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I feel like this was a excellent prologue (as compared to Unicorn which was pretty lousy prologue) and I dearly hope it somehow did well enough in some way so we get another season.

I actually wasn't going to say Sailor Moon is proven because 5pm performance on a Friday evening means little compared to 12:30am performance on Toonami. We don't actually know how Sailor Moon did with any demographic of note beyond social media reception which was pretty divided between people who loved having it back on TV and the people who bemoaned it wasn't nostalgic enough. You actually think it's better to get the scraps of Viz's catalog over Sailor Moon R? Several of those shows are single seasons with no continuation. Accel World might be something or maybe Mr. Osomatsu if we're going Pop Team Epic levels of out of the box but Sailor Moon R is still reasonably a better choice than either of those or anything else Viz can offer Toonami that hasn't already aired on the network. I will continue to shake my fist that they didn't air Tiger & Bunny before Netflix got season 2. Not sure what the limits are with Aniplex but I don't think they're going to be able to get more than 2 at a time, in which case I roll my eyes even more at bringing back Blue Exorcist over anything that hadn't already aired on the network. At least Sailor Moon is an entirely different dub all the other HD remasters Toonami has picked up besides Kai were the same old dubs (in all cases for the better but I digress). I suppose I'm willing to believe your "can't promote it till the check clears" theory with Assassination Classroom given the late promotion. In which case they didn't plan as well this time but I'm not willing to write off January entirely just yet. As Bryan mentioned, MHA season 7's dub is already partially on Hulu and the 2nd half joins in January. Seems like they might be the reason why Toonami hasn't been able to get it yet, just like back in 2017. Also seems like CR might have outbid to exclusively stream Daima's dub. If it doesn't show up on Hulu or Netflix soon then that's pretty solid evidence CR managed to pull that off. Given CR was in charge of dubbing it, maybe they had some weird deal where CR offered dubbing services as part of their bid to sway things in their favor? Since Toei controls the license they normally would be paying for the dub like they do with One Piece and did with Dragon Ball Super but if CR could have offered them a big discount or outright battered dub services to secure exclusivity for the dub on top of paying whatever Toei asked.

No I'm pretty sure they had already secured Assassination Classroom's second half with the tail end of the 2021 budget. and held it for January so they'd have something. But they moved like lightning to get Made in Abyss and reacquire One Piece in the weeks that followed. Even if the budget refreshes on January 1st, they (Kim Manning, Gill, Jason or whoever) have to be "on the clock" to make a deal and so does the other party so deals aren't getting made with the new year budget until after work has resumed. I don't believe it is exactly on the 1st of the year but it is within the first week. So I don't think we're seeing the 2025 budget in action yet but I wouldn't be at all surprised if it was less than they had in 2024. Last year they had already secured more Demon Slayer and Lycoris Recoil before the new year and this year it seems the last of their budget went to grabbing Mashle and re-upping Blue Exorcist which would carry them into 2025. There's no doubt they were eyeing Daima and they probably hoped that was a big enough deal for the network to give them extra budget but it's not 2016 anymore. I could get into the technicalities of how Viz's dub of Sailor Moon R is new by many metrics and offers a very different experience than what aired over 25 years ago but the more worthwhile argument is it's something Toonami can feasibly get and those options are dwindling. We can speculate they're not talking to Sentai but we have no freak'n idea if that is the case or not. For all we know, Made in Abyss was all that could squeak by before AMC changed it's tune in a similar vein to Crunchyroll. Maybe it's not the best idea to outright abandon the option when they are down to 2 premieres?

Yep this sucks. Down to 2 premieres and they have an hour of reruns between them. Daima dreams are dead. They might get it a few weeks later but that’s yet another show they can only get after most people stopped waiting to watch it. If they can’t even get a Toei license the same week as CR they are absolutely cooked for airing acquisitions in a timely manner. Dr. Stone is our one hope and only if TMS makes it so. I have a bit of a hard time believing that Toei wasn’t willing to sell the TV rights of Daima to Toonami so more likely it came down to money. In the past, AS was willing to spend big to get Dragon Ball series and if that’s no longer the case then no acquisition is guaranteed if they don’