Toonamiguy321

I think Fire Force is a bit too “anime” for a run outside of Toonami. Tamaki flying out of her clothes isn’t something you can sell to the Fox comedy crowd. Plus, S3 hasn’t even been announced yet, it’s a bit presumptuous to assume Toonami is going to get it when we don’t even have an ETA for Japan.

Been reading through some discussion about the news, it seems between some keyframe leaks and better translation, this may not be a proper anime season, and rather two separate extra length special episodes to conclude the series. Which if you think about it, makes a lot more sense than two full length seasons. There are only 8 chapters that have not been adapted, and even with the old rumors of the anime giving us an ending that doesn’t suck, that’s still far away from filling 24 episodes. So, if that is the case, that completely changes how Toonami has to approach these. Rather than looking for a home on the normal schedule, we may be looking at two nights in 2023 that are preempted by a long AoT episode. Maybe we don’t even get them at all depending on how their contracted is worded.

I see zero reason to even consider this. AoT is not socially relevant enough anymore to warrant 11:30. MHA barely is. The blocks recent numbers have not made a strong case it can handle 11:30 either. They have a perfectly good timeslot they aren’t using, and Naruto has spent a long portion of its run at 2:30a anyway so that’s not a punishment for it. Especially with a 23 week filler stretch starting soon. Not to mention the turmoil this change would cause down the line. Ok, they get 11:30 to fit in AoT. What about when it ends? You know damn well they aren’t going to support another rotating slot, so we would just get cut back to midnight again and make everyone sweat about what cut is next.

Man this whole last season but it’s split into 3 parts but the last part is also split into multiple parts is getting old. Let’s hope this is actually the last stretch. Anyway, giving Crunchyroll roughly 3 weeks to start the dub, would put this into April, or possibly even late March if they start sooner. We have two slots open in February, and one open in late June. Neither of which are going to work out for us. So there are two ways I see this going. 1. When it’s ready to air, Primal gets the boot, the shonen hour moves down and they slot AoT likely as the second show 2. One of the show replacements in February is a FLCL Prog/Alt rerun, which would leave a slot free roughly the week AoT needs to start. If they are off, OP or Naruto can tag in to cover the time Lets all pray it’s #1

This is where I pump the brakes. The felony charges are real, and we will see what comes of them at trial. But every single time a prominent person catches some charges, there is always a stream of people who go “uhhhh actually he did that to me too I suddenly remember now that I see charges have been filed!” More often than not, these tales are either grossly exaggerated or entirely fabricated. Do I believe Roiland is the type of person where these could be true? Absolutely. But I also believe there is always a stream of nobodies who think they can ride the felony charge coattails into a few minutes of notoriety. I have been hearing since R&M started that Roiland and Harmon are creeps. If anything was bad enough, you would have come forward BEFORE someone else got charges to stick. Not to mention, it will be a cold day in hell before I believe “themarysue.com” engages in fair, unbiased reporting

From a quality standpoint, you are correct. AS has been in zombie mode for quite a few years now,. As we saw in 2021 during that brief period when FG left and before KotH and Futurama came back, they struggled to keep the ship afloat. Without a steady stream of Fox content, AS would be dead already. From a business angle though, letting it die isn’t a good idea. Something has to air during those hours, and it’s not like CN is in any better shape. Having a subpar block that has one heavy hitter is way better than trying to kickstart something new in 2023. So I agree, AS isn’t going anywhere. But they are also going to try everything to keep R&M going. It’s a nice bonus for AS to make a little money rather than just be 10 hours of late night time filler.

Primal is done. Genndy did say something about making an anthology but I find it extremely unlikely such an expensive project with middling ratings is getting another season in the Zaslav era. Smiling Friends is certainly popular by word of mouth, but it’s actual ratings were pretty subpar. Comparing Nielson to Nielson, Smiling Friends on the high end did around 250k. Rick and Morty on the low end this year was around 600k. If they lose that powerhouse, none of these other small fries could keep things going.

It was, at a time. That time has long since passed. If TOM was arrested for beating Sara and they cancelled Toonami before next Saturday, nothing would change at adult swim. They would need to paste over 2 1/2 hours of programming on one day. Easy. Anime fans would whine, nobody else would care. They would save a bunch of money on license fees. It would probably end up being a net gain. You could argue the entire reason AS hasn’t been shut down is purely so Rick and Morty has somewhere to premier once a year. It very quickly eclipsed everything else. American Dad? That would hurt just because it’s their last noteworthy Seth show they use to inflate ratings. Yolo? Haha.

