Jman

It’s bribery. It’s unethical. It’s brilliant.

I’m of the personal opinion that if Unicorn and Hell’s Paradise were in next to each other, Hell’s Paradise would pull decent numbers and Unicorn would tank. If you put the two of them on Netflix, Hell’s Paradise would hit the top 10 and Unicorn would be buried. But it’s not a perfect world. They don’t have access to any new shows from this or last season. So they air Unicorn, and it being the star of the show, it should do just fine even as an encore. Demon Slayer’s continued Netflix success shows a hunger for action animation Toonami has to fill with Unicorn and Primal, because that’s what they have to work with.

For reference, the last strike was 16 years ago. This video about that writers strike at the dawn of internet video is 16 years old. And yet things seem to have gotten worse for the writers.

AI prompts are the long term goal. But the tech isn’t there yet. Short term I am expecting a lot of imported stuff and reality TV. If someone greenlights an All Rounder Meguru series from Japan to replace Cobra Kai I will not be surprised.

Meanwhile, Demon Slayer Entertainment District Arc is rounding out the top 10 on Netflix, which to me is a surefire sign of a divide between the casual fans of the series and the more hardcore ones who have Crunchyroll. Unicorn is likely Toonami’s big bet to get some positive movement for the block going again. It’s a shame that it has a few things working against it, airing elsewhere before (which to be fair is a potential issue with everything on Toonami), and being a kids show without blood or sexual content. Toonami has been a proud action, not anime block since forever, so I don’t think the issue is country of origin so much as the mistaken assumption about maturity.

A separate English language Kickstarter also met its goal. Since this is a fully Japanese production, the only thing the short film would be asking for is funding.

AI + Scabs = A legion of work done to studio specs. No diversity, no rewrites for sensitivity, but also no creativity whatsoever. Tucker Carlson would be hailing this as genius, if he had an audience now outside of his golf clubs.

I posted about this over in Entertainment, but it does fit the breaking news, doesn’t it? Word on the street is the big tech companies are the holdouts, with Netflix announcing they’re investing $2.5 billion into South Korean film and television as a “fuck you” to the Guild. Whether the Ameri-centric nature of US television tastes forces their hands quickly or these companies pivot to importing and outsourcing is an interesting question.

Primal finally heads out next week as Unicorn Warriors Eternal has its first of several encores (including one on regular Cartoon Network after ACME night!). Let’s see if it takes.

https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/hollywood-writers-studios-stage-last-minute-talks-strike-deadline-looms-2023-05-01/ No deal. Strike is set to begin at midnight PST.

This is pretty standard, and they WERE able to stem the worst of the damage by facilitating the JP Morgan purchase. Now if Jim Cramer said it, grab your shotgun and hide your money underneath your bed

Jim Cramer could say a bomb was in the building and you’d feel perfectly safe.

Let's see... You can still lament shows not airing while thinking their genre is overstuffed. Stampede isn't terrible, and quite the technical achievement, but I think people preferred the original story. Shame the first anime never got to the rest of the manga. One of the few good things about Zaslav being such a penny pincher is that he seems more willing to license internally made stuff to Toonami to fill gaps rather than spend precious money. Jujutsu Kaisen is a Crunchyroll property whose movie outgrossed the Bob's Burgers movie (which never belonged in theaters anyway, but I'm pretty sure had a contract rider forcing it). It's never airing on Toonami. Budget's being crunched on all levels is very unsurprising. They need that budget for shows, when they're available. Oshi no Ko is actually available to them if they so desired (being a Sentai product), and it seems to be connecting with people despite it not being an action show, but probably the most scathing deconstruction of the idol industry since Perfect Blue. Not surprised he likes Moribito. It never would have gotten airtime unless someone on staff personally enjoyed it. Funny thing is the franchise these days is better known for the trio of live-action J-dramas that started in 2016 rather than the 1 season anime (which last I checked, is free to watch on Prime Video). Him liking the original GITS more than SAC is actually a genuine surprise.

Bizarre. Last thing they need is more reasons to abandon linear for streaming.

https://www.indiewire.com/2023/04/unicorn-warriors-eternal-genndy-tartakovsky-animation-1234831292/ Genndy interview with IndieWire discussing Unicorn and other projects.

Hell's Paradise: Jigokuraku 3. Witch from Mercury 16.

Primal takes a break next week for an hour premiere of Unicorn Warriors Eternal. So leading off with an hour of the kids show.

Current moderate, but trying to go down to light. I drink a few times a week but I am very particular about having hard limits.

I wish there were more reviews of Unicorn. A week out the only review is Paste Magazine. The core of the argument is a super basic question - Is the content the main driver for the viewers or the context? I argue that given it’s an adult block (and the general demeanor of anime fans as a whole about how they get with their animation), the content matters. From there, we question if “weirdest cartoon yet” brings viewers or repels them.

I'm sure they would if only to fill up another timeslot, but it sounds like it's not their call.

Sym-Bionic Titan was written off for taxes. That's not exactly a good example of being warmly embraced. The last time there was an unabashed kids show on the block was Beware The Batman, which was another written-off disaster. It was also notable that the ratings tanked for the Batfleck, then rose afterwards for Hellsing Ultimate and Black Lagoon. That alone should point how the Adult Swim/Toonami audience feels about kids shows that don't offer any adult material. I am well, WELL aware that I do not speak for everyone, and I am not so arrogant as to believe that my tastes are inherently better than others. But there is a definite correlation between shows not meeting that "adult" requirement and low ratings. And I feel like a jerk here because it's Genndy, and Genndy is awesome, so I feel bad saying anything bad about him. Also Akame did monster ratings for the block, even if a lot of the more highbrow fans (and DeMarco) merely viewed it as a trade-off for Parasyte.

Well, the block doesn’t get trending shows anymore, or if it does, it gets them too late, and that all circles back to my core argument, Unicorn is a proud kids show and I don’t know how that will work. Getting away from the Hell’s Paradise tangent for a bit, we have a new preview clip - And the show will be ran in quite a few places -

https://deadline.com/feature/hollywood-writers-strike-wga-explained-1235341146/ A strike seems all but guaranteed for Monday. https://www.reuters.com/technology/netflix-invest-25-bln-south-korea-make-tv-shows-movies-2023-04-25/ Meanwhile Netflix has made a tremendous investment in the Korean entertainment industry.