Toonamiguy321

It’s a strange scenario for sure. I highly doubt Toonami cashed in a favor with Toei to get a single oddball episode dubbed. Toei likely did it just for completions sake and threw a bone to Toonami as a bonus. Toei promoted this on their twitter almost immediately after Toonami put their schedule up, further supporting it’s a little gimmick thing Toei is doing that Toonami can coast on for a week as a bonus. What is getting a little overshadowed here is that they are doubling up MHA. Normally they would move the heavens to prevent a premium lead show from being exhausted any faster. Even if (for now) it’s only for one week, it’s troubling they are doing that.

People made the exact same jokes in 2011 when this episode originally aired. Toriko was never very popular, and propping it up next to Goku and Luffy was seen as a comically desperate move. This special is the only reason Toriko hasn’t been entirely forgotten. And I really hope this doesn’t lead to the show joining the lineup one day.

So apparently, it’s a world premier dub of the episode. Whoever runs the Facebook page should be fired. This is a crucial piece of info that makes this event quite a bit more significant

Because it’s probably more like this Gill: Hey Jason, here is a list of shows I’m going to look into for the upcoming schedule gaps, any preferences? Jason: Yea I like the sound of X, Y and Z Gill: Ok, I’ll see if any of those are available to us and get back to you I do agree that they do have pretty similar tastes though

The Facebook post did not indicate anything about it being dubbed. As that would be significant, I took that as a sign that it’s just going to air subbed.

I think it’s time to start worrying about the future of the block a little bit

Made in Abyss did a lot better than I would expect from it most weeks of S2. Especially as a transition show from MHA, they are night and day difference, but it still managed to hold MHA well. Shit, this week it actually had a couple thousand extra viewers. We can’t expect too much from its finale when MHA started us off at a near record low. Steering show choices isn’t something that takes much time. If Gill brings him a list of potential shows, he can circle his picks in 30 seconds. Where he is likely off the wagon is the actual legwork of trying to secure those shows. My main point being, I don’t believe he has completely handed the reigns to Gill in regards to what airs, and it will still very much be programmed to his personal tastes. If Gill wants to make a statement that this is “his” block now, he is going to have to do that with programming choices that break away from Demarco’s normal fare.

Stop making me tap the sign Toonami is not significant enough to take time off for every single holiday on the calendar. We have seen time and again that the weeks they do take off besides Christmas and New Years have very little shift in their ratings. Marathons and delays are entirely pointless and serve no other purpose than to waste time and make it take longer to finish shows. As you say, MHA is still airing, so even if you did want to take a vacation, you still gotta tune in for at least 30 minutes. It really isn’t. I haven’t watched one second of Velma, but I have seen Redo of Healer, and I HIGHLY doubt Velma has a 5 ish minute long, well detailed rape scene. And that’s just the tip of the Redo peni- iceberg.

Demarco is hands off in regards to the blocks day to day maintenance. He still has full involvement in major changes and show acquisitions. Fanart event went south? - Not Demarco Show pickups not happening? - Demarco That’s been a problem for a long time. He really isn’t the anime pro he wants people to believe he is. If it’s from the 80s-90s (his own generation for anime) or is trending on Twitter, he is an expert. Beyond that, he knows nothing. Which is why we so often fall back on cheap nostalgia cash grabs and Gundam. He goes to what he knows. His logic for old shows made sense a few years ago when they could seemingly pick any show. Why pick something old when you can pick something 2 weeks behind it’s dub release? These days, they don’t have the room to be picky. Annoyingly, despite those comments about old shows, they would still go after stuff like Outlaw Star. IMO that was more just an easy excuse to justify not picking up stuff people were requesting.

I feel like a big part of it is Demarco is just incapable of getting out of his own way. In 2019, Toonami was riding at its peak height. We had simuldubs on top of simuldubs and every popular seasonal show fell into the blocks lap with a snap of their fingers. Then they started dialing things back in 2020, and then Covid followed that, and then Crunchyroll started devouring the market, and then Discovery came in and told everyone to stop wasting money. They went being treated like royalty in the market to being seen as a dog turd to avoid stepping on. The fans for the most part have accepted this, it sucks, but things change as time goes on. Demarco though, really doesn’t seem to want to let that royalty feeling go. It really shows when he goes to twitter to complain about not being allowed to air stuff like Demon Slayer or Witch from Mercury. He is trapped in an outdated mindset where Toonami is entitled to popular shows and it’s madness distributors won’t give them to him. There’s no telling what goes on in the background. Demarco did shaft Sentai pretty hard after Parasyte ended, so perhaps they just don’t feel a need to help out more than one show at a time. Or maybe they just pinch their pennies in a foolish hope of being able to land one premium show down the road. Maybe a little of both. You may be right as well, the overlords may want Toonami entering a conclusion phase. In the Zaslav era, nothing should be considered 100% safe. The time for an announcement is closing in pretty quickly. Two weeks ago, it felt like they were buying time for FLCL. If that’s not announced in the next two days, maybe not. If it’s not FLCL I certainly hope there is something else on deck.

