Jman

My new headcanon with this announcement is that Winston is just telling John Wick about One Piece at the Continental after a few drinks.

Should I be surprised DeMarco kept the FLCL sequels around? They’re still considered terrible but I guess he wants to prep the audience for the next chapter in this pointless saga.

Still plugging away at Persona 4 Golden. I can see why all the people who wanted to be with Chie in the Meat Dimension got pissed when Golden and the anime made Marie Yu’s canon love interest.

The John Wick actor is apparently the narrator. Also, Oda does have some power according to Screen Rant. Oda had several scenes redone for quality control.

Bastard!! S2 5-8 Jujutsu Kaisen S2 2

The opening is another banger from Coldrain.

Wonder if the new Hulu Futurama season boosted the ratings for the reruns.

https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/anime-top-places-netflix-global-chart-1235685753/amp/ Baki continues to be one of the most popular things on Netflix with hours comparable to big hits like The Witcher and Lincoln Lawyer.

Bastard!! S2 3-4

Bastard!! S2 1-2 If Toonami is the bespoke, 2000s animation is art block, Netflix is the 90s, anime is sex and violence block.

Yes, this is an adult swim related story as Pee Wee’s Playhouse did air on Adult Swim and arguably reignited enough interest for a Broadway revival and a Netflix movie. RIP.

SNL did do a rather terrible Squid Game skit. They wouldn’t have done one if it was animated. Then again does the world need a TV Funhouse skit where the Senate fights Pickle the Caveman and the Baki narrator does a tangent about why Joe Mainchin’s punch powered by fossil fuel special interests can hurt him? I don’t think it does. That being said, yes I am quite thankful we were spared a Barbenheimer skit during the week Cillian Murphy would likely have hosted.

I try to book a vacation, and I do last week. Then the forecast goes “Surprise! Rainy season.” Now I have to cancel the trip and see these freaks pick away at what I spent. Edit - After untangling the mess that was the booking, I switched travel spots from Nassau to Aruba. It works out.

Baki Hanma S2 8-13. This is the most popular show in the country no one will admit to watching. Presumably because it’s so insane it makes Riverdale look sane.

I feel like DeMarco is so obsessed with trying to recapture Bebop and FLCL’s appeal when most of the shows that were mega hits for Toonami and Adult Swim were more along the line of Inuyasha and Bleach. But I think DeMarco is too focused on that adult appeal, than to make say, a lesser known shounen remake (I don’t think the world wants a Toonami made Tenku Senki Shurato), that the attempts at catching that lightning in a bottle will bear little fruit. At least Kamui is an original story.

All these years later and I still get weirded out by people reading manga or watching anime in public. I’m going out to dinner with some people, and a family by my table has a little girl reading Demon Slayer volumes while waiting for her order. Keep in mind we live in the timeline where Baki is one of the most popular shows on Netflix and more people watched the Miraculous movie than They Cloned Tyrone. But it still feels weird to me from an era where this was hidden from the view of the public.

I adore this film (choreography from the late great Andy Hug makes the fight scenes tower over the Van Damme film) so this is good to see.

Baki Hanma S2 5-7.

You know things are bad when people are comparing this to Amber from Invincible.

One positive about this show airing when all the writers are striking. We have been spared an SNL skit about One Piece.

Anime hits in the US sometime boil down to dumb luck. How else does My Happy Marriage become a Netflix Top 10 performer while Baki ends up one of the most popular shows in the country? That being said DeMarco has made his distaste for isekai well known.

The problem with acquisition is that it’s temporary, and in the increasingly segregated ecosystems of streaming based systems, getting something from AMC (Sentai) or Crunchyroll when others outbid them makes less sense than doing stuff in-house they can own. I don’t think the segregation will be permanent, there’s rumors by next year Paramount will sell, likely to Netflix, but for now, Warner wants stuff they can own, and potentially write off for taxes. And I get it from a business perspective. Toonami has no budget, so why spend it trying to outbid Netflix or Hulu when it would be more straightforward to just make something from the ground up? That’s the theory, in practice we have pointless FLCL sequels no one wants.

First half of the season is out, and it's currently the second most watched show in the US. Apparently even Netflix was surprised by how popular Baki is.