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They could theoretically do other stuff to open up 3am for subbed airings of Rickanime besides burning through the rerun of Entertainment District so here’s hoping that that (and maybe an expiring contract) isn’t the only reason. I’m leaning toward the reasoning that they couldn’t get MHA yet so they are airing Swordsmith Village and will try to circle back to MHA after that.

Believe me I'd prefer variety but it would still be a major improvement to have two big shows join now even if they're both shounen. Unfortunately most seinin aren't any Toonami's radar and there's not many that aren't licensed by CR or Netflix. Zom is a rare breed in that respect.

That's the ideal and MeTV Toons is about to prove its doable but I understand why its not that easy to pull off after years of CN having an identity crisis. They are under the false impression that CN can't be an all ages brand anymore and they are surely being pressured by advertisers to separate the demographics for ad-space even while kids ad-space is becoming less and less valuable to advertisers. By now I would think that kids ad-space is so worthless that making the network all ages and running general all ages advertisements from 6am-7pm would probably work fine. That's the direction the network seems to be going in based on which ads air during the shows. But they could have some blocks that specifically target kids with toy ads and such like network television used to do. The other factor is lack of content being made for the network outside of Adult Swim and they seem to be shifting CN Studios from a house of fresh ideas to a stagnate IP mine like Hanna Barbera under Warner's control. I hate to see it. Nothing with kids in mind is guaranteed for CN as long as Max is a thing. Despite the fact that Max can't seem to make kids content work for them either. So the kids side of the business is just a huge mess right now and doesn't look to be churning out much other than rehashes of prior series. If they have to divorce CN from Adult Swim for the network to have any good time slots for premieres then I say they should replace Boomerang with a 24/7 version of CN which targets kids until late night, let Adult Swim absorb all of CN and run it similar to Latin America Adult Swim where they fill the earlier hours with Checkered Past programming, and Toonami. Then its a nostalgia network and a adult focused network 24/7 like advertisers would probably want anyway.

They wouldn't be making an extra Toonami block if that were the case. And I don't think they're winding down CN, they're just running it incompetently because they don't know what to do with the CN side of the network.

You're being too picky if Demon Slayer and MHA airing back to back premieres in August or September isn't good enough. Shounen is Toonami's bread and butter besides originals. If we're denied MHA and/or Demon Slayer there's still hope for Dr. Stone if that airs in October in Japan but that's not starting till at least November. They could very well have been holding one or both back till August because they know they don't have budget for much else for the rest of the year. Preferably they also have an actual premiere to replace Shippuden with. Maybe something from Sentai, Aniplex or even the Viz backlog that isn't Boruto. Hell, maybe they finally can show Bleach: TYBW because it's been long enough. That won't solve the shounen-overload problem though. Now that DeMarco is actually aware of Urusei Yatsura's dub, maybe Toonami will finally air that but if they blew all their budget on MHA, Demon Slayer and are holding back for Dr. Stone then they might not be able to acquire anything else and the network's decision to build a nostalgia block over bolstering the main block looks that much more stupid.

They had better get something in August because if they don't then they're down to One Piece and reruns baring a true replacement for Shippuden. That's it. Optimistically we get some premires in the 12AM hour in August and we could have this in September once Shippuden leaves 12:00 AM - Rickanime 12:30 AM - MHA 1:00 AM - Demon Slayer 1:30 AM - One Piece 2:00 AM - One Piece / Reruns 2:30 AM - Reruns OR we could have this in September until who knows when 12:00 AM - Rickanime 12:30 AM - One Piece 1:00 AM - Toonami Rewind Rewind Possibly a combination of the two 12:00 AM - Rickanime 12:30 AM - MHA or Demon Slayer 1:00 AM - One Piece 1:30 AM - One Piece 2:00 AM - Toonami Rewind Rewind