I think the topic of “older” anime gets a little confusing to discuss in Toonami communities. Most hardcore Toonami fans are late 20s to early 30s who grew up with the original block. When I hear “older anime” my brain immediately goes to 90s shows (the type of stuff Toonami should NOT be looking at), but that’s just not the reality anymore. A show that came out in 2012, when Toonami came back on the air, is ELEVEN years old now. That’s damn old by anime standards. Even when we got AssClass, which was roughly 5-6 years old when it ran on the block, it was considered to be pretty well passed it’s prime. And despite that, fans still turned out for AssClass most weeks that it was on the block. I don’t know why Demarco thinks the block can’t subsist on shows from a few years prior. With 3 rotating slots, if I set the Hidive catalog filter to Action - 2012 to 2023 - Dubbed, the block would be comfortably programmed for the next 3-4 years. Is it all quality content? No, there are definitely some stinkers in there I wouldn’t recommend to my enemies, but there is plenty of good to at worst, mediocre stuff in there that we could avoid the bad stuff for some time. And hey, you never know what the audience is going to take to. Akame ga Kill still holds the premier viewer record despite being panned by everyone when it was announced for the block. The Viz catalog is unfortunately not as well stocked. They could fill in some gaps here and there, but Toonami would burn through their action catalog pretty quick with the same filter as above.

I’m right there with you on that. At this point, I’m of the believe they need to just go all in on the Sentai and Viz catalog of shows and stop chasing the hot titles like Witch from Mercury that are now unobtainable to the block with meager budget and relevance. I think the problem is they just don’t want to accept that’s the reality of their situation. We have been seeing a lot of examples of perfect being the enemy of good enough. If they would just start working through the “action” tag in the Sentai and Viz catalog, the block wouldn’t need to consider DC movie stalling for years. The flow of content would make the block not look so dire, even if it isn’t the top shelf shows. And they probably could get their tiny budget to go further by not constantly chasing the most expensive options on the market.

For the moment, our cast off content has been limited to things AS was airing on their regular schedule. We haven’t crossed the line of Max exclusives on Toonami (nor AS) and I hope it stays that way. DC movies have been less about Toonami content and more about using Toonami as a commercial for something vaguely related on Max. Personally I hope it never goes beyond the occasional movie.

I try to be a trooper with the block, if they pick up something shitty I just use it as my poop break. But if it came down to this I think I’d just be signing off for good. Not interested in a block that is a trash can for failed Max projects. I don’t think we are at this stage yet, but I don’t consider it out of the realm of reality either.

What a strange upside down night for the block. It’s not often we see the first show do terrible then everything after it do better. I know I have said it before but Demarco really needs to drop two slam dunks for March. MHA has been volatile as the lead, but it’s not gonna get better if we get two stinkers after waiting this long for news. And since FLCL has a good chance at getting one of those slots, the other show is going to have to carry pretty hard.

Know why it works? Because Adult Swim has a twitter page. They can very easily flip through submissions and find one tied to a twitter account to verify its authenticity. I have no idea why Toonami insists on being a boomer that only has a Facebook page no one interacts with because Facebook is for boomers. Plus, AS knows their own characters. Even back when it was Facebook only, sometimes they would post fanart from shows like Fairy Tail because the art looked close to a show the block did air.

Toonami’s contract entitles them to dub premier every part of the TV anime. That’s gonna be the X factor. The first one at least, seems like it’s going to be a TV special. So we should be good on that one. If part 2 is the same kind of special, we will get that too. If part 2 is a TV film, we should also still be entitled to it. If it’s a theater film, then we are boned. At this stage, I don’t really think they have the time nor the budget for a theater film. Especially since AoT has pretty well fallen out of grace. There are also the statements about this not originally being meant to be a 2 parter, so I’m thinking odds of it being a theater film are pretty low.

I told y’all but nobody wanted to listen. If they are part of the already established contract, Toonami will air them. So that would mean some of the block goes on hiatus sometime in April. If they aren’t part of the contract? Never gonna see them on the block. Personally, I’m a bit relieved the series isn’t going to have another meandering season. Demarco on the other hand, is likely tearing his hair out that one of his only guarantees this year may not be a guarantee, and even if they do land it, it’s only going to cover two nights that they will have to build the block specifically for. I really hope their grand plan was not to air Grunge/stall until AoT was ready. Because if it was, March ain’t looking too hot.

I liked Yolo at first, but this second season has opened my eyes that it’s pretty much just silly Aussie voices on top of nonsense. Normally, that’s fine by me but AS has been really leaning hard on Cusack in recent years. That said, it does take me back to better times when AS shows weren’t trying to be more than a few late night laughs. At this point I have zero expectations for Uzumaki. It’s got too many delays on it to live up to that expectation with just 4 episodes. And even if its 11/10 amazing, it’s just 4 episodes. It will air, we will discuss it for a week, and it will be forgotten. Just as HCC was. Personally I don’t worry about AS as a whole going broke and shutting down. But I do worry about them being forced to cut some costs to make ends meet. When that discussion comes up, Toonami is always #1 on the list. The block is already suffering from major cutbacks, i don’t think it can weather too many more. I don’t see them outright cancelling it, but it being alive on just a diet of One Piece, Naruto and the occasional original for 2 hours a week is worse than death.

