English Dub Review: Rick and Morty: The Anime “Alien Elle”

The third episode of the ongoing cross-cultural experiment that is Rick and Morty: The Anime continues to do good work as a sumptuous visual feast that explores an alternative approach to the adventures of the Smith/Sanchez family to the tune of a kick-ass soundtrack. As this season’s storylines slowly begin to stitch together into what we must assume will someday be a wearable narrative, it is tempting to speculate as to how this is all going to end. Will at least one Rick, out of all the infinite Ricks, be able to escape the emotional pit of his past failures? Will Tammy get her shit together and be a good mother?Will the Galactic Federation finally win one, for once? It’s still way too early to tell at this point in the series, but there is one thing we do know for sure – Morty’s latest love interest, Elle, has Dune powers.

So far, RaMTA has been a fairly lady-centric show. Of course, the first two episodes of RaMTA expend an appropriate amount of energy setting up the freshly fractured relationship between Rick and Morty and the ongoing infighting of Rick against alternative versions of himself, but they each, respectively, spend a lot of time with Summer and Beth. In ‘Alien Elle,’ we may be following along two parallel Morty routes, but the primary point of interest here is most certainly the mysterious warrior in the midst of it all.

Sure, we’ve known the whole time that Elle has some kind of future-sight. But that can mean so many things! She could have ‘Edge of Tomorrow’ syndrome, where she’s reborn every time she dies until she can become the ultimate fighter, or she could have been a very studious time traveler, or had the Yantianto in her. Or she could have simply been well-informed about upcoming events by a magical edition of the next day’s newspaper that was delivered to her each evening by a mysterious cat. Hell, Elle might even have been kicking it old style with some straight-up-Joan-of-Arc-talking-to-God moves. But Elle isn’t up to any of that – she’s just a young lady, born of a dying race that has the ability to perceive the future in the same way that most people perceive the past. This technically means that, while she knows the future, Elle is unable to change the future. You know – Dune powers!

Now, you could argue that Elle’s powers differ slightly from the curse of complete sight that is bestowed upon Paul Atreides and his son, God Emperor Leto Atreides II, as Elle knows the future cannot be changed, and both Paul and Leto each, at times, have some limited ability to alter their immediate futures, but those incidents typically crop up in the moments before the future becomes set in stone due to the very presence of an Atreides-level future seer. Therefore, being born of a society in which farsight is a birthright would generate a certain inherent sense of the inevitable to the populace. 

Even though RaMTA doesn’t seem as concerned with prioritizing humour as it’s American counterpoint, there’s still a few funny bits in this episode. There’s an m almost X-tacles-ian dynamic between members of the Galactic Federation, which led to my favourite joke of the series so far. When the GF team is being debriefed on Elle, the guy I think of as ‘The General’ says – “She’s that race with memories of the future. But… we killed them all.” Hus underling, who seems to maybe work in IT, responds with the throwaway line –  “We killed who, now?” and the scene moves on. It’s not the same kind of funny that you’d expect from a classic episode of Rick and Morty, but it still works as an mild joke/stinging indictment of bureaucratically aporoved genocide.

It’s quite nice that one of our Mortys, aka ‘Space Morty,’ gets to experience life as a local hero because of Elle’s future-sight. He doesn’t get a lot of wins in life, but this one is a good one. He also seems to really have a positive impact on Elle, who has basically been hunted by The Man her whole life. All the Scott Pilgrim fans out there in the world might see some parallels between Morty and Elle’s relationship and Scott and Ramona’s. Elle and Ramona both know a thing or two about the future, and hopefully, Morty will rise to meet his challenges, just like Scott, and earn the respect of his lady friend in the future. she already knows. They both like pickle hotdogs, so, we’ll see.

On the non-Elle side of things, it’s a truedelight when a Rick and a Morty from two different universes/timelines get paired up – it’s a slam dunk instant recipe for a subtle mismatch scenario, no matter what the pairing. I’m sure when Doofus Rick first met Eric Stoltz ‘Mask’ Morty, they both had a few ‘you expect me to work with him?’ type moments. We also get to hang with President Curtis, who is considering dumbing himself down using science. The idea of the impossible future comes up once or twice, and everybody ends up just a little more depressed than when they started.

It may not be the concept onslaught of the original Rick and Morty, but there is something happening here that’s worth checking out. This story’s slowness is part of what is making it work, even if it still feels weird to be left hanging each week by a dangling story from a franchise that’s always let us know not to wait up. The shift away from slapstick humour and nihilism is for sure an adjustment, but I think it’s one worth making. Next week – Summer and Morty go save Grandpa Rick!