SDCC 2024: Rick and Morty: The Anime Execs Explain How the Shorts Inspired a Full Series

Rick and Morty: The Anime is will be making its full spinoff series debut with Adult Swim later this Summer, and the team behind the series explained how the shorts ended up inspiring a full series. Rick and Morty first got anime fans’ attention a few years ago with the debut of anime inspired shorts from prominent director Takashi Sano. It was then announced that Sano would be directing a full series with Adult Swim a bit later, and thus there has been a wonder of how the spinoff was formed after the shorts. As those behind the series explain, it was just a natural extension of the original shorts’ success. 

Rick and Morty: The Anime executive producers Jason DeMarco and Joseph Chou spoke with ComicBook during the San Diego Comic-Con 2024 weekend, and the two explained how working with Sano on the Rick and Morty anime shorts a few years ago led to the release of the full series. As Adult Swim was seeking out creators who could offer different interpretations, the idea of an anime short and its eventual success due to Sano’s efforts led to Rick and Morty: The Anime.

How Rick and Morty Became a Full Anime Series

“In my job at the time I was running Adult Swim on Air. And part of my job was promoting Rick and Morty,” DeMarco began. “We had always at Adult Swim leaned into the idea of working with independent animators or animators from around the world to reinterpret our shows. And Rick and Morty was so popular that we knew we wanted to do different interpretations. And among those interpretations, we thought, well, the idea of anime shorts would be really cool among the shorts we commissioned. I spoke to Joseph [Chou] and he suggested [Takashi] Sano, who then did “Rick and Morty vs. Genocider,” which was a really, really massive success for us. And is what ultimately led to the idea of the series.”

Chou elaborated further by noting how wild the idea of turning Rick and Morty into an anime was at first, “It was actually interesting because when he said you want to try doing an anime version of Rick and Morty and I’m like, ‘That Rick and Morty?’ and like, ‘Yeah, that Rick and Morty.’ So we got to do about three shorts with I think two of which was done by Sano-san, and they were hugely successful.”

“I didn’t think in the outset that it was supposed to be like this huge series, but with Adult Swim’s blessing it turned out to be a series,” Chou continued. “We’re really just excited to have it out there and for fans to see it because Sano-san himself actually is one of the few really accomplished anime directors who’ve been a huge fan of Rick and Morty in Japan. So just everything clicked together and I think it’s worked out. We’re just holding our breath now [to see] how the fans will react to the work that he did.”

Rick and Morty: The Anime premieres on Adult Swim with its English dub on August 15th at midnight before returning on August 17th with its English subtitled release.