WHY Does Rick and Morty The Anime EXIST?!

Rick and Morty The Anime has come and gone, and the Rick and Morty fandom seems to have unilaterally met the entire thing with a resounding “why does this exist?” Personally, I was pretty curious to see what Rick and Morty might look like through the mind of a completely different creative from an entirely different culture, particularly because some of those previous Rick and Morty anime shorts were VERY cool. However, what we’ve ended up with, I think, was something far too ambitious for its own good and a bit too far removed from why people like the original Rick and Morty in the first place. That isn’t to say I thought it was all bad, there are some really interesting ideas within this project, but I do NOT think Adult Swim or the creatives behind the project did themselves any favors in how this story was presented to us. Just untangling the story of Rick and Morty The Anime is not particularly easy in itself, so today let’s try our best to navigate this entire project and not only make sense of the narrative, but the thought process in producing it.

Edited by Michael Yunez and @ToonrificTariq

Music:
Johnny 2 Cellos Theme Music - Norman Marston
@lofigeek

Video Used:
Rick and Morty (2013-2023)
Rick and Morty The Anime (2024)

Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted.

[gsampson]

You know how they post weird versions of the characters on their social media in different art styles, I thought it was just a gag like those and didn't realise it was a genuine show. Feel like this was 3 years too late and it's missed it's peak

[axis]

Youre the only person to ever make the rnm anime sound cool and I respect that a lot

[COCO-tmgp]

The fact that all the marketing was just “your favorite show…but ANIME” proved that the whole selling point was just “Thing, Japan”.

Fr tho, I can hardly believe that Rick and Morty was once hailed as the crowning jewel of adult animation, now they just released a show nobody cares about six years late to the party

[murnshaw]

I got the vibes that Frank is a version of Elle or a combination of Elle and Long-Haired Rick that exists due to the experiments. Could be wrong though. It could just be Takashi Sano putting himself in the series.

[MovieFanatic]

I didn't mind it. It would be nice to see other Rick & Morty spinoffs based on other dimensions. They don't have to play into the main story, but as a one offs miniseries based around other variants of the Smith family.

[JumpingTuna]

It exists because the shorts were popular and television executives thought they could profit.

Frank exists to tell the audience that there is no "Happily Ever After". The credits roll but those characters keep on living. Sure, Morty and Elle had their love at the time we saw them, but there's always a next. Morty thought all he needed was Elle to be happy, but he gave her up the moment he thought something else would make him happy. Frank was just the catalyst for that. In a way, Morty's simulation of a scenario where he leaves Elle helped him cope with the fact that Elle left him to save him.

[NoahHolden-lnno]

Every time I look up Rick and Morty on Hulu, I get a mini heart attack when it says it's locked behind an add-on, but it's just the anime that's locked, not the original.

[SweetCrumblingDoll]

I outright love this series for what it is, and for what many others find confusing, I find intriguing. I love how the series made me think and theorize, reflect on the interactions and the reveals. I enjoyed it throughout. I can understand why others don't like it, but I'm a supporter.

[normanmai]

12:15 "I think Jerry is seen as slightly less pathetic overall. Rick defends him in ways that main-line Rick would not be caught dead doing." Still not as brilliant a character as Rick's mate, Dougie, the Bush Wizard. He knows how to treat earthworm bites.

[SnowBaller]

The way you described this story was actually really cool though lmaoo

[EnigmaticGentleman]

Its good to see that some people on youtube still have nuanced takes, seriously though it feels like we've devolved into "piece of media is either good or bad", when oftentimes deeply flawed media has some of the most interesting ideas (heck this own comment section is guilty of this).

[johnxmanny]

Rick and morty the anime is basically the tv show version of the meme "place x place‚japan"

[Penguinnns]

god im so mad they didnt pull this narrative off it sounds so cool and if they had a year longer with the story and script and had test audiences they couldve made this show of the year cause those twists and turns so couldve worked

[jordanloux]

From what I'm hearing it was similar to what happened to Uzumaki, AKA someone (Zaslav) slashed the budget and they had to work with whatever they had.

[jordanloux]

I agree with the theories that Frank is an alternate version of Elle that was created as a result of all of Long Haired Rick's experiments. That or he's someone that Space Morty saved who also got roped into the new universe.

[ByakuyaOfTheDreams]

I was wondering what your thoughts on the anime were, and I'm glad you made this video, yours is easily the best take on it I've seen on Youtube. This was a refreshingly fair discussion of the anime's highlights and missteps in being a fundamentally different take on Rick & Morty that unfortunately undermined itself by being both too different in characterization/tone/humor and yet not separated enough from the original.

I personally lean towards liking the show, in particular I really liked episodes 7 and 10 and found the latter to work really well for me in its themes and emotional moments, but I think how the narrative was presented in the first couple episodes was very disorienting in a way that made it hard to latch onto until things starting clicking around the middle. So I agree, I too am glad the anime exists for its experimentation and highlights, but I think calling it a monument to failed potential is a great way to describe it.

Though that said, I would be interested in them doing another Rick & Morty anime with a different director and take that's more tonally closer to the original or to the style of comedy/action people might expect when they envision what a Rick and Morty anime should be like. I think a Rick & Morty anime made by Studio Trigger, for instance, would be pretty fun. Or even get Masaru Matsumoto, the director of the Great Yokai Battle of Akihabara short, since his take was pretty comedic and over the top in a way that fits better with what I think a lot of R&M fans would've expected/preferred from an R&M anime.

Speaking of Adult Swim-produced anime that are monuments to failed potential, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts and see you do a video on the Uzumaki anime, which despite its promising first episode I think is unfortunate that both it and the R&M anime came out around the same time to similar levels of backlash as it went along and have soured a lot of people on the idea of Adult Swim producing their own anime entirely.

[madeumad]

Frank is an excuse for "canon" yaoi.

[kingdomheartsguy]

When I think of a Rick and Morty anime, I think of an action comedy with brilliant animation. Like something from Studio Trigger. Not what we got.

[mauriceisaac]

I think it would’ve been better if it leaned more into being a parody of anime instead of being a serious anime.

[crashstarr]

Without having watched it at all, just from your description, I'm guessing 'Frank' is either some kind of incarnation of L's original Morty, brought in by whatever portal fluid nonsense rick described in another clip you played, or else it's a big meta joke about the character 'paul' from modern spiderman comics - the guy who MJ is with these days.

This was also the first negative review that ever made me decide I *need* to watch the thing to figure it out myself though, so I'm gonna check it out now and see if I come up with a better answer.

Edit: OK, one episode in, it seems clear to me there are at least 3 different realities in play, and in at least one of them Frank is Morty's secret romantic interest, a la the implied backstory for Jerry and Sleepy Gary. Not expecting to get much more from it than that at this point, other than as a hint that almost everyone in the 'video game' thinks they themselves are the players, and everyone else is an NPC.