[dragontamer]

Rick and Morty fakes a lot of its depth with nonsense technobabble, akin to Evangeleon's biblical references which are largely nonsense.

The good bits of Rick and Morty are very short, maybe 1-minute sections of episodes. Morty's relationship with Planetina was one of the deeper moments of all of season 5, except it is summarized in maybe 90-seconds of story at the most.

And its really not much deeper than "some eco-friendly people turn out to be eco-terrorists", and that's enough to ruin a relationship. Yeah, sucks for Morty, but... its not exactly a particularly deep message (deep in the context of the rest of the show, yes. And I definitely enjoy those kinds of moments. But something needs to be longer than 90-seconds of story for me to call it "deep", especially compared to other things I've seen)

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I dunno, as far as technobabble / nonsense words go, I prefer Evangeleon from that perspective. There's a lot to be said about Shinji's exploration of his depression (caused by Gendo, his father's, obsession over the Human Instrumentality Project).

Rick is just a toxic asshole that the show forces you to watch. Someone like Morty should have run away / cut Rick out of his life a long long time ago. At least in Evangelion, Shinji is actively trying to cut out the entire mecha-project out of his life (running away multiple times), but since Shinji is one of the few candidates who can pilot the mech, he's forced back into the job over-and-over again (unlike Morty who seems to just be this passive guy who is needlessly picked on by Rick for 5 seasons).

If nothing really matters, then Morty could just leave and that's that (and the fact that this hasn't been explored across ~5 seasons shows the limitations of the relatively shallow, episodic format... forcing Rick and Morty to be friends again by the start of the next episode to keep things serialized). What makes Shinji's situation unique is that Shinji's worth as a pilot is more than he gives credit for, and each time he tries to leave, a disaster occurs. Each time Shinji does fight, a disaster also occurs by his hands. So Shinji's confusion and depression is far more understanding.

Ex: Shinji's relationship with Toji evolves over a few episodes, and is deeper than all 5 season's of Morty's development.

Shinji is forced to pilot the mech in episode 1. Shinji's inexperience with the mech causes collateral damage, and Toji's sister gets trapped in the rubble. Toji bullies Shinji until Shinji saves him in the next fight, as Toji didn't realize the issues of being a pilot. The arc culminates as Toji himself becomes a pilot, and Shinji is forced by his father to destroy Toji's mech. Shinji is being forced to follow Gendo (his father's) plans as scripted out by "The Dead Sea Scrolls" (aka: technobabble), but the important thing is that Gendo's ambition for the project is so great, he's willing to traumatize his own son over it. Shinji x Toji's relationship is just one sacrifice Gendo makes, and Shinji's depression goes even deeper because of it.

[thorin]

Thanks for the reply, I'm only about 6 episodes into R&M so my view might change. What is "deep" is probably a better question, The Simpsons is pretty deep if you choose to look at it that way. I'm sure many people have written PHD thesis on this kind of thing. Personally I found the Midnight Gospel pretty deep as it basically rehashes a lot of Buddhist philosophies which Duncan Trussell is very fond of.

[dragontamer]

I think R&M is an unusual message, in that it tries to take a Nihilist stance on a lot of subjects. Combined with pop-culture references and technobabble, it can come off as more high-brow than it really is IMO.

Neon Genesis Evangelion, really did the Nihilist thing better though. No matter what Shinji tried, things kept getting worse. Rick is "too obvious" of an asshole. Gendo (Shinji's father) is better, because nominally speaking, Gendo is working on a project to literally cancel out the apocalypse that's occurring in the series.

So when Gendo says "Get in the mech and fight that monster", you generally know that Shinji (probably) should do that, you know, to save the world. The long-term effects of this decision (as well as the alternative decision: for Shinji to run away from this responsibility) are explored in the short 26 episodes of the series.

When Rick says "shove these 'Mega Seeds' up your ass Morty", I'm not entirely sure if Morty should comply with that. They have some foreshadowing going on for the "what if Morty stopped listening to Rick all the time", thanks to the "Alternate Universe Evil Morty" plotline going on, but we've had like 4 episodes so far with that character? And most of the time, that character doesn't interact with mainline Rick/mainline Morty.

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The show is randomly pretty good with some relationships. Rick x Unity was a good episode, as was Morty x Planetina. Otherwise, I think its largely just a comedy show where ridiculous things happen in a crude manner, with a mildly Nihilist perspective on events.

A lot of R&M scenes are due to incredibly poor decisions of the main characters: Rick outright lying to Morty and then hiding the lie through toxic interactions (its your fault Morty). Morty becoming so overly influenced by his sexual desire to potentially cause a world-ending (or universe-ending) event. Jerry wimping out of some fight. And these decisions are largely encoded into the format of these characters. These characters rarely "try something else", because doing so would break the serialization format (ie: the golden rule of American cartoons. Do not change the characters).

[zhynn]

Plug for CJ the X's excellent video essay on the dialectics of Rick and Morty. Given the thought you put into your breakdowns of both R&M and NGE, I think you might like it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qm4dxUIRZso

[Zababa]

Note that Gendo has always been focused on getting his wife back, the Human Instrumentality Project was just a means to his ends. In both timelines/stories, the original series Neon Genesis Evangelion and the Rebuilds, he doesn't follow the plan.

[dragontamer]

Well yes but I'm trying to avoid unnecessary spoilers, in case the readers haven't seen the ending yet.

The Toji sub-plot is all wrapped up before the 10th episode, and is a side-story at best. Its barely a spoiler IMO. What makes Evangelion great is that its filled with these interactions: Misato's interactions with Ritsuko, Ritsuko interacting with Rei, Rei interacting with Asuka, etc. etc.

Its filled to the brim, not all of the interactions are depressing, some are ridiculously over-the-top / campy (especially the excuses for fanservice scenes), but the "serious story" that's told over the 26 episodes (or 4 OVA movies for the new timeline) is pretty good. Albeit heavily laden with long-winded dialogs about Selee, Three Magi computer system, Dead Sea Scrolls, AT Fields, the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th impact events and Hedgehog's Paradox (Okay, Hedgehog's Paradox actually is relevant and the running theme between all of these characters. But a lot of the other stuff doesn't matter, lol).