‘Rick and Morty: The Anime’ Review: Uneven but Oddly Beautiful

Over the course of seven seasons of Rick and Morty, the titular duo has visited myriad parallel universes and met numerous alternate versions of themselves. Each jaunt through spacetime has, in turn, rendered the unfathomable cosmos ever vaster—and their own place in it more insignificant. In a multiverse swimming with innumerable Ricks and Mortys, their existence is but one of untold possibilities, the inevitable product of choices made with and without their consideration.

Rick and Morty’s headier themes are familiar territory for writer and director Sano Takashi, who contributed two entries to the anthology of anime shorts based on the series that Adult Swim aired between 2020 and 2021. The blistering “Summer Meets God (Rick Meets Evil),” for one, is dotted with snappy scenes in which the Smith family philosophizes over meals. “I do what I want and never what I don’t,” Rick says as he forks a leaf of lettuce. “I’m not gonna have a pointless debate on whether that constitutes as free will or not.”

With Rick and Morty: The Anime, Sano further explores free will, selfhood, and loneliness to exceedingly uneven but oddly beautiful results. The series begins with Rick (Joe Daniels), in possession of a dangerous scientific marvel, hiding out from galactic authorities. He receives assistance from Summer (Donna Bella Litton) and Beth (Patricia Duran), who are hunting down his pursuers, and keeps Morty (Gabriel Regojo) busy with an eerily immersive VR game.

In the two episodes provided to press, a flat English dub fails to elevate stilted writing and inconsistent jokes. (The series will feature English and Japanese dubs, though only the former was available for review.) The animation, meanwhile, offers pretty compositions but often lacks a sense of weight and depth—an issue that’s more conspicuous in “Fighting Mother,” the second episode, where both Rick and Beth engage in brawls whose blows feel like whiffs.

The episodes more assuredly depict Rick’s and Morty’s inner lives. In “The Girl Who Manipulates Time,” Rick stands alone at the edge of a canyon, takes a few swigs from a flask, and belches. “There are an infinite number of paths available to us, but we only get to pick one life,” Rick says, gazing at vivid auroras. “It’s pretty dumb, huh, Morty?” As if Rick’s words have suddenly conjured his grandson beside him, we see Morty look up with a characteristically wide stare. But when the episode cuts to a distant wide shot, Rick is once again on his own, his solitude etched into the endless rocky mesas that surround him.

Another standout sequence portrays the adventures of multiple Mortys in virtual reality. (It appears that the Ricks of at least a few worlds have crafted the game for their Mortys.) A montage, set to Takahashi Tetsuya’s graceful piano and string score, shows them getting eaten alive by alien serpents; making, losing, and reuniting with friends; falling in and out of love; and growing old and balding and withering away. Quick cuts turn a handful of ridiculous non sequiturs into an emotionally resonant collection of vignettes. The tightly constructed scene, like Rick and Morty at its most formidable, finds remarkable pathos amid its absurdity.