New Rick And Morty Samurai & Shogun Pt. 2 Clip Teases A Bloody Continuation
The Adult Swim Festival is coming to a couch near you this weekend, November 12-13. It's sure to be an event that even the most casual of Adult Swim fans won't want to miss. They have put together a powerhouse lineup of the irreverent network's most popular shows like "Tuca & Bertie," "Joe Pera Talks With You," "Blade Runner: Black Lotus," and — of course — the quintessential "Rick and Morty."
"Rick and Morty" tends to be a polarizing show for a lot of people. It's full of gross jokes, alcohol abuse, and oddly deep, well-written dialogue amids a barrage of potty humor and hypersexual aliens. It's all over the place, and you either love it or you hate it. For fans who love it, the show recently released a second "Samurai & Shogun" teaser trailer to hype up this weekend's festival, and it's an interesting combination of some very different genres.
The anime-style clip is yet another shout out to Japanese anime fans
Back in late March, Adult Swim dropped the first "Samurai & Shogun" cartoon short on their official YouTube channel. It's a seamless hybrid of the show's main characters crossed with the aesthetic of hyperbolically violent Japanese samurai anime. Think "Rurouni Kenshin" or "Samurai Champloo," but with an added layer of Dan Harmon's proprietary brand of insanity. Given that the Venn diagram of "Rick and Morty" fans and anime fans has a lot of overlap, it's no surprise that the show would experiment with this style. It isn't even the only time they've done so; the "Rick and Morty" team released a claymation teaser back in June featuring the main characters exploring the wildly popular world of "My Neighbor Totoro."
They're back at it again with this one, and it picks right up where the first animation left off. It starts with Rick picking up the severed head of his most powerful enemy — an alternate reality version of himself — as the clip transitions between bloody anime violence and images of Rick committing seppuku. The English subtitles are largely nonsensical, akin to what might happen if you scan a thousand anime scripts into a script-writing A.I. machine to see what it spits out. Morty also appears to fall in love with a geisha robot. It's weird, it's wacky, it's fun, and the full animated short is going to air this weekend during the Adult Swim Festival on YouTube (and possibly HBO Max) for fans to enjoy.