I'd say show quality wise this is MARGINALLY better than September of 2023 (due to no FLCL Grunge) but it is less block premieres than even that because they're in no hurry to finish Shippuden sooner and won't double it up 1. Yeah it's either Swordsmith time in August or they're just looking to drop 3am after the Superman marathon or... they're pushing it out so they can slap Sailor Moon and/or Naruto on the back sooner than later 2. I would be very surprised if Rick & Morty the Anime isn't starting in August but I really hope we get either Demon Slayer or MHA block premieres that month as well 3. It's really starting to look like CR has completely blocked MHA and Toonami wasn't expecting that to happen, either that or they are pushing buffer out even further because what's Toonami gonna do refuse to air it if they don't get to do so in a timely fashion? HAH 4. Shippuden would have ended on August 20th now it will end on August 27th because of the Superman marathon and we'll probably be spared a Labor Day weekend marathon. It would be a nice send-off if they ran the last 3-4 episodes in a single night in August. 5. That COULD change the first weekend of August when Toonami Rewind pulls ahead of Toonami's broadcast of DBZ Kai I expect some notable shakeups in August on both blocks. A 4th show will join Toonami Rewind while Rickanime and either Demon Slayer or MHA premiere on Saturdays and some changes to the back end could include reruns of Sailor Moon and OG Naruto or maybe a second run of Zom 100 while it's still under contract. Given it's gone from the AS website it seems they can't rerun Lycoris Recoil and that's a bit of a shame. May was a snore, July is a snore, all that promise early in the year sure didn't last and we can only guess why but I'm guessing they once again got caught with their pants down because getting MHA didn't go as easily as they expected and they haven't looked into other shows due to lack of interest or lack of money. And they just had to blow a nice chunk of money on a nostalgia block, uncut Sailor Moon and a pair of glorified reruns rather than grab anything from Sentai for the Saturday block. Did the door close with Aniplex for non-sequels right after Lycoris? Can they not get Mashle or do they just not know about that low-hanging Shonen Jump fruit? IMO a few weeks of double One Piece instead of another premiere isn't a big deal but they keep doing that sort of thing because they have nothing else and it's not something the majority of their dwindling audience cares to sacrifice their Saturday nights for. Constant stall tactics just makes them look even less relevant. DeMarco keeps talking about how the network and the company are pleased with Toonami's performance but if they won't back that talk up with enough money to maintain a steady stream of premieres that aren't One Piece, Naruto or one of their occasional originals then that talk is awfully cheap. We'll never know what's really going on here but it's hard to believe there's absolutely nothing they can't afford to throw in to avoid these lulls in activity.

So…. Basically the Hawkeye show And for real that’s exactly what I thought would work to keep the gear in the story

James Gunn didn’t put this one down like Jman fully expected him to. I must admit I’m surprised as well because Toonami getting the premieres felt like WBD was wiping its hands off it after this season. I’m pleasantly surprised that isn’t the case and I hope that means WBD will premiere more action originals that aren’t anime on Toonami.

It's 2D! Now I'm officially hyped.

It's PG so I don't think it's strictly for kids but it might not appeal to adults.

You are so right. These are different tapes, based on the HD upscale Viz made for Blu-ray. The 2012 "uncut" tapes were weird because they still used the edited dub's opening and ending credit roll rather than the original Japanese openings and endings. I can't say I paid that much attention to it but I believe the dialogue was the same as what was on the uncensored DVDs, which mainly meant there were some swear words. I'm guessing back in 2012 Toonami told Viz the show couldn't run with the full OP and ED and rather than shorten those they just slapped the TV dub opening and ending credits in. Now they actually put in the effort to shorten the ED "Wind" like they did for the Sailor Moon ending (and also for the OP and ED of Zom 100). Hearing "Wind" and "Rocks" on US television for the first time is really nice and it's funny to me that it makes me nostalgic for the days when I was watching fan subbed Naruto before the show even aired on Toonami. But besides having a version of the Japanese OP and ED they even have the episode previews. All of that is a nice upgrade from the 2012 tapes but the best upgrade by far is the fact that they are properly pillar boxed for 16:9 screens like Kai, HD Outlaw Star, HD Bebop and HD Sailor Moon and aren't stretching the 4:3 video like the 2012 tapes did. The upscale isn't fantastic but it's an early digital paint show made for SD televisions and there's only so much they can do with that to upscale it for modern screens.

It's the best time ever to be a One Piece fan.

Either that or they farm it out to Sentai Studios because they dislike unions THAT much. Real shame if it isn't SAG-AFTRA though, then we couldn't get Troy Baker as The Joker or John Cena reprising Peace Maker. Though, Roger Craig Smith did a very passable Cena when he took over Cena's role as Baron Draxxum in Rise of the TMNT season 2. That could work. But I don't think we're seeing the dub on day 1. The market is more open to streaming things subtitled now.

What a waste and it’s all but guaranteed it won’t get renewed beyond whatever initial order it had. WBD really doesn’t know what to do with CN.

Full OP, short ED and the PV. Wild times.

