Toonamiguy321

Wow, I figured Bleach would be a shot in the arm, but not like this. That is a crazy boost in viewership across the board, and in just one week of Bleach airing. If you said 200k at 2am One Piece was possible earlier in the year, you would have been laughed out of the room. I hope the suits put the pieces together here. If you actually buy shows for the block, people will tune in. Yes, even for your mediocre originals, as long as it’s a BLOCK and not just one show and a bunch of reruns.

I’m not sure, given it has many overlapping VAs with Naruto, I would also perceive it as one. Lodge did say he was willing to take back the role. I can see why they wouldn’t want him back though because he handled the dispute he had way back in the day in a pretty ass way that made work for people who weren’t to blame. I believe even he has vaguely admitted in interviews that he could have approached the situation better. Lee had every right to be as upset as she was. Let’s not sugar coat it, with a cast list this enormous and needing to contact quite a few big name or lapsed VAs, there was no mistake made that Lee wasn’t available. Chad’s VA dropped out because he didn’t want to voice a Spanish character, and the studio just assumed Lee would also be ok being recasted by a black VA. If Chad’s VA wants to do that, fine, it’s his own initiative to do so. But don’t unilaterally recast other characters and think they are just gonna be ok with it. If Lee didn’t go to social media and get others to kick up a storm, she never would have got the role back. Yoruichi is one of the series most iconic characters, she knew she could leverage fan outrage to force the studios hand. With the dub already under way it’s not like she had time to dick around with more tactful means of resolution. Every episode that passed was lowering her chances at getting the role back.

Family Guy jabs at Robot Chicken are always funny because they are meta. Making Chris into a hardcore RC fan always gets a laugh out of me. Can’t say Simpsons got Smiling Friends wrong, it leans hard on screaming as comedy.

Well, on the topic of June, the schedule for 6/7 comes up blank. The previous Saturday lands on 5/31, exactly one year on the money when Rewind started. And that schedule is up. No shows end on 6/7, and there is no logical reason for a marathon that night. So the most educated guess here is that Sailor Moon and/or Naruto are shipping out for good after their one year contract expires. As for what they fill the time with? Who knows. Plenty of original trash in the archive they can use.

I’ll give it some credit, until this weeks episode, it was at least visually engaging even if the plot is spinning its wheels. Most Toonami originals spin wheels AND are boring and lifeless. At least in this our cast is doing something. I hope this weeks episode was an outlier because it was a return to form for a Toonami original, with minimal action animation and the cast kinda just wandering about for 22 minutes. I’d safely assume next week will have a lot of save Chris from her captors action, so maybe that’s where this weeks budget ended up. There are some ways this could go and redeem itself, have the team fail and everyone dies, reveal Skinner was actually that guy in the homeless camp that looked exactly like him, but I doubt it will have the balls to do any of that, and will instead hamfist some quick fix for the final episode.

We are over halfway through with this show and I just don’t think it’s gonna find its footing. At their meeting, they claim they are back to square one. Buddy, you haven’t left square one yet. Every single episode has been a meaningless side quest that has amounted to nothing by the end of the episode. It’s become increasingly apparent that in the final 2-3 episode there will just be some big deux ex machina to wrap everything up hastily. Some may argue, it’s the journey. Sure, that works for some shows, where i give a crap about the cast. I just tonight learned the black guys name is Doug because it was on the monitor. That’s how little impact anyone in the cast has. The first few episodes of this show should have been spent building the team and making us care about them. We started with most of the team already formed and just Axel left to be recruited. Current episodes seem to be attempting to develop the cast, but it’s a bit late in the game for that. I guess we get Chris backstory next week, but there will only be 5 episodes left for it to settle in. Doug and Axel will get even less, assuming Axel has more depth to his character than “jail bad”. This is definitely a contender for one of Watanabe’s worst projects.

Unless Sailor Moon or Naruto is expiring and being pulled, there is nothing to reveal. The schedule won’t have any changes till the first week of July when Lazarus ends. Tomorrow night the schedule for the first Saturday of June will populate on the official schedule.