That just goes to show how bad things are for AS. R&M has slipped hard, yet it’s still miles ahead of anything else in relevance and success. Ending R&M is equivalent to ending Adult Swim.

Oof, had to go all the way back to season 3 to find a noteworthy success to talk about. They are felony charges, but none of the details are public yet. I’m sure once Jane Doe gets a 7 figure check in her hand, she will remember some facts about the charges a little differently. We will learn what really happened were just a couple minor misdemeanor things that Roiland can shake off with an apology. False imprisonment? The lock on their house is faulty and doesn’t open unless you jiggle it a little which she forgot at the time. Weapon? She was hysteric and the tears clouded her vision.

Those are infrequent occurrences. Any week they don’t have those or a new show they will have a major drought. Facebook IS social media, just a somewhat outdated option. No idea why Toonami never tried to kick off a twitter account. But, even as out of date as their Facebook page is, it still has roughly 725k followers which is nothing to shake a stick at. It’s pretty much their only means of official fan communication.

It’s the end of the day now, and the Facebook page has not posted anything. So it seems their statement about fan art Friday being dead as well is the truth. IMO that’s a bigger loss for them than the on air segment, as it was one of the only things the Facebook page had to interact with people with. Now it will just be the occasional show reveal and an endless loop of that weeks new episode promo.

In sane times, that’s what we would have done. Just wait for the facts and go from there. But this is 2023, we cancel first, ask questions later now. Right now, AS is probably praying to Black Jesus, Gee Whiz, Ted Nugent, Jimmy, whoever will listen, that this case is flimsy and gets tossed out and they never have to acknowledge this. If they can’t have that, they are hoping he at least didn’t Chris Brown the girl, that way they can have him issue a “heartfelt” apology promising to learn and change, and then hope people forget about this. If it’s really bad and he is convicted, that’s gonna be a tough track to navigate. The R&M fanbase is the kind of people who would riot if he wasn’t fired. AS has backed themselves into a corner here. They have set a precedent that mean tweets are grounds for firing. If domestic abuse and false imprisonment arent, that’s going to be terrible PR.

I agree we are going to be seeing some major profit fueled hypocrisy from AS as this unfolds. Their current refusal to make a statement shows they are already sweating and don’t know which side they want to get on yet. If it was anyone else, they wouldn’t have hesitated to put immediate distance between them.

Comparison wise, if the allegations against Roiland end up being true and he goes down for this, that’s a much bigger offense than a couple poor taste social media posts. Squids had the benefit of being in its final season after a solid run, so it wasn’t as difficult of a choice to do a gag tier recast. It will be interesting to see how AS handles the possibility in their bread and butter show. As others have said, Roiland has gotten a little too big to fail, and the future of the entirety of AS rests on his and Hamons shoulders.

Main voice actor though. You can’t just hire Tracey Morgan every time one of your VAs makes a social oopsie that tanks their career. They will probably let him get away with a formal apology and some community work though, because Rick and Morty isn’t a cornerstone of Adult Swim, it’s the main support beam.

At this point, they shouldn’t even bother. They have explicitly, by name, told fans they can’t air S2. Not a vague “CR won’t work with us” type statement where people have to infer, a straight up “we can’t get Demon Slayer S2 because of Sony”. That has no doubt pushed many fans to go watch it on their own. They would be blowing a massive wad of their yearly budget on a show they unintentionally sabotaged.

I think that one has aired a couple times in the past as well.

Part 5 starting it’s run at 2:30a was likely a response to what happened with part 4. Part 4 never actually aired in the deathslot, they shifted the schedule around only a few days after announcing it because so many people complained. Then that effort was rewarded continued ratings issues the rest of its run. If I remember right, this was the same schedule that had initially given Black Clover a well earned promotion in the schedule, then quickly took it away. Then Clover ended up being one of the shows doing better than Jojo despite airing later.

