"There are traitors among us who have not given five stars", this slightly joking short comment from Douban netizens on the animated series "Rick and Morty", but I really said to this netizen, you are really right. This is really an anime god series that chases and flies.
Since its launch in 2013, this fanciful animation work has gained countless loyal fans around the world, creating a record that TV animation may have reached its limits on mainstream rating websites.
As a traditional form of broadcasting of American TV series, one of the negative consequences of seasonal dramas is the "bad tail of high frequency". In the first decade, "Lost", "Prison Break", "Bloodthirsty Forensic Doctor", which were highly respected by drama fans, and the two major TV aces of this decade, "The Walking Dead" and "Game of Thrones", have already planted countless seasons. They were squeezed out of value by the TV station and ended up in a regrettable way.
In the form of a seasonal drama, to ensure the stable quality of the series, it is not only necessary for the producer to have the awareness of receiving the good and ending the episode at the right time; what is really tested is the screenwriter's script conception ability and the production team's ability to present the script.
This is also an important reason why the animated series "Rick and Morty" is regarded as a god by the audience. With its jaw-dropping performance, the show received a whopping 9.3 ratings from imdb during its broadcast, making it the highest-scoring animation work imdb has ever recorded.
The finished five seasons also recorded scores of 9.7, 9.8, 9.8, 9.7 and 9.4 on Douban, and the fifth season was a bit stretched, but still above the horizontal line.
I have to say that although the fifth season still has a bright episode, the overall situation is a bit paddling, and after watching it, I feel lonely and bored. There is really no novel shock from the first three seasons.
If it is difficult for seasons to maintain the quality of each season at the same level, then under the premise that the first season has reached a high score of 9.7, it is simply impossible for subsequent single seasons to surpass this score. But Rick and Morty did it again!
The series Rick and Morty is a sci-fi animated sitcom created by Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon and Cartoon Network's adult channel, Advanced Swim, about a series of adventures around scientific inventions between Ghost Horse Scientist Rick and his mentally savvy grandson Morty.
So what kind of work is Rick and Morty? In a less rigorous but intuitive way to put it, it is an American-inspired, fully adult aesthetically oriented Doraemon.
The protagonist, Rick Sanchez, is a scientist with countless brain-opening fresh inventions, who is as powerful as Doraemon, and the source of wisdom is his "pocket" that can go to heaven and earth. But unlike Doraemon's cuteness and thoughtfulness, Rick is not a kind old man.
This hair-blown, one-line guy isn't good at emotional communication and doesn't have any interesting private life. He always went in and out of the laboratory (garage) in a white coat uniform, and from time to time there was a pool of unappetizing ha laziness hanging from the corner of his mouth.
Grandson Morty Smith was a timid and fearful elementary schoolboy who was unremarkable in school, lacked personality and advocacy, and always acted too sluggishly to be suspected of being mentally inferior by his parents. Morty and Doraemon's male protagonist Nobita Nobita are essentially the most common type of people in real society, and if they continue to travel according to the normal life trajectory, their lives will be doomed to do nothing.
But if Doraemon is the savior of Nobita's mediocre life, it is a fairytale dream. Then Rick is not just the savior of Morty's mediocre life, he is also the biggest disaster and nightmare that Morty is destined to do. Not only does Rick often bring life-threatening dangers to Morty's side, but he also always imposes his thoughts on Morty.
In addition to the adventures of the grandson and grandson through various dimensions and parallel universes, another scene in "Rick and Morty" is "family interaction".
Rick's daughter, Morty's mom, Beth, is a veterinarian and, to be precise, a surgeon who specializes in heart surgery on horses. Beth is a woman of personality and charm, stubborn enough to do whatever it takes to save a dying deer, and can live optimistically with her family in the last days without the slightest pretense. Beth is full of incomprehension for his father, who is obsessed with scientific inventions, and disappointed in her mediocre and selfish husband Jerry.
Jerry is a traditional man, mediocre, selfish and unromantic, he often disappoints Beth, and the marriage between the two has already cracked. Jerry was also not at all rude to Rick, he had never liked his husband, just as Rick had never liked his son-in-law.
Summer, Rick's granddaughter, Morty's sister, an equally fuel-efficient lamp. Summer has a lot of highlight moments throughout the show, compared to the dazed morty, Summer is smart, flexible and belligerent. She has been involved in Rick and Morty's adventures several times, and has even taken Morty's deputy position.