Huh, so all those references to HBO Max that Royal Crackers made won’t date the show anymore. I don’t believe I have ever seen an example of a show being dated, and then later on becoming undated.

Typical slop piece that bundles every part of the network together into one category of “kids content” even though that isn’t the case. I don’t disagree that CN has a foot in the grave, they aren’t really putting anything out and seem to have resigned themselves to just slowly fading away. But on the adult swim side, they are at least making an attempt to be relevant. Common Side Effects was a stroke of good fortune of putting out something people really liked. The ad revenue issue doesn’t surprise me. It’s gotten better in recent months, but last year we went months where an ad for Friday Plans boner pills was on nearly every single break. Companies like that just buy up all the unsold ad space for peanuts. Unfortunately though, it does seem that the entire channel is going to end up paying for the failings of CN

So long as Netflix didn’t grab exclusivity, there is nothing to worry about. Personally I assume Toonami will be tactical with any possible pickup they can land. Right now, Bleach and Blue Exorcist are holding things down. They don’t need Mashle too. If Bleach goes on a mid season break though? Mashle can bridge the gap. Gone are the days of a fully loaded schedule. Anymore they just want to avoid a repeat of March and April where we had zero shows.

I honestly can’t tell if he is being serious or just having a giggle. Because that’s the exact type of person I’d expect Pibby to come from. It’s just too perfect. The weird thing is AS kept prodding it along past the initial YouTube short that dropped on Halloween. The (suckass) April Fools prank and the couple of billboards. I think they even edited their twitter bio for it and still haven’t changed it. I guess you could argue it was classic AS trolling where they see people want something and give tiny glimmers of hope now and then even though they have no intention of ever following through. But that’s not something I expect from post Lazzo AS. What’s worse really is how many people thought this was a good idea, and not something thousands of middle school children came up with and have already beaten to death.

Oh it absolutely is. But being better than One Piece isn’t exactly a high bar.

Yea, it’s a massive cast show. The most notable one is Chad, but given that Chad rarely has much to say, it’s hardly noticeable. Really, it’s commendable they were able to keep the recast list that short. There are a lot of lapsed or semi retired VAs they did manage to get to reprise.

There is actually quite a long list of recasts, mostly among the minor cast, as quite a few VAs from this show who were small time in the mid 00s are now big time and anime dubbing isn’t worth it to them anymore. There has also unfortunately been a few recasts due to VA deaths. I think the most interesting one is that David Lodge did express an interest of reprising Kenpachi, but was not contacted. So the bad blood on that runs deep. And then strangely, Yoruichi was recast with zero contact or consent from Wendee Lee, which with the help of Twitter got the recast unrecasted and Wendee Lee back into her role. All Yoruichi lines are re-recorded by her, but the initial release of the dub has her voiced by a different person. This chart indicates Dave Mallows retirement as the cause for his recast, but in March he passed away, so it would have had to happen regardless even if he reprised in 2023.

There is no way they could legally air it on cable, but I was surprised to see that they DID promote the project on the official Facebook page 2 days ago. An official acknowledgment from Toonami is way more than I’d expect.

I don’t love it. I definitely agree this is not the correct way to operate where we have to go extended periods of time with nothing and they won’t give anything fresh a chance. But I’m just glad to be able to show some apathy towards it all for awhile. Even if they get nothing else at all this year, as long as they got 2 cours of Bleach, we have at least one hour of good content on the air until 2026. No more frustrating 30 minute blocks or months of not tuning in at all. For this year at least. I agree, we probably won’t stay at 5 premier slots for too long. Unless Get Jiro is ready to roll in July, I don’t expect Lazarus to be replaced. Bleach will just move up for however many weeks it needs to. One Piece might hold out on double duty for a bit longer. Thinking about it, even if they increased their yearly order from 50 to 60, that’s a full 2.5 months of consequence free double ups, that likely did not increase the expense a significant amount. Maybe come July when Lazarus ends they trim it down to one for a Lazarus rerun. And hell, since there are no rerun obstacles in my way, I may even stick out the full 5 premieres for awhile. Hopefully Dressrosa has made some progress in the 8 or so months I have been skipping it.

