Rick and Morty: The Anime has wrapped up its debut season with Adult Swim, and the spinoff anime’s launch has been such an unfortunate story with fans that this could end up being the one and only season of the series. Rick and Morty: The Anime made its debut earlier this Summer following Rick and Morty‘s greater experiments with the world of anime. Starting out as a series of anime shorts developed by Tower of God director Takashi Sano, Adult Swim had approached the creator about taking on Rick and Morty in a more full way with a full spinoff anime series.
Featuring a brand new story of its own not connected with the original Rick and Morty animated series, Rick and Morty: The Anime started out with a mixed reception among fans. It was admittedly always going to be an uphill battle as anime fans aren’t exactly Rick and Morty fans, and Rick and Morty fans were actually just hoping for Season 8 instead. But this new series bridging the worlds together had the best chance at successfully appeasing both audiences. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like it has hit that mark as the first season has come to an end without anyone really talking about it. And ultimately, that’s what’s going to make it a failure.
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What Happened to Rick and Morty: The Anime?
Rick and Morty: The Anime got off to an impressive start with its first two episodes. It introduced a new anime take on the titular duo along with a brand new angle for the multiverse. Dealing with space and time in constant flux, the first two episodes were telling the story out of order as it teased that fans would get the blanks filled in the coming weeks. It was an intriguing start to this new era of the series, and offered a new vision of the titular duo from a different creator. But that storytelling twist continued through the weeks ahead.
Rick and Morty: The Anime told its story out of order as Rick’s new entropy device was revealed to be messing with the flow of time. But as it tried to lay out this mystery, it also started to further add even more questions before answering what it needed to. On top of introducing brand new characters like Elle and Frank (both of who play a significant role in one of the Morty’s lives across the multiverse’s timelines), and the anime always kind of felt like it was continuing to spin its wheels while trying to tell a story with a grand scope. It’s just that those pieces never quite connected properly in the way the anime seemed to have hoped.
This nonlinear style of storytelling is ultimately the fatal flaw for Rick and Morty: The Anime. With the anime having to tell its story out of order, conversations between characters could never really allude to anything happening because it was unclear as to when a particular scene was taking place. It wasn’t clear as to what the actual timeline of the series looks like, and that was an issue that was carried all the way to the end. Making matters even tougher to figure out was the fact that it all started with Morty getting sucked into a virtual reality game, so it was a whole other virtual experience on top of everything else happening.
Rick and Morty: The Anime Lost Its Fans
Due to the combination of its nonlinear storytelling and the fact it was an uphill battle anyway, Rick and Morty: The Anime had a high barrier to entry that only got higher with each new week. Though the final episode of the season (and likely series) was able to find a heartwarming conclusion for it all, it was still mired by the weight of its timeline. Rick and Morty is no stranger to these kind of science fiction shenanigans, but it’s usually solved within the span of a single episodic adventure. It’s a completely different case for a season long serialized narrative.
While Rick and Morty: The Anime still had a few standout episodes that had some fun ideas such as the Jerry focused adventure in Episode 5, each episode still had to deal with the fact that nothing felt tangibly connected with the others. This made it hard for fans to not only stick around, but hard for new fans to catch an episode and get hooked that way. Unlike the episodic main series that allows lapsed viewers to happen to catch an episode and seek out more, the serialized story (told out of order) in the anime doesn’t have that same welcoming nature.
Where Does Rick and Morty: The Anime Succeed?
Even with that fatal flaw that meant Rick and Morty fans are no longer around to see it, Rick and Morty: The Anime did tell a notable love story for Morty. He has a history of tragic romance in the main animated series, so creator Takashi Sano opted to start a love story here to make it stand out on its own. It’s a successful romance for Morty that allows him to actually have a full life with someone he loves. He goes on to marry Elle, have a child named Maria together with her, and dies within the virtual world as Rick brings him back to his own universe.
It’s tragic in how it hits, but the focus on the love story between Morty and Elle was ultimately the anime’s strongest quality. It’s a type of story that Rick and Morty hasn’t really explored in any kind of meaningful way, and made the anime significant. It was an interesting experiment to see play out that proves Rick and Morty can indeed work in other mediums with other creators. But if there’s another shot at taking Rick and Morty in an anime direction, maybe make it easier for fans to keep up with each episode. It might have gone for too big of an idea for its first outing.