Family interaction is not limited to the chat between family members, these clichés are rarely expressed in "Rick and Morty", this work is more from a side, detailed perspective to present the value and meaning of the family. Rick joined Morty's family as an interloper, and he did bring a lot of trouble and danger to the family, but he also brought a sense of freshness that is rarely found in real life, and he invisibly became a valuable and contributing person to others.
The success of the series "Rick and Morty" is directly related to the creative team. Justin Rowland, who is also the director, screenwriter, producer, and voice of the two core characters of Rick and Morty, is undoubtedly the core character of the entire animation.
Roland has been involved in the dubbing of well-known animated works such as the Adventure Live Treasure series, the Weird Town series, and The New York P-Folk, but it wasn't until Rick and Morty that he had a great opportunity to express himself. Roland's new animation work "Solaropposites" cooperated with the American streaming media leader Hulu is also very good-looking, and the first season received a good score of 9.1 on Douban.
Alien Refugees
Another important creator of the series "Rick and Morty" is the screenwriter Dan Halmon, and most of the screenwriting work in the whole series is done by Dan. Dan Halmon's most important work before Rick and Morty was "Scrap Wood Alliance" with the now-famous Russo brothers, a sitcom that, although not as popular in the country as "The Big Bang Theory" or "Bankruptcy Sisters", has a level of humor that is not lost. Harmon's talent for sitcom creation is also an important reason for the rapid popularity of "Rick and Morty".
Waste Wood Alliance
Of course, the success of "Rick and Morty" also lies in the scale of the work, which is a work aimed at an adult audience, so it is bloody and violent, contrary to mainstream values, and even inconsistent with traditional moral aesthetic requirements. In such a state of anti-serious postmodernism, which is endowed with the bad taste of adults, it is precisely in line with the identification and desire of contemporary young audiences for "rebellion".
The interestingness of this set of dramas is also reflected in its identity as an "adult animation". "Adult animation" is not equated with "vulgar", from Katsuyo Otomo, Imatoshi, Oshii Mori, Kawajiri Zenaki to Masaaki Yuasa, japan, as a major country in the animation industry, has achieved many great animators in the exploration of adult animation aesthetics, and their works are the best names for the demonized "adult animation".
Rather, to some extent, children's animation itself is a castrated animation with an incomplete worldview and value system. The production of children's animation from text to screen content must go through the self-censorship of creators and the secondary review of broadcast platforms, and the creation is full of various taboos and cuts.
Adult animation is much more free, and this freedom is almost maximized in the animation of "Rick and Morty": "large-scale" pictures without self-censorship; strange worlds that contradict logic; creative props; narrative forms that break through the limitations of live-action dramas... The whole work brings the imagination to the fullest extent, and its originality and inspiration are unmatched by children's animation.
Finding the roots is also a great pleasure to watch "Rick and Morty". As an expressive adult animation, "Rick and Morty" naturally carries the private discourse and political views of the creators, from history, culture, current affairs and politics to philosophy, this animation is almost everything to talk about and ridicule.
For movie fans, the occasional homage to classic movies is also a surprise to watch "Rick and Morty". Considered one of the show's most interesting episodes, "Lawnmower Dog" connects and subverts classics in American film history such as "Eye Opener" and "Ghost Street" by parodying the plot of "Inception", while at the same time making a reflection on the comfortable life of human beings in humor.
Rick and Morty will have different harvests from different perspectives, but in the end, it is not a perfect work after all. "There are traitors among us who don't give five stars" is the biggest compliment to the show, but we still respect those "traitors" who don't give five stars.
From a realistic point of view, the objective existence of aesthetic differences has defaulted to the imperfection of all things in the world, and no matter how much the animation work "Rick and Morty" is respected by most audiences, its limit value on the popular scoring platform such as Douban can only be 9.9 from the full score difference of 0.1.
Needless to say, Rick & Morty is certainly not an absolutely perfect animation, and maybe even one day, it will face the fate of the quality of most seasons to decline or even end badly. But as long as we feel the beauty it gives in the moment, that is the ultimate meaning of chasing drama. There is no such thing as perfection in this world, and there is no need for perfect things, perfection is anti-human.