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Watched the last two episodes and cried at the usual times I did in the Arlong Park arc. Emily nailed Nami’s moments of desperation. Seeing the “let’s go” scene recreated was so great. Loved the declaration of dreams scene too. I’m mixed on various things and arguably Garp had too much focus at the cost of time to flesh out Usopp, Sanji and to a lesser extent Zoro but I thoroughly enjoyed the ride and I couldn’t have believed I’d be this satisfied with what we got. They did East Blue justice and planted some seeds for future arcs and characters. The soundtrack is also really great. I can’t stop listening to the ending song of episode 8.

Baratie made for some major changes to the story progression but the only things that irked me were Sanji’s send off lacking the emotional punch of the anime scene and Luffy acting considerate and acknowledging he made a mistake. Giving Mihawk more of a reason to show up was a good change.

I genuinely think FUNimation wanted Toonami to drive up interest in Fire Force. CR won’t do that now but Viz might. ZOM 100 is Viz’s big show this year besides Bleach and clearly everyone wanted it. Maybe Toonami doesn’t but it’s about as likely that they do and they’ll wait till they don’t have to pay for the early window price of the streamers or at least wait till the dub is further into production. The show had to take weeks off in Japan already. And it’s the hottest thing this season not in Crunchyroll jail so with the limited new options, they’re probably aware of it.

If 3 streaming services can get ZOM 100 at the same time and Toonami couldn’t then Toonami clearly doesn’t have the money. I think I just realized why YashaHime took so long. Hulu, FUNi and Crunchy were all willing to pay X amount of money for the simuldub. If Viz were to sell it to Toonami at the same time for less money just because they like Toonami it would not go over well with those streamers or the production committee. So Toonami had to wait for a certain window of time to end before Viz would sell them the sloppy fourths. The same might happen with ZOM 100. Hulu and Netflix’s increased interest in One Piece might lead to Toei taking the show out of Toonami’s price range again. But I see Toei wanting to keep the anime on TV even if those companies will pay more for the episodes. Hardly any other anime company still cares about linear TV exposure enough to cut Toonami a sweet deal. And the perceived value of a show surely affects how much Adult Swim / WBD is willing to pay for it. For sequels or proven commodities they’ll open their purse wider but there are limits as seen with Demon Slayer and Mob Psycho 100. We don’t know if TMS helped keep costs reasonable with Dr. Stone: New World or if Toonami was simply able to pay whatever amount CR wanted for it. And with Food Wars my best guess is CR knew that season was garbage and was willing to let Toonami have it for whatever both sides decided was reasonable. We have generally assumed the crew has no company oversight for how they use their acquisition budget but what if that isn’t the case? I get the feeling DeMarco, Austin and Manning had to negotiate with their bosses so they could go after Made in Abyss and the 2nd season looming helped. Maybe DeMarco tried to get Akudama Drive but the company vetoed the spending or Sony was asking more than he could reasonably spend on an unproven series that would last 3 months and maybe rerun once.

Fridays look to be one show blocks for the time being. Eds next week and Billy and Mandy the week after. Hopefully the Mon-Thur lineup does better than the 2 hour marathons on Fridays so they don’t make every day a marathon of one show.

MHA reruns will finish in November.

I’m inclined to agree. Luffy is more nuanced and not let’s be honest… ADHD with more than a little Aspergers. Overall he’s better for it but he’s a tad too observant and conscientious for my liking. They made Buggy way more sadistic and leaned way into the circus aspect. I finished ep 4 now and Usopp is a delight. Zoro’s snide remarks keep cracking me up. They changed the settings of many encounters arguably for the better. Garp and Koby are a lot more involved with the story so far rather than off in some other corner of the ocean doing nothing significant. I would not be surprised if Oda took this as an opportunity to tweak things with the betterment of hindsight.

Watched the first episode and honestly it slapped. Lots of tweaks but no bad changes IMO. I look forward to watching more.

Uneventful Programming quality besides Food Wars, Injustice and the filleryomi wasn’t dreadful but there were only brief moments of interest, a lot of stalling and not much to show for all that stalling. If they were not allowed to encore Unicorn and Superman the quality percentage would have been even worse and I can’t hardly imagine how they would have stayed 3 hours without them. Dr. Stone and Superman were the only shows I genuinely looked forward to watching week to week since MHA finished its season. 2020 wasn’t much better but it had some bright spots like JoJo, Paranoia Agent and Assassination Classroom. Less fresh content but only because 2023 had Unicorn and Supes encores. For acquisitions it was marginally better because Food Wars drags 2023 way down on that front. Honestly 2023 hasn’t been much less boring to me than 2021 or 2022 either and it’s not quite over yet. If they added a good acquisition before the end of the year and air Uzumaki then 2023 will be about the same as the past 3 years in my eyes.

Yeah it’s pretty stupid to fight Toonami for months instead of letting Toonami air it and then stream it the next day rather than disappoint their subscribers for months just to TRY to stream it before Toonami shows it.

