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Having a black Nami would have followed the noticeable trend of red heads becoming black characters which has certainly caused ire whether it should or not. It’s kind of like trading one kind of underrepresented group for another though that’s probably a stretch. Still I love me some redhead white girls so I’d at least be a bit bummed. I think Nojiko being a different ethnicity than Nami is fine. Maybe Bellemiere will also be a different ethnicity than both? I have no qualms with that.

Probably something recently aired. It’s just about as misleading but at least it won’t make people think Toonami is still in the Pain arc.

Cross-promotion between networks? What a novel idea. Seems odd it wasn’t the lineup promo and the only program shown was Naruto Shippuden and from the Pain fight I think. Well that’s more than AT&T ever did to promote Toonami so maybe the Discovery people will do more than this?

He recently mentioned in a Twitter AMA that they tried multiple times to get Fairy Tail and each time the parties involved could not agree on the terms and the cost. DeMarco definitely doesn’t watch every show they have considered for Toonami or aired on Toonami but if he hates or strongly dislikes a show then it’s not airing. He’s hardly the only person who doesn’t like Panty & Stocking and thought Darling in the Franxx went to shit. Arguably we dodged some bullets due to his veto power for whatever else it might have robbed us of. Some shows aired primarily because the staff liked them and the deals were good enough but there were surely other shows that were thrown their way that they hadn’t researched AT ALL which they put on the block. Admittedly some of which were picked up due to association with a known franchise. I don’t think they hand picked SAO, Blue Exorcist, Akame ga Kill, Dimension W, Black Clover, Boruto and Fire Force. They hand picked Casshern Sins, Samurai 7, Soul Eater, Black Lagoon, Gurren Lagann, Hellsing Ultimate, Michiko & Hatchin, Pop Team Epic, Assassination Classroom, Gridman and Made in Abyss. I doubt they even knew much about Demon Slayer, Neverland and Dr. Stone when they got them. There’s really no telling what they can actually afford or negotiate for now or what they have been trying to get in the past year. I’m not at all surprised there hasn’t been an announcement yet, it’s probably happening this week. They didn’t even have the decency to run the Lupin promo before the tail end of the block the night MiA ended. A Wednesday or Thursday announcement is par for the course so I’m not battening down the hatches till at least Friday but more than 11 days notice would be nice. It should be at least 14 days / 2 weeks notice.

To give him the benefit of the doubt, maybe they started looking at Fairy Tail after DeMarco admitted he’d never watched it. We’ll never know if they had tried to get it before DeMarco watched any of it or if waiting a while made it harder to get it but sometimes deals just don’t work out. I agree that variety should be a their focus, especially now. A variety of lesser known shows and original series are the only things they can use to attract an audience in the heat of the streaming age.

Didn’t have the patience to watch the last two episodes with us huh?

They could certainly do worse than an extra episode of Primal for two weeks. Having a full marathon of Primal right after finishing weekly airings would be excessive.

Yes

As much as I’d appreciate a rerun of Dandy that’s not after 2am, I don’t think a midnight airing at the top of the block is advisable. IGPX, GITS, FLCL, Bebop and Big O season 2 are better left to the end of the block. I don’t think Jack reruns would do nearly as well as Primal has though maybe season 5 reruns at midnight wouldn’t tank the block. You need look no further than DBZ and DBS to know how good a rerun can do for Toonami, quite good if it appeals to the casual audience. They could certainly do worse than rerunning the latest batch of MHA (which they probably don’t have anymore) but maybe early Bleach is feasible? Naruto Shippuden has plenty of casual appeal still, if cannot lead the block with fresh content then maybe they should try letting Shippuden lead the block. There might even be merit in trying One Piece as the lead if they have nothing coming.

Probably not just any good rerun that hasn’t aired in a while. But there’s really no other options Adult Swim can provide for Toonami after Primal’s good will is spent. Even though it hasn’t been aired regularly in a while, I don’t think Samurai Jack season 5 would fair nearly as well. Though I’d appreciate the balls it would take to rerun Space Dandy at the top of the block, that would probably flop. I do wonder how Harley Quinn or Young Justice would do in that position. My expectation is that midnight will be covered by Primal season 1, Primal season 2 (as an encore at least), Uzumaki and Housing Complex C for the rest of the year.

Primal is holding Rick & Morty better than Shenmue and Black Lotus most likely because it’s freaking good and not actually overplayed compared to most AS originals. It’s been off the air for a year and a half before it recently returned. Had it been airing regularly since 2020 then it probably would not be finding as many eyeballs right now. It really makes me wonder how well season 2 premieres could do on Toonami. The Saturday Rick & Morty episode seems to be just as good of a lead in as the Sunday one right now, so why not? If they try to premiere it at 10 or 10:30 on Sunday then it probably won’t do much better than the reruns are doing on Toonami.

The reruns are starting to do pretty well. Lupin and One Piece are holding fine. Things are far from falling apart.

Looking over several of those top 200 rerun lists shows Primal’s retention with Rick & Morty is far better than Shenmue’s was but Primal probably would not have gotten 0.14 and 0.15 if Rick wasn’t getting 0.17 and 0.18 those weeks. And the week AC lead the block the Rick & Morty on Saturday didn’t even rank in the top 200 meaning it got 0.13 or less. There have been a few weeks when the Saturday Rick beat Sunday or was even the highest rated Rick of the week but it is far from consistent. Some weeks American Dad on Saturday outrates Rick as well.

