Toonamiguy321

“We are close to announcing a new show” ”Here is Primal S2 again from the top” Something here does not compute. Assuming the show they are allegedly so close to finalizing replaces Food Wars, thats like 6-7 weeks away. Maybe we have a different definition of what “close” means.

You better be telling us lies right now. April Fools is on the first, not the 26th. I’ll forgive you, if you just admit to making this up to get a rise out of us. Please, be the liar I want you to be. My sanity needs it.

He is the one who has been talking up this acquisition the past few days. Reasonable conclusion that he is pretty involved with it. This schedule gap has been here since February. They have had more than a reasonable amount of time to get something sorted out. Especially since they burned off MHA, that was a big beacon to the viewers that they had something cooking that needed to get on right now. They say be patient. We already did that. If people need to clown on them a bit to pass the time, I think the audience has earned it at this point.

Maybe, but who else needs MHA? Crunchyroll was first, Toonami was second. Is there someone else in line for it?

I can’t hear her as anything besides Naruto. It is just so jarring to hear that voice coming from anywhere but Naruto’s mouth.

When it comes to her career oddity, that’s Naruto. I don’t believe she ever did another anime role. It’s by far her most iconic role in her portfolio, but still the one that just isn’t like the others.

Some other interesting observations we can skim from this news. 1. It looks like after one more bout of Primal diarrhea, this curse is finally going to be lifted from Toonami, and MHA will take up the torch as our late night rerun for the rest of the year. Unfortunately, that means if we get the FLCL sequels this year, they will likely rerun in their premier timeslot. So be prepared for that. 2. The Facebook post heavily implies they are working on an actual show, likely for the 12:30 slot. So where does that leave AoT? I highly doubt Crunchyroll is so far behind on its dub that a late May premier would happen. Perhaps the 2014 deal did not include those specials as we had hoped. For now, as long as the dub does not release on CR, it still has a chance, but my doubts are growing. This is what the Facebook post implied. But I cannot list any show I believe could be clogged up for essentially an entire month. They bought themselves till mid May to make an announcement. The only thing I could see having this much involvement on the Japan side would be one of the FLCL sequels. Hopefully that’s not the answer, because that is going to be a huge letdown for the fans. It also begs the question, why burn off MHA if you weren’t absolutely 100% sure what you were clearing it off for was ready? MHA could have given them 5 extra weeks of time had they not doubled it up in March.

And they took this opportunity to quietly add Unicorn Warriors to the schedule without addressing its triple rerun status.

That book would be cool, but I can understand why it probably has too many prototype “this isn’t supposed to leave the office” type of things to ever be a thing for the public. Have my doubts on the Crunchyroll progress until we see some actual evidence of such. Big oof on Uzumaki. It’s almost May, and it’s thematically supposed to air in October. If they aren’t confident on that now, I’m expecting another summer delay apology video. Even if they did that to another show like what they did for GitS and Big O, what from the list they have already aired could they even float that option with? First that comes to mind is Deadman Wonderland, but it’s animation studio is dead and the manga concluded many moons ago. I wouldn’t complain, but would anyone in Japan see value in such a project? Maybe a total restart with a different studio, iirc the anime deviates pretty hard early on, so continuing where the anime stopped wouldn’t even really be viable. What else? Toonami has stayed pretty far away from the one season wonders over the years, so I’m at a loss for what they could want to invest in continuing. I guess Dimension W is another one. But again, does that have any clout to its name to get more made, even if AS covers some of the bill?

Tonight’s was a swing and a miss IMO. The only good joke was the one they put in the promo. The more of it I watch, the more of a believer I become that this should just be The Theo Show. Because when Theo isn’t the focus, the laughs dry up.

Hopefully he isn’t just talking about the AoT special here.

I have always considered that excuse to be a load of shit. When Toonami sets its sights on a show, they would move mountains to secure it. If they were told no, they would keep trying. Take Demon Slayer for example, Demarco had admitted they continue to inquire about it even knowing the answer is likely still no. In the past, Sentai has shown a lot of eagerness to have their shows be on Toonami. The reason it’s “hard” for Toonami to get their shows is they usually don’t have anything Toonami wants, and thus I believe they half ass their efforts. I can’t speak on their customer service quality, but I highly doubt the call center they have for customer complaints is in any way associated with higher level executive branch that would deal with making a TV deal for a major network.

I already pointed out Mob and the initial pickup of Food Wars in another post. Both of which when they did get announced, they apologized for the delay and gave us a reason for them being late. It happened, just rarely. These days, almost every show is delayed. They don’t apologize or give reasons, they are just late and that’s how it is. It’s a new issue that didn’t exist for the first 3/4 of the blocks revival. Even when we were saddled with too many long runners, we still had 1-2 rotating slots and those always were announced on time. Even when they were going hard on simuldubs, they didn’t seem to cause any issues. In 2019 we had shows 1-2 weeks behind the simuldub announced promptly. The only obvious factor that has changed between then and now is the swap over to the much less cooperative Crunchyroll.

