Jman

That’s not nearly as bad as making Jessica Cruz a white twink.

I miss SHAFT already.

That trainwreck did permanent damage to the franchise. I remember hearing about the riots and going “this is mass produced sauce for nuggies. You can’t be bothered to go to an actual Chinese restaurant for duck sauce?”

The announcement for movies of canceled shows included Plantasm, a Venture Brothers movie that’s a direct sequel to S7, and a Metalocalypse movie that’s supposed to finally wrap up the Doomstar story. https://movieweb.com/adult-swim-aqua-teen-hunger-force-metalocalypse-venture-bros-movies/ Aqua Teen was first out the door, but I presume because it was cheap as hell (and Plantasm has numerous jokes about it being cheap). And I’ve been admittedly negative about the block, maybe undeserved because Plantasm was vintage Aqua Teen (maybe with some annoying gross out humor but still hilarious more often than not) but it feels like the sun is setting on the block. It’s a bit reminiscent of the last days of Adult Swim Action before Toonami reset everything (and by DeMarco’s admission, if Toonami hadn’t come along, Williams Street was ready to excise anime from the block completely). We’re all waiting on that new spark.

The internet has lost its mind and at this point all I can think is - You’re still buying AAA games Day 1. You know there’s going to be bugs out the ass and a lot of patches.

You neglected one major factor. That in 2008, The Simpsons Movie hit theaters after decades of rumors and rejected scripts being turned into regular episodes. Rick and Morty will never get a movie now.

Counterpoint - Matt Groening isn't looking at 7 years in prison.

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/daily-briefs/2023-02-08/attack-on-titan-the-final-season-part-3-anime-1st-half-airs-as-1-hour-special-on-march-3/.194668 Part 1 is a 1 hour special due March 3. Presumably Part II is another special or a film. And we know how Toonami is about movies.

Merchandise is only as relevant as the show, even knockoff merch, like all those Rick and Morty cannabis accessories or those shirts with Kid Goku in bling. It's not self-sustaining. If the show's ratings go to shit and the merchandise is found in bargain bins because people think the show is ruined with all the bad press and new voices, do you really see it lasting that long? No merchandise machine is self-sustaining. At best, if the popularity is compromised, you can return to this in a decade and sell it as sort of a vintage thing. (Member Rick and Morty? Damn if that won't make you feel old). It all depends on if people want to give the show a chance with the new voices.

Movie hit HBO Max tonight and it's pure Aqua Teen, although with a longer form plot.

We know if this was a lesser show they would have canceled it without a second thought, because they did cancel a lesser show without a second thought when one of its leads was accused of a crime literally a few months prior. Hence the cancelation of Tuca and Bertie. But with Family Guy gone, none of their other originals really doing anything, Futurama and King of the Hill both set for Hulu revivals, Toonami utterly barren thanks to Crunchyroll cutting off the anime spigot, and those finale movies one Zaslav tax cut away from being canceled, they literally have nothing left that will keep the lights on. If they cancel Rick and Morty, start the countdown timer because things are going to go sour with the block very quickly.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-features/justin-roiland-animation-empire-implosion-rick-and-morty-1235319366/ The rise and fall of the only thing keeping Adult Swim buoyant after Family Guy left. Apparently him and Dan Harmon haven’t spoken for years.

Demon Slayer S2. Finished the rest of it and I’m now awaiting S3.

I'm pretty sure they said that publicly, but privately China was probably "Okay, just get rid of it, but we get to make a statement." Things are tense enough as it is without killing balloons unilaterally. Otherwise they would have intercepted it immediately.

I'll say it again, self-declared PC censor. You're boned if someone like that is on your staff and isn't immediately fired (but she was apparently a nepotism hire). The best criticism I've seen of LA Bebop was that in its quest to update the material for no discernible reason other than to be PC, it completely destroyed the far more relevant and resonant moral of class struggle that sort of forms the background of the settings and the characters (and is lifted from its noir roots). That's kind of the point, that the system screwed over the Bebop crew, in different ways mind you, but screwed them over all the same.

My loathing, my complete and utter loathing of assholes who hate remote work is once again validated. But Texas is a Right to Work state, which is why CR is there in the first place. If you don’t like it, you get to sit and spin.

New poster -

Yeah, that would be nice. Of course with every streamer asking for stuff because of the reliable returns, and all these light novel companies asking for returns, it’s a lot. Too much.

The only immediate thing I can think of is a tie-in to the new Shazam movie, in March.

“Aqua Teen gonna never be canceled…”

Raiding the DC chest! It’s a move I’m surprised Toonami didn’t do more before, and stunned they can do it with Zaslav selling the rights to animation off to Amazon. That said, Fatal Five is really good (and might as well be a DCAU movie) but Injustice is crap. Then again, if they were going to animate an Injustice comic, I was hoping it would be Injustice vs Masters of the Universe.

Netflix and the studios are claiming that this will help alleviate a labor shortage (since the anime industry is notoriously overworked as demand for anime skyrockets) by allowing AI to make backgrounds and a single animator to clean up what is made rather than have six people do the backgrounds. Somewhere Miyazaki is ready to burn things.