The release of "Rick and Morty vs. Genocider" comes just few months after Adult Swim rolled out a blood-soaked Rick and Morty anime short in March 2020. Entitled "Samurai & Shogun (Rick and Morty)," the short hails from anime production house Studio Deen (Patlabor, Ranma 1/2, Neo Yokio), and depicts Rick as a samurai who's tasked with looking after a levitating-wheelchair-bound Morty. When a legion of ninja Ricks emerge through various portals in the middle of a field, samurai Rick goes on the defense — especially so when he learns that the ninjas want to capture the shogun Morty for their own, given he embodies the soul of all the ninjas.
Adult Swim's senior vice president and creative director on-air Jason DeMarco explained Observer in March 2020 how the anime short came to be: "The idea for a Rick and Morty anime short came from myself. [...] Adult Swim went to Maki Terashima, a producer we've known for years, who took the idea to Studio Deen. Studio Deen spoke to Kaichi Sato, who is a massive Rick and Morty fan, and asked him to direct it. From there, Adult Swim oversaw all of the work, but Studio Deen and Sato were the people driving the project."
Inspired by Lone Wolf and Cub, writer Kazuo Koike and artist Goseki Kojima's acclaimed manga that ran for six years in the 1970s, "Samurai & Shogun (Rick and Morty)" is heavy on the bloodshed and inventive in its action — thanks to writer-director Kaichi Sato and producer Maki Terashima. We won't give away too much about "Samurai & Shogun (Rick and Morty)" since it's best experienced visually on one's own, but be prepared to see heads roll, faces get sliced off, and Rick fight against ... hypnotic alien creatures in the middle of space.
With Rick and Morty season 5 bearing no official release date as of this writing, these two anime shorts will have to hold fans over until more episodes of the series head their way.