I think we’ll finally get the answer to that when they lose Bob’s Burgers.

It’s sort of an unprecedented thing because of how The Final Season became two seasons and two hour specials. I can’t say for sure how the payment structure even went. Though it’s unlikely they paid only once even if it’s all considered one season. They probably paid for Part 1 in 2021 or late 2020 and for Part 2 in 2022. There might have been a point where Part 2 was intended to finish the series and MAPPA could not pull it off and had to decide to do a short season, a theatrical movie, a direct to video or ultimately two long episodes that aired on TV. The way things turned out might have entitled Toonami to those episodes without additional payment but more likely it just gave them first right to refusal and CR could price it as high as they like unless Kodansha had any say in the matter. Naturally Toonami doesn’t want to pay more unless it’s the only way to get the episodes and if CR can’t have the premiere unless Toonami walks away then they’ll try to coerce them to give up by charging a lot. But they’d be happy enough to take the silver medal of whatever extra cash they can squeeze out of Toonami if they can’t force Toonami to walk like they did with Demon Slayer.

MHA weekday morning reruns did start from the start of season 1. IMO it was wasted in that early morning slot and they should have tried that at 8pm but oh well. If One Piece and Shippuden can only be aired from whatever the oldest episode they still have is, then they aren't likely to catch on. Even if One Piece were to start back at 517 like it did on Toonami, it has an uphill battle to appeal to new viewers. Though it does help that Hulu has everything up to the time skip now and nothing beyond that. If there was ever a time to attempt rerunning One Piece from the start of the time skip then it would be now. If the Netflix show manages to appeal to the broader audience then going back to episode 1 for a weekday strip of One Piece could actually make sense for the first time in over a decade. Personally I'd be annoyed that the first 206 episodes are cropped from 4:3 but Toei can offer that cropped HD version of those episodes to CN/Adult Swim so there's no black bars or stretching. But realistically the network isn't going to do that. One Piece does well enough for 1 to 2 slots of Toonami and they won't spend money on a bunch of glorified reruns for something that isn't a sure bet like KOTH. You almost wonder if they have some buyers remorse for Futurama given how they buried it. If anything an early morning Cowboy Bebop is an approachable option but that's not gonna suit a time slot between 5pm and 8pm. So I know I'm repeating myself here but they should really move Checkered Past to 7-9pm so they don't have to run quite as many KOTH and American Dad episodes and actually put some effort into making 5-7pm attractive to younger viewers rather than giving up on them entirely. But if that's not going to happen then I say expand Checkered Past another hour and include Johnny Bravo and Cow & Chicken.

Did it have to? No. Did it? Probably. Never under estimate contract negotiations.

I can understand why CR would at least try get the dub premiere for themselves even if that is petty and unnecessary. But I suspect the negotiations were mainly concerning whether or not the two special episodes were considered part of the season Toonami already paid for or if CR could demand an additional hefty fee.

It wasn’t a public video and those who came across it didn’t make it public till after Toonami announced it via Facebook. Toonami had several openings to air this so I don’t believe for a second that they were intentionally holding it off for months. Far more likely they had difficulty negotiating with Crunchyroll because lawyers could argue back and forth about whether or not Toonami’s deal for the series included these special episodes.

It’s worth trying at least. After all 5-7pm 5 days a week is where Toonami found it’s most success with all audiences. 8pm didn’t work out because it’s going up against network prime time. 9-11 on Saturday struggled against sports. Though IMO 6pm or 7pm is a safer hour for Toonami because many adults get off work at 5pm. At this point AS could definitely spare midnight or 1am on other nights to encore some action shows but comedy is their bread and butter. As long as they can air King of the Hill they probably won’t try anime reruns on weeknights again.

I’d really rather CN get 5-7pm back and AS start at 7pm with Checkered Past. Playing 2 hours of KOTH before a block of Cartoon Cartoons would feel very strange. However, Looney Tunes, Scooby-Doo and The Flintstones 5-7pm would just be classic Cartoon Network on Adult Swim. Regular Show and Adventure Time aren’t bad options either. Of course Toonami is another option but even MHA has many TV-14 episodes so that might be a bit of a problem despite ACME Night running TV-14 movies as early as 5pm going forward. One Piece has been entirely TV-PG though and Shippuden rarely pushes TV-14 due to so much filler.

That promo was uploaded months ago on YouTube and apparently whenever it was going to happen they were planning to air it at Midnight.

Practical?!?! Wow that’s fantastic

Season 1 of Attack on Titan was certainly popular but Toonami getting the dub premiere took it to the next level. Roughly the same is true for OPM season 1 but in both cases it was only season 1. I’d say Toonami also drew more casual interest to SAO and Toonami viewers and animation otaku are the only people who give Space Dandy its flowers.