That’s why I specified there are little kid anime peppered around here and there. But to the majority looking for an anime fix, those glorified toy commercials aren’t what people are looking for. I won’t lie to myself, Toonami isn’t providing adult anime either. It’s all one step above the little kid stuff. But there are no other options. If you want the cable anime experience, it’s Toonami or nothing. There is always that narrow chance they grab something like Made in Abyss that is actually more adult oriented, but it’s rare. I don’t see 4 hours in our future anytime soon. Demarco is already prepping people for disappointment in the upcoming schedule cycle. Unfortunately, Toonami falls into this trap with anime too. A long time ago they should have turned away from CR/Sony owned shows. They have made it clear they won’t share and the block has nothing to offer them. Go for the Sentai catalog, they may not have the shows they want, but they do have the shows they need. Which in the current scenario, is anything that isn’t a rerun.

Many years ago, I remember someone asking Demarco why they don’t air new western stuff. And he just flat out told him, there wasn’t any to air. And that wasn’t even really an exaggeration, until recent years, the only real action animation coming out of the west were straight to video DC and Marvel films and Korra. Anime has single handedly kept the Toonami lights on for about 9 out of 11 years of its revival. And the only western show to PREMIER on Toonami in 11 years has been Samurai Jack S5. Things change, and I don’t blame a single person who considers this to be an anime block. Besides the odd little kid anime, this is the only home for anime anywhere on cable. A tiny, 3 hour window once per week. The frustration of not being able to have that 3 hours a week without some random western reruns getting thrown on it is a valid frustration. Maybe in the good ol days it was an action animation block, but the west chose to turn its back on action animation for about a decade. Can’t blame people for becoming diehard anime fans when few alternative options were on the table.

That doesn’t make any sense though. If this was always the case, we would have more examples of this in the blocks history. Really, with more frequent content, we logically should have seen more delays like this if they are the norm. And that’s just not the case, it’s a brand new phenomenon that started around 2020. Demarco used to say they had almost all their deals done and settled 4-6 months ahead of time. In recent years, every deal feels like it’s still be worked on 4-6 days before it needs to air. There has obviously been some kind of change with how the AS side is doing things. And returning to my earlier point about Demarco’s obsession with controlling the news flow, when schedules are running tight, at the very least they could slot the episodes that are NOT new onto the schedule. We are well beyond the point where shows might shuffle around. The rerun, One Piece and Naruto are never moving from their current timeslots. So why do they need to be hidden on the schedules as well? It’s just more slots messed up on DVRs Genndy would have a stroke if they did that

The 29th was the cleanest option. Food Wars takes a rest for a week and the open hour up front covers the rest of the time. If they do it the following week, they either have to park it behind an hour of Genndy reruns, completely taking the wind out of its sails, or lead with it and put the Genndy reruns at the end (where they should be) and make everyone mad the following week when they take over midnight. My hopes that AS holds any sanity and would put those reruns in the 2:30 slot are incredibly slim. If they did, AoT can tag in whenever, but yes that would mean either putting the brakes on a new show (those tweets don’t make it seem like any are ready) or just having the lineup continue it’s stall tactics. Would not be surprised at all if CR is intentionally holding it up just to cause problems. I guess we will find out next week.

Let’s not forget the meltdown he had when people dared to use that old backdoor schedule to see that they had picked up Soul Eater. Or that time that food truck told us they got Parasyte. There are plenty of examples where they could have made announcements and chose not to because of this bizarre obsession with controlling the flow of information as tightly as possible. But hey, at least back in those days they had the decency to stick to the two week thing. It was actually kind of an oddity to have a show announcement delayed to the 2 week mark, but when they were they still made the cutoff. It’s either ready or it isnt, they should already know. If it’s not ready for the 29th, that’s really gonna botch up their Unicorn Warriors plan.

As much as I like on air reveals, Toonami really needs some W’s right now. We are on the edge of it being May and have only had a single thing added to the block since the start of the year. AoT will probably be one of their biggest things of the year, 7 or less days of promotion is no good. Plus, announcements are usually made during the first show, which a lot of people will likely skip this week. We still have a few hours left for something to go up on Facebook, let’s hope something appears.

It’s kinda funny that Demarco actually bit the bait though. It’s very obviously an insincere post but he took it seriously anyway. Ok, but why was this NEVER a thing prior to around 2020? There were the occasional hiccups, like Mob and Food Wars, but when those happened, they gave us a reason that made them outliers. These days, we never get schedules on time. Now and then, the schedules don’t even have anything new on them. It’s really hard to believe that nearly every schedule update for the past 3 years or so has been late because Japan wouldn’t let them announce.

Hopefully this just means Crunchyroll is being a jackass about AoT and not an admittance they don’t even have anything secured.

Realistically, airing any of their shows on the block has little, if any effect on potential CR viewers. But that hasn’t stopped them from being petty as hell about it since 2018. CR still has a long way to go to prove that they are a supportive ally to the block.

For Dr Stone and other possible CR pickups, we also have to consider how CR has taken what AS did with MHA here. They made them stall with reruns for 5 weeks before it started, for no discernible reason other than putting a larger gap between the CR dub release and Toonami airing. Doubling down once or twice probably wouldn’t have been anything to sweat, but 6 weeks in a row to an end of only being 2 weeks behind the simuldub may put the block into another CR embargo scenario. An optimistic viewpoint would be that CR encouraged them to blast through MHA to get on Dr Stone or something else, but so far we have seen absolutely no evidence CR would do something like that for the block, so I find it difficult to think positively when it comes to CR.

To me, comments like these make leaks seem more realistic. “Hey that super negative review that’s going around is total baloney just don’t read it DONT READ IT STOP!!!!” Then people like that will likely push a “real” review in a few weeks that Netflix paid to sing praises.