If this happened earlier in the year, this would be a merited concern. But Bleach is gonna be starting 2 weeks prior to the halfway mark of 2025. If they did blow out the budget here, it doesn’t really matter as long as they got the first 2 parts which will cleanly carry us till years end. Blue Exorcist feels like small potatoes in comparison so I have no concerns that they will continue forward with that as well. If they can swing one more acquisition by October or so, we will be solid. I think they DID blow the budget here, but we already suffered the consequences of that so it’s all good times till next year. I have heard that Sailor Moon is starting to expire on demand, so they are probably letting that go at minimum. Naruto seems to be fine though so it may be hanging around a bit longer.

There are plenty of shows that were “mainstays” that are never gonna air again. I have no doubt AS would always try to get Bleach, but ultimately the opening for it to come to Toonami was entirely in the hands of Disney. And with the absolute state the block has been in this year, we weren’t even sure if we would get ANY acquired shows ever again. Blue Exorcist S2 was our bare minimum. Not one genuine person out there has Bleach on their prediction chart for May. None. I don’t think we should count those chickens yet. Yes, we now know it’s at least possible to land shows held by Disney. But I doubt doing so comes at a bargain price. Bleach is one of the most iconic anime that AS ever aired, so they were willing to fork up to get it. I don’t know if they are willing to extend that courtesy to any other show. If they do, Undead Unluck is the obvious front runner. And honestly, it needs the cable exposure. From what I have read, it was overshadowed in its season and the Hulu release greatly limited its reach. That’s a rare example of a show that might actually see benefits from a Toonami run in 2025. I was of the opinion that Heavenly Delusion felt like an ASA era show when I watched it. However, it’s for sure a later in the night kind of show, so it would have to be a killer bargain for them to even look at it.

So do we consider this the final nail in the hopium coffin that Crunchyroll will cooperate in any way? Bleach was not on anyone’s radar as a potential pickup, yet here it is while MHA S7 still is MIA. As well as Dr Stone and Fire Force. Hopefully AS has secured at least the first 2 parts of Bleach, as that will easily take them to the end of the year. And since Bleach is one of those few shows they trust at midnight, it can fill in the gaps between originals rather than visual vomit like FLCL.

I think the mouse has enough financial issues right now that they understand it’s a waste to not license their content if there is a willing buyer. I JUST watched Undead Unluck thinking it was a safe, never ever show for Toonami because it was Disney/Hulu locked. So watch that find its way here soon. Nonsense. Especially when Kyoto Saga is coming in at the same time nearly ten years since its release. Bleach is easily one of the biggest pickups they could have landed.

5/10 is stupid, but on 5/17 we are SO FUCKING BACK. Never been so happy to be wrong about something. Blue Exorcist isn’t that surprising, but Bleach is way out of left field. Dare I say it, is Toonami saved?

I’d rather get nothing over the block becoming a trash can for unwanted Max shows. It does make you wonder why they have been so against moving One Piece forward. For a few weeks it’s just to keep the schedule stable. But for 5 months (or more) there’s no real reason it couldn’t have moved up in the night for awhile. That said, they really need to get OP cut down an episode ASAP or they are gonna have a real mess at the end of the year. There is no way they can coast on that till July.

Well, this is a 3 episode rule point. If this wasn’t on Toonami I’d be bailing. Each episode feels like it’s maybe 10 minutes long, with the other 12 filled with padding scenes and some of the most god awful dialog I have ever heard in modern anime. I understand now where the reviewers were coming from calling it a poorly paced slog.

Well that’s what I get for having any kind of expectations. So means this upcoming Friday is where we turn our focus. Yea they could delay it longer but with two slots to deal with, I don’t think they will have that luxury.

Would be neat if we could get another double announcement from them. They still have some Demon Slayer and Mashle too. At this point, anything from their catalog that isn’t a rerun is welcome. Hmm, I had thought they were offset a week, but you are right, both shows end on May 3rd. If this panel doesn’t reveal something it will be even more concerning that we didn’t get an update yesterday. Two Aniplex premiers + Lazarus subbed replacing the second One Piece should absolutely be doable but I’m sure they will find a way to let us down.