I’m looking at their recent slate of content and I don’t think they are going to find what they are looking for. Their big pivot to try to lure in a female audience has done nothing but churn out turd after turd. I don’t know if you watched their shorts event last week, but IMO it was 4 consecutive duds. And currently, we are still in a scenario where we know more Toonami original projects incoming than actual AS projects. If AS isn’t making anything then they aren’t going to discover anything. I do agree R&M has been sinking for some time now. It’s been showing the telltale signs of creative bankruptcy and seasonal rot. They have never been able to balance the demands of the lore audience and the season 1 adventures audience. That said, the half submerged Titanic that is R&M is still a safer and more successful option that any of the other dinghys AS has out in the cable waters. What is most worrisome is it could be easily argued that R&M success is whats paying the bills for the other small time shows to get made. Yes, no longer funding it would free up some capital, but the investors are gonna be pretty scared of risk when there is no clear breadwinner to restock the coffers in the event of a dud.

It’s not like R&M has completely prevented the creation of other new content. The problem is all the other new content does terrible. Even content they make that people like barely holds a candle to R&M performance wise. AS always wanted a Simpsons style show. Something with insanely high viewership that they can just crank season after season out of. R&M was as close as they got to that goal, losing it will be hard to recover from.

I really don’t think AS wanted to fire him. I can’t think of any show that has survived a main character recasting for reasons besides death of the original VA. And AS has nothing else. So these antics were being ignored for the sake of keeping the cash cow mooing. Can’t ignore charges though, but by the sound of it, even then they had to be pressured into action. This is the ideal show where they can just take the piss out of the change. Have Morty screw something up that gives them new voices and Rick shrugs it off as something that may be permanent but he doesn’t know nor care. The tik tok guy is great at imitating Roiland, but does bringing in the closest match force them to admit the only thing keeping the show watchable was Roiland’s (apparently real) drunken, ad libbed stammering? I think it does.

That is a bit of unexpected fortune on our part. As cool as simuldubs are, they really just have not recovered from Covid. And honestly, I think that’s kind of a relief to the dubbing staff. At one point in 2019 we were 1 week behind Fire Force. Having to get an episode, do the script, get everyone in the booth, mix it, etc in less than a week for a huge slate of shows sounds like suffering and chaos for everyone involved. Also with the decrease in simuldubs, it has felt like other legacy projects have gotten more attention. For example, One Piece had its dub moving at a snails pace for like 5 years. Then around 2021 they really got it in gear, and in 2022 they cranked out like 100 episodes. I don’t mind waiting a little longer for brand new shows if it means everyone isn’t so overworked that nothing else gets done. I don’t blame them, in previous years once stall mode starts, things don’t really go back to normal. We have an occasional spurt of something here and there but most of the time is spent jumping between stall tactics. In 2021 it started in October. In 2022 it started in May. In 2023 it started in February, so people are right to be concerned. To me, the most annoying part here is this was likely their only chance this year the surprise the audience because nobody had a clue what might be coming in. Now that things have changed, FLCL is a strong contender for one of the slots. And in not wanting to steal its thunder, probably is joining the block solo. So the people asking if the block is even capable of getting anything are just more to fuel the belief that it cannot. So if we get FLCL in March, that will likely be replaced by AoT. So in the summer months they may have one more chance to do something unexpected between MHA and AoT. Maybe sooner if AoT is as short as people say.

I think his point was they could have went about it a different way which would have generated them extra time. They could have kept this week normal, cut Yashahime next week for the hour finale of MiA, then brought back the Yashahime finale and an extra OP on the 18th. Not as much time, but if they were in a temporary stall mindset they are taking things a week at a time anyway. Instead, they took the path forward that cleaned off the schedule efficiently and as early as possible. That certainly felt like to me, they had a pretty good grasp on what they planned to air on the 18th. Obviously that’s not the case, so one or more deals likely went down the tubes in the past two weeks.

Even Demarco made that statement in a speculative tone. He never said there was a deal or that the relationship changed. He just said that he hoped getting MHA would open more doors with CR. We also should consider that their standing with CR could improve, but not in a way we theorize. For example, CR may allow the block access to shows that aired prior seasons on Toonami, but tell them to kick rocks for anything else. Whatever the case, we just don’t have enough info to go on to say either way. Myself, as well as a few others did caution to not take MHA as a sign CR was going to start full cooperation with Toonami, and it seems that was the correct mindset to take. By the way Demarco was talking about it, it does seem like they tried lining up Witch from Mercury to be one of the new shows on the 18th, possibly even a dub premier. But either Toonami didnt have the budget for it, or CR just wouldn’t let them have it. The problem being, they didn’t have a fallback plan in the event they couldn’t secure it. So now we are in stall mode and just have to hope they can secure something else in the span of the next month. Ideally, the new schedule is posted on or before the 18th. That’s the two week cutoff. But, there is no reason they couldn’t take things up to the first day or two of March. That would mean almost zero promotion for what gets added, but that hasn’t stopped them before. If the new FLCL ends up being an accurate guess, we will probably know sooner rather than later.