Sentai won’t even dub Redo of Healer

It's possible they already had the contract for Food Wars Fifth Plate ironed out and the last time Ass Class took a break Food Wars returned but if it happens again it might be nothing more than a coincidence. If YashaHime has some kind of stupid 6 months wait or something then that could explain why it didn't show up already. Beyond those two honestly who the hell knows what they can get from Sentai, Viz, a Japanese company or even the CrunchyMationPlex conglomerate. And if they can't get anything still, then it's Primal season 2 or bust this Summer.

You gotta admit at least that the kids did an incredible job remodeling the old man's school. Oh and it won't be the last you see of this other pink haired girl named Sakura.

I don’t mind the rerun hour at all it’s just extra meh whenever it’s filled with shows that recently finished airing. I realize that can be useful for people who missed the original airing but I sure have no incentive to watch that hour. I would much prefer they cycle library titles that haven’t been aired in a year or longer. If they did that then it could even be two hours but maybe that’s a bit much. FLCL Alternative got a rerun it even stayed early in the block one week to buy time for Mob to join, then it moved toward the back. None of the FLCLs have aired since then though. Jose gave them a version of IGPX that’s proper wide screen but it’s not HD. They haven’t aired that version yet. I forgot about the flub ups with HD GITS, they should give that another full run. I was relieved that Black Lotus wasn’t immediately rerunning but I do think it and Fena should get a second run this year. They supposedly still can air Space Dandy so they definitely should do that. Space Dandy right before comedy resumes with Futurama, it would be perfect. Hell if it was for Space Dandy I would probably not lose my shit if AC was replaced by a rerun but it should not have to come to that. Also regarding anime fans and wrestling, they ran an AEW ad during Toonami last night.

Common beliefs among Toonami critics: 1) Jason DeMarco has "old man" taste and doesn't look at anything new that isn't a popular shounen and he programs Toonami like his own personal MyAnimeList 2) Jason DeMarco, Gill Austin and Kim Manning wait till the last minute to pick shows whenever there's an opening on the horizon 3) When the popular shounen aren't available, Toonami's management would rather pick up nothing than go outside of their comfort zone 4) When Toonami was loading up with long runners they were missing opportunities to get other shows I don't think Jason's statements here will be nearly enough to persuade Toonami critics because many will just say he's lying but he can't be much more transparent about the process than that. They do regularly discuss what shows to get for Toonami and DeMarco does look a new anime that aren't shounen. In the past he's mentioned that they were unable to get KonoSuba, Shield Hero, The Ancient Magus Bride, Fairy Tale and Yuri on Ice among other shows. Who knows what other shows they wanted to get that they couldn't? I'm not sure what's a more distressing thought.. that Toonami wasn't interested in Blood Blockade Battlefront or that they wanted to get it but they couldn't. Why then could all those big shounen air on Toonami? My theory is the companies involved (primarily the Japanese ones) wanted those shows on television most of all but they did have wait things out a bit for My Hero Academia despite that. Gundam and Lupin happened for similar reasons. Aniplex brought Neverland and Demon Slayer to the table because at the time Toonami had proven a successful partner with SAO, Kill la Kill and other series. Perhaps they felt burned from their exclusive deals with Hulu and Netflix and still considered Toonami a good partner in 2019 but now feel otherwise. After Neon Alley didn't pan out, in 2016 and 2018 Viz went all in on Toonami with the exception of Sailor Moon (which Toonami also wanted). I'm not sure why Toonami couldn't get YashaHime sooner but from the sound of it, Toonami would have gotten JoJo's Stone Ocean if Netflix hadn't butted in. So while Toonami was considering Made in Abyss, SSSS.Gridman and Assassination Classroom some time earlier than they got them, other opportunities swayed their hand. We know Adult Swim has always run it's network "on the cheap" so with the exception of already huge titles like Attack on Titan (first season), DBZ Kai, DBS and My Hero Academia (in 2018) they probably got rather good deals on the shows they did air. So a serious problem Toonami could very well be facing now is that Sony has no interest in cutting them a deal for anything and the amount of money that might have sustained Toonami in prior years isn't enough to get as many shows now because the costs have gone up across the board. It might actually be becoming more affordable to make new shows than to borrow shows from licensors. It is evidently more affordable to make a new show than to license and dub an existing one according to DeMarco. I suppose that makes sense, you can set the budget of your own project but when you license a show from a Japanese company they can put whatever price they want to on it. I do not envy their position and I'm not surprise they're "basically giving up" on trying to make Toonami fans "happy" because a sizable portion want the focus to stay on big shounen like Jujutsu Kaisen and Demon Slayer and the fans who have grown tired of the shounen onslaught want to see anything but more shounen. Its difficult to find a balance there especially when the shounen fans are much more vocal on Facebook and Twitter and the shounen haters mostly vent their frustrations on 4chan. They're probably better off not worrying about appeasing either faction. I'm sure they see the merits in having a variety of programming but it doesn't always work out that way. I sure would love to listen in on even one of those conversations they have about potential show pick-ups.

InstaSnapTok or something… yeah that what the kids like.

It’s probably around 25-30% of what it was in 2017. So I guess we could formulate from that.

That’s an interesting idea. What sorts of things could they do?

Primal has done it again! 0.15 18-49 and 325,000 total viewers. Seems like as underwhelming as Toonami is right now, it’s doing more than fine. Nothing below 100k.

I hope they both have a swift recovery with no long term damage. This is why conventions should not be in person for a while longer.

Probably Food Wars or YashaHime but maybe another Sentai series. They are currently dubbing The Executioner and Her Way of Life and Kaiji: Ultimate Survivor, they'd be fresh dubs that would be nice to have on the block. Executioner wouldn't be a dub premiere but maybe Kaiji could be. A safer pick from Sentai would be the shounen adventure series Ushio & Tora if they are even aware of it.

They should totally let Sentai Studios try a terrible approximation of Roiland's voices.