Not really anything comes to mind. But that’s part of my point, they are gonna have to roll the dice on MAKING something popular (among the Toonami crowd at least) unless they want to keep up this cycle of landing one decent show then having 6 months of drought afterwards. And yea, Gundam has had its problems in the past, but Witch from Mercury has lesbians. It’s not your standard boring political drama sausage fest most of them end up being. Like I said, we aren’t looking for a massive boost in viewership. That’s not gonna happen. What we want to see is a consistent turnout each week and no massive dives in viewers. Like what we see with Yashahime most weeks. Our audience clearly does not want to watch that, and they just don’t come back for the stuff after it. If S1 of a show flops, stop getting S2. This method comes with two issues. For starters, they do in fact still take requests. I believe Demarco shared the most recent top requested shows a few months ago. So they haven’t completely shunned fan input. Problem number one is the shows people request are gonna be pretty obvious. It’s always going to be the hot seasonal shows. Which is fine, but if the top 5 requests are all shows Toonami can’t access, what good is that information? The second issue, and this is one we have seen in the past, shows people think belong on Toonami are often shows people won’t actually tune in for, for various reasons. They already watched it (which is why they suggested it), they don’t like dubs, the blocks on too late, the OPs are cut, and on and on. Probably the biggest example of this was Jojo. Easily the blocks top request for many years, only to do downright terrible across 5 seasons. Remember that time they rightfully death slotted part 4 of Jojo for its subpar ratings, only to actually go back and change the schedule because so many people complained on Facebook? And then after all that, Jojo continued to lose to the shows airing after it nearly every week? Too many popular shows have a fanbase who think their favorite show is entitled to top billing, but won’t actually tune in and support it.

Between today and Dec 31st, Bobs will be leaving. I’d assume once it does, Futurama will become a cornerstone of primetime again. I don’t think there will be a smooth way to repurpose the Kothbobfutdad ad though

Well, MHA is about as casual normie tier as anime offers currently and it seems to be doing its job as intended. Problem is, those wide appeal normie shows are the ones everyone wants to fight over, and Toonami hasn’t been in the weight class for this fight in a long time. The way I see it, there are two paths they can take. The first is the current one, where they continue chasing the latest fad in what will usually be a futile attempt at picking it up. This means long stretches of the block covered by reruns and double ups, and the occasional beacon of good fortune when they get something like MHA. Or their second option, air shows that are still good, but never rocketed into the normiesphere. That means more calls to Viz and Sentai, and hopefully with less competition, less dead stretches on the block. Right now they have two open slots rapidly closing in. We have been here long enough we know what’s in their crosshairs, Bleach, Chainsaw Man, and Witch from Mercury. The question is, can they make the shot? Or are Toonami fans going hungry once again? We will find out in a few weeks.

Best news here is it seems the MHA numbers from the 17th were hopefully just an end of the year hiccup and not the norm. Let’s hope Demarco has two winners lined up to take over for MiA and Yashahime, it would be a major help if we could eliminate those huge dives in viewership in the first 90 mins.

We aren’t though. We are passed the point where good shows would substantially IMPROVE viewership, but we aren’t passed the point where good shows can help maintain the 250k or so people that are left. Trying to lure new eyes to Toonami is a fools errand. Maybe they hook a few when they run a promo on AEW or something, but not enough to shift the needle. If you are still tuning into this block in 2023, it’s because you are a bigtime fan and don’t care that the shows it offers can be streamed. You WANT to watch these shows in the inferior way, because you want to watch Toonami. The question to ask isn’t how we get more people watching Toonami. It’s how do we keep the current audience tuning in.

I think this is something everyone is thinking about too hard. I guarantee you, exactly zero people tuned into Toonami last week thinking “boy I can’t wait to see fanart!” It was a nice bonus, but it’s not the kind of thing drawing new eyes to the block. There are only 2 things they can do that will fundamentally improve viewership, packaging and show choice. As we saw last year, packaging was another thing they struggled with and blamed on staff issues. With that in mind, I don’t really know why they thought an extra layer of work with the fanart thing was a good idea when they couldn’t even update bumpers a single time across the span of about 10 months. For the nostalgia based watcher, the packaging is everything. So if that never changes, it defeats the purpose of tuning in. And the second factor is the most obvious one, their programming choices. Thanks to Naruto and One Piece, they only have 4 slots to play with, which doesn’t give them a lot of room for mistakes. It’s pretty simple, if they want better viewer engagement, they need to air things people actually want to watch. MHA has been a pretty healthy boost for the lead slot, so there is a clear science that picking the right shows pumps the numbers up. Nothing else is going to make a difference. They could be giving out handjobs every Saturday and it’s still not going to get people to tune in if the lineup is weak.