The Anime premieres on Adult Swim on August 15 at midnight ET/PT, with new episodes airing on subsequent Thursdays at the same time. Two out of ten episodes reviewed.
5/10
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