Well you know I can't leave well enough alone so I took a swing at revising the launch schedule. The only show I added which I know they have is Silverhawks. Beyond that I mostly gave some shows better time slots, cut back on Police Academy and Captain Planet (they only need 3 hours of E/I so they don't need to run that every weekday morning). I also threw together a big Saturday morning cartoon block featuring shows that were mainstays of Saturday morning blocks in the 80s and 90s, followed by a sort of racer block just cuz. If a show only gets one or two weekends slots I'll be darned if it is needlessly early in the morning or late at night. Ed Grimley, Freakazoid, Duck Dodgers, 2 Stupid Dogs and even Mister T deserve better than that. Though having more closely observed their schedule I get why they repeat several shows from weekdays on the weekend, it's so they're shown at different hours than they are on weekdays. Even though they could run more short shows on the weekend I respect the decision to give some weekday late morning shows airings in afternoon and evening, so I didn't just get rid of all of that. I even expanded on some of it while still giving priority to some shows that are only on the weekend hours. I'm fine with the Supermarination block that runs from 3am-6am on weeknights. I don't necessarily want to throw other shows on that late. Though Thunderbirds is an hour and it only has 32 episodes so maybe it shouldn't be on 5 days a week. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1C8tgDC_Q6Aib2rzP4jQDatQpWpBoCcUGnTPrA0uFh0w/edit?usp=drive_link

Regular Show has been the 4pm hour show daily for months now. It went viral early in the year and CN has been riding that wave by having it at 6am right after Adult Swim and the 4pm hour right before Adult Swim. What they should be doing Friday is airing Steven Universe or Adventure Time (both are currently on Sunday before Regular Show) but it's not like Regular Show is devoid of action or anime influence/references.

They are very likely going for the AS crowd with the late night choices. Honestly surprised that Beetlejuice is in the morning instead of late nights. I do wish Freakazoid and 2 Stupid Dogs weren’t limited to midnight on Saturday but that’s exactly the time millennials who like those shows would more easily catch them (I’d still prefer 10 or 11 though). Mid-day and primetime on weekdays is courting boomers first and foremost. It’s an interesting choice to have some millennial fare in the mornings. They are showing some remarkable restraint by only airing Jonny Quest and Top Cat on the weekends. Boomerang and CN didn’t shy away from airing both daily despite their low episode counts. (39 and 30 respectively). There’s really only one show I think they’re giving too many time slots and that’s Police Academy. Once a day is appropriate for 65 episodes but twice a day is a bit much when Beetlejuice and TRGB have quite a few more episodes. Sure it’s only late night and early morning besides Saturday afternoon, but STILL. They must like that show a lot. I’d swap one airing for Silverhawks immediately. How did they miss the opportunity to pair up Silverhawks with Thunderbirds on overnights?

Lupin Zero isn’t happening as long as there’s no dub announced. I don’t believe one has. Scavengers could happen but it’s less likely to be this year with it joining Netflix. Maybe IGPX replaces Shippuden if they have nothing else. Now that DeMarco is actually aware of Urusei Yatsura, that is a possibility. I think when DBZ Kai catches up to Saturday they will add a 4th show to Rewind. Or if Rewind doesn’t pan out they’ll move Sailor Moon and Naruto to Saturday.

Here’s the complete schedule and it’s got even more surprises. The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley Wait Till Your Father Gets Home ALF cartoons Histeria!! They even included the Hanna Barbera Bible cartoons on Sunday mornings. Maybe they’ll eventually get Superbook / Magic House. I’m pleasantly surprised some 80s and 90s shows air in the mornings and mid-day and aren’t regulated entirely to late nights. They play Police Academy a lot, even though it only has one mid-day slot. Duck Dodgers has 39 episodes so I wish it had more than one airing a week but I guess it’s fine for Freakazoid and 2 Stupid Dogs with 26 episodes each to be limited to uh… Toonami hours. Overall it’s a very promising start.

Either they get Chopper right or they die trying. It's a tough nut to crack but I have confidence they know what they're doing.

I certainly have said they should be playing Kai at 6pm but this is well beyond what I thought was feasible. How the heck can they get Sailor Moon and Naruto right now when they had to rely on scraps when they had to rely on scraps when they first returned in 2012 (yes I realize Naruto didn’t take more than about 6 months but still). Uncut Sailor Moon at 5pm? Uncut Naruto at 6:30? What a world we live in! I really wish they had included One Piece or was able to get a DCAU show, a Gundam series or Yu Yu Hakusho. Having a late 90s or early 2000s show between Kai and Naruto would be atheistically pleasing…but DBZ, Sailor Moon and Naruto are the most important shows in the history of the block and are the most guaranteed to tickle nostalgia for millennials. Probably only Batman, InuYasha, YYH, Outlaw Star or Gundam Wing would come close. InuYasha is likely the most feasible because it looks like Viz is doing the heavy lifting here besides the Toei deal for Kai. Maybe they could get Bleach. I suspect they bought 46 eps of Sailor Moon (season 1) and 52 episodes of Naruto (again) to test the waters. If it’s a success then they have a year worth of episodes. If it’s a flop then they can move both to Saturday at 2am until the contracts expire. But if it’s a big success then they might boot Checkered Past out of 5-7pm on the other weekday nights. At which point they really ought to get a 4th show and One Piece is perfect if WBD and Sony won’t play. The way DeMarco is taking suggestions makes me think they’re considering airing older anime that never aired on the network prior. The perfect excuse to go after old stuff he can’t stop thinking about. But what of Saturday? I don’t expect Kai will leave anytime soon and they’re up to 3 reruns as it is. When Shippuden ends we might be looking at a shorter Saturday block as a trade off for Rewind. Honestly that’s fine by me but I would like Saturday Toonami to stay 3 hours so it doesn’t look anemic. The question is, will they have any money for acquisitions on the main block after buying a year worth of OG Naruto and Sailor Moon? I certainly hope so. But they could do worse than simply re-airing the same episodes of both from Rewind on Saturday after 2am.