It won’t be that hard for Grunge to do similar numbers to the other originals this year. Things are that abysmal. The thing that frustrates me the most is even in their current financial struggle, WBD could easily afford whatever CR is asking for but they simply won’t bother. And if giving Toonami more money for acquisitions is a bridge too far then they could at least share more Max shows and much more of the DC library with Toonami so the block has something besides One Piece and Naruto to air next to these risky originals. They demand Toonami be promoted but give them nothing much worth promoting. It makes no sense. It feels like last year they saved up most of their budget to keep MHA though YashaHime might have been costly and Titan probably was as well. Is Dr. Stone the only big ticket for this year along with two Titan specials? They would have been in dire straits if WBD didn’t let them encore Unicorn and Supes. I’m still willing to believe they have one more acquisition coming before next year but I can’t say I expect more than that. Viz is sharing ZOM 100 with 3 services unlike Bleach. If Toonami doesn’t also get in on that action then it’s safe to say Toonami either lacks the budget, the interest or both for much of anything besides sequels and spin-offs of established brands. If they do get ZOM 100 (or something else) then maybe there’s a glimmer of hope we’ll see new acquisitions that aren’t sequels or spin-offs. But man I really wonder why they didn’t get Urusei Yatsura from Sentai. It’s the kind of classic anime Toonami loves to introduce to their current audience. If that was too expensive for an unproven commodity but Food Wars 5th Plate wasn’t too expensive for a proven one then I don’t even know what to think of the how the network and WBD assess these things.

Bleach did gang busters for Adult Swim Action and much of the Toonami viewership grew up on Bleach. It wouldn’t give Toonami more variety and wouldn’t get the block noticed much more than MHA does if it streamed first but it would probably do very well and having the dub premieres would have definitely drawn more attention back to Toonami. Probably more than Titan does because arguably more people watch Titan subbed than Bleach subbed.

I want to see Cow & Chicken, I Am Weasel and Johnny Bravo. They should also have short series once a week like Evil Con Carne, Whatever Happened to Robot Jones? and Time Squad. I want an action block on Saturday with SWAT Kats, Pirates of Dark Water, The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest and Samurai Jack. They’re putting thought into curating the programming but I wonder how long they’ll keep that up and if they’ll quickly run out of “good enough” episodes and just start repeating the same ones. Dexter has 78 half hours, Edds has 69 (nice), Billy & Mandy has 84 and Courage has just 52. But I suppose even if they only air about 50 half hours of each show, that will fill 10 weeks before repeating. They could probably get through two or three cycles before dedicated viewers would get bored of these cream of the crop series. It would however be more of a “must see” thing if they rotated in other shows after one or two cycles. I just have a hard time believing they will continue to put that much effort into the block unless it dramatically improves the viewership and ad revenue. And even if it does that, they’ll be hesitant to swap out any shows for a good long while unless one or more of them does significantly worse than the others. Remember for AS something can last for years if it does well enough or can be immediately pulled if it doesn’t meet expectations.

Teen Titans Go has actually been airing a reasonable amount considering how many episodes it has but they have gone crazy with Gumball. Gumball is currently airing 5.5 hours out of 13 and considering CartoonIto is on for 1.5, Gumball is using up nearly half of CN’s day. It’s a great show but that’s beyond excessive. That said, I think CN’s schedule has improved dramatically from how it was in recent years when they did endlessly spam both TTG and Gumball. After Checkered Past starts TTG will be down to 1 hour a day instead of 2 and Gumball will be 4.5 hours, Clarence gains a half hour and the only show entirely removed is the 6:30 airing of Adventure Time which is a bit unfortunate. I’m sure pasting from a text pad will make this nearly unseeable but here’s a comparison Now 06:00 The Amazing 06:30 World of 07:00 Gumball 07:30 Cocomelon 07:45 Batwheels 08:00 Cocomelon 08:15 Thomas & Friends: All Engines Go 08:30 Cocomelon 08:45 Bugs Bunny Builders 09:00 The Looney 09:30 Tunes Show 10:00 Craig of 10:30 the Creek 11:00 The Amazing 11:30 World of Gumball 12:00 Summer Camp Island 12:30 Clarence 01:00 Teen 01:30 Titans Go! 02:00 The 02:30 Amazing 03:00 World 03:30 of 04:00 Gum 04:30 ball 05:00 Craig of the Creek 05:30 Teen Titans 06:00 Keep Going! 06:30 Adventure Time Soon 06:00 The Amazing 06:30 World of 07:00 Gumball 07:30 Cocomelon 07:45 Batwheels 08:00 Cocomelon 08:15 Thomas & Friends: All Engines Go 08:30 Cocomelon 08:45 Bugs Bunny Builders 09:00 The Looney 09:30 Tunes Show 10:00 Craig of 10:30 the Creek 11:00 The Amazing 11:30 World of Gumball 12:00 Summer Camp Island 12:30 Clarence 01:00 More Clarence 01:30 Craig of the Creek 02:00 Teen 02:30 Titans Go! 03:00 The Amazing 03:30 World of 04:00 Gum 04:30 ball 05:00 Dexter’s Laboratory 05:30 Ed, Edd ‘n Eddy 06:00 Billy and Mandy 06:30 Courage