Rick and Morty: The Anime arrives next month, and it’ll be the only new Rick and Morty content for hungry fans until the original series returns for its eighth season in 2025. But if you love Rick, Morty, multiverses, and outrageous sci-fi shenanigans, it seems likely you’ll also dig the anime riff from director Takashi Sano. Sano and other Rick and Morty: The Anime creators were on hand at San Diego Comic-Con to share more.
The new show springs directly from the Rick and Morty shorts Sano—a longtime fan of the original series; he’s apparently watched every episode multiple times—created for Adult Swim. When those proved successful, the idea of doing an entire series took root. “He was really honored to take on the series,” producer Joseph Chou, acting as a translator for Sano, explained. “Already, a strong template was built in the original series, and he just really wanted to make sure he respected that … he just wanted to make sure the universe and characters stayed intact.”
“However, there’s one thing that he thought he could explore more that may not have been fully explored in classic series: the element of time,” Chou continued. “So obviously there’s a multiverse, multi-dimensional story that he’s bringing to this—which is quite popular these days—but he also wanted to put another curveball in there, with the element of time … [and] he wanted to focus on Morty having a bit of a romance throughout the series. He used that as a sort of springboard to connect all the different stories that [are] happening in different universes and in the multiverse through different times. So you can see a lot of respect paid to the original series, because we didn’t want to make it an anime show necessarily just for anime fans, but rather something for everyone to enjoy.”
He continued. “Even though this is named The Anime, it really didn’t occur to him that he was doing something very, very different to try to make this into an anime, or bring a lot of his experiences in the world of anime into this … But if he just did what the franchise does, he’d just become a cheap copy, and he didn’t want that. So, obviously you’re going to see influences of anime … that’s something [where] he thought, ‘Okay, I can bring something new to this. And I can bring my sensibility as an anime creator.’ That came naturally. But he really enormously enjoyed making the show and is just really excited that he’s here to share this with you guys.”
Rick and Morty: The Anime premieres August 15 at midnight on Adult Swim; you can also catch it the next day on Max. If you’d rather watch the Japanese version with English subtitles, that drops August 17 at midnight as part of Adult Swim’s Toonami programming.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
Adult SwimRick and MortyRick and Morty: The AnimeSan Diego Comic-ConSDCCSDCC 2024Takashi Sano
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