Toonamiguy321

HBO Max namedropped twice this episode.

What time and which show?

The only thing I remember from this series is it’s one of the ones they let Ashly Burch have a lead role in. Crazy to think how fast her voice acting career exploded, from niche anime to prominent video games in less than a decade.

I could have swore it moved twice. Well, if I’m remembering that wrong that’s my bad. Considering the absolute asinine schedule choices they have made in recent years to not move a premier from its timeslot, I’d say they have some evidence that would support even moving it that one time was detrimental to its run. That aside, I still think there isnt any valuable information about future pickups gained from Hellsing except maybe avoiding OVA series because they might have weird rights that doesn’t entitle Toonami to all of it. I agree, AgK, KLK and Parasyte are better gauges since they were regular episode length and didn’t have such a chaotic in and out run. Giving up on an entire genre because one show did subpar is moronic. And I’m pretty sure they took that path with Pop Team Epic, because that was the start and end of diverse program choices. There is a lot more than just how “adult” something is. When the block came back, it felt like the world of anime was an open oyster to them now. And instead of utilizing that to its fullest, they opted to fall back on a lot of stuff they would have been airing on CN. We didn’t even get 6 months in before Naruto was back. People just wanted them to try to NOT air every single thing that came out of the Shonen Jump catalog. As long as a show didn’t have excessive nipples to censor, it was fair game from a content perspective.

This is why I suspect they may not move into the next arc of One Piece. I’m not exactly sure where we are, but I think it has 10-15 weeks left of Punk Hazard. Had we doubled up, MHA would be done next month and that would be wrapping up too. Like I said, the entire purpose of getting OP was for it to do duty as schedule gap filler when needed. The fact that they go out of their way to not use it for that is suspect. If they do drop OP though, I have no idea what they would do with the slot. Since it’s anchor content, that might worry me that they are planning to sunset the block. In that case, perhaps double Naruto to get us to the end quicker, or they just trim off an hour.

That’s exactly how they ran the block up till 2020, and still attempt to run the block to this day, and up till 2020 that was their recipe for high ratings. Quite a few fans have been irritated by the excess PG level shonen and lack of any MA content that fully utilizes the Adult Swim timeslot. Made in Abyss was received very well. You see the complaint less these days because a lot of those fans simply gave up and moved on because the change was never going to happen. That’s not really fair to Hellsing, they pulled it two episodes early, told people to go out and pirate the last two episodes, and then are shocked it did terrible a month later when they picked it up. Even the first 8 episodes had a hard ride because they were moved all over the block because at the same time stuff was getting written off and they needed to fill space.

Right now it’s too much KotH, but I’m hoping down the road they grab more PG stuff like UWE and Superman that can hang out in that early hour. Still mad they didn’t slide Toonami up to 11-2 though.

If Primal was intended to be temporary, they wouldn’t have restarted it from S2 ep1. The restart shows a clear intent to get it through another full run, and syncs its run with UWE. The new show, if/when we get it, is probably set to be the replacement for Food Wars. Our only hope here is if Primal does absolutely abysmal in the coming weeks. Like, five digits. And I don’t think that is possible with this audience. And even if that does happen, best case scenario is Food Wars, One Piece and Naruto move up a slot, and Primal is moved back down to the end for the rest of this run. Unfortunately, we will never even know how this show does on Toonami. We may have been able to get a vague idea if there was a premier after it, but going into the millionth Primal rerun is going to skew the numbers too far when we do get numbers for Food Wars. We will just have to make educated guesses based on what Thursday does. Personally? I’m not expecting much. Primal was significantly more anticipated and it’s premier numbers were middling at best.

If the choice comes down to solely Demarco, One Piece is never leaving the block. If Demarco has to sell higher ups on a 2 year long arc, there may be an issue. Another issue in 2017 was the block had so much long running content there was no room for flexibility. So between its poor ratings and the need for space, dropping it made sense. Our current situation, the block has 3 reruns they can ditch before they need to talk about dropping OP. And with the struggles they are having just securing one show, I have my doubts they are doing that. The only way this would happen is if the audience actually tuned out. There are still a lot of fans who feel obligated to tune in regardless of what the block is airing to support it, and are completely oblivious to the fact doing so encourages them to stay the course. I agree with this. I hated 2020 when it went new - rerun - new etc. If we can’t avoid these reruns, I’d rather they all be contained either at the end or at the beginning so I only have to tune in for one chunk.

90 minutes in my eyes since one isn’t even new. If they did do this, something would have to fill the slot. More reruns would be the betting man’s choice, but they could always surprise us with something more finite.

Just something that’s been in my head I’d like some opinions on, I think I have floated the theory before but their chosen path forward has me thinking about it again. Do we think One Piece is out of here at the end of Punk Hazard? If they needed to buy 10 more weeks, I think the majority of fans would prefer an extra One Piece or Naruto over any reruns, let alone Primal S2. Naruto I can understand, in about a month and half, we can officially say Naruto has less than one year left on the block. While I’d love to get to the end sooner, I doubt AS wants that. One Piece though, has no excuse, unless of course, it’s more finite than we think. Unlike its last run, it’s ratings have been acceptable for its timeslot for the majority of its run. So I wouldn’t cite performance as a reason if they did get rid of it. The gargantuan size of the Dressrosa arc though may be an issue for them. At our current speed, it would take Toonami viewers over 2 years to finish the arc, thats a huge commitment people likely will not make. On one hand, with the dire state of the lineup right now, even considering they might drop one of their few new things is hard to believe. On the other, one of their justifications for getting One Piece back in the first place was to use its massive episode count as a means to fill gaps on the schedule when necessary. And since November, they have gone to a lot of effort to NOT do that. So could we be seeing the end of its run here soon?

“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.