You can just change a few things about this and it's a pitch video for MeTV Toons. I'm looking forward to "CN 1992 but better"

Just from the FUNimation Channel they might have aired FairyTail, Kenichi, Baccano, Darker than Black, Hunter x Hunter 1999 (yeah they got some Viz dub premieres for some reason) and probably Soul Eater much sooner than they did. They also had Monster on there but it wasn't exclusive to the channel because it was also on SyFy. Speaking of SyFy, they nabbed Gurren Lagann and Gundam 00 which both seemed like shoe-ins for Adult Swim or even Toonami in 2008 and given they got Monster it's possible SyFy could have gotten any of the above that were exclusive to the FUNimation Channel but Darker than Black would have fit the best. ThunderCats is currently on Hulu and I suspect that's why it's neither on WB Cartoon Rewind (a FAST channel) or among the known shows for this channel but maybe it will show up eventually. There's not a lick of DC on this channel besides maybe the Superman theatrical shorts but I'm sure the people running the network are interested in adding Batman: TAS if not also Superman, Batman Beyond and Justice League. Pirates of Dark Water is on WB Cartoon Rewind so I think that will show up along with SWAT Kats but SWAT Kats hasn't been shown on Rewind yet (nor have Centurions and Mighty Orbots which WBD also own). Rewind also runs the Hanna Barbera Pac-Man cartoon and that's not among the known shows. Space Ghost and Birdman are probably off the table, along with Sealab 2020 if anyone even cares. Herculoids and Thundarr the Barbarian will potentially cycle in. Honestly I rather like that this channel is choosing to air some more obscure and largely forgotten shows but it is kind of strange that Jonny Quest, The Real Ghostbusters and Speed Racer are the only really well known action cartoons but a lot of the others are now owned by Disney. I certainly hope they strike up a deal with Paramount to air TMNT and reasonably they could play the 1987 show and the 2003 one. Grabbing Exo-Squad from Universal would be rad! And the network guy seemed pretty excited to show a bunch of cartoons that spun off from movies. I think that will late night block more so for the millenials. Beetlejuice, The Mask, Police Academy and The Real Ghostbusters are known but beyond that we could see Hanna Barbera's Bill & Ted and Dumb and Dumber as well as the Ace Ventura Pet Detective cartoon (did you know Ace was voiced by Michael Dangerfield in that, yeah the 2nd voice of Sesshomaru and Gintoki of Gintama played Jim Carrey, I find that amusing). They could get the old Rambo cartoon or perhaps Men in Black, Godzilla, Kong, Jumanji, The Mummy, Back to the Future, Roughnecks: Starship Troopers there were so many movie spin-off cartoons. My top pick would be Men in Black. Give me a block with Exo-Squad, Men in Black, Ghostbuster Extreme and Roughnecks. And given they're showing the Mr. T series, they'll probably run several other celebrity cartoons. The Ed Grimmley Show (based on Martin Short's SNL character) would fit right in. Anything that was TV-MA is out, especially Made in Abyss, Food Wars, KILL la KILL, Hellsing Ultimate, Black Lagoon (uncensored anyway) but most of what they air could pass for TV-14-VLSD or less on broadcast television. Crunchyroll's FAST channel doesn't really push TV-MA much if ever and I suspect that's by design. HiDive's FAST channel isn't showing Domestic Girlfriend or Love Flops but they have cycled in Food Wars. For other anime FAST channels I think the most hardcore thing's they've shown are episodes of Hunter x Hunter 2011 and JoJo. Sony could absolutely fill a broadcast channel with anime if they wanted to but a streaming FAST channel just makes more sense for their business. You can stream the old DBZ dub and the dub of Dragon Ball so I don't think it's absolutely out of the question the old FUNimation dubs could be licensed to MeTV Toons but in both cases they'd have to show the Y7 cuts or do a new cut which just removes the nudity. The latter is too much work for anyone to want to deal with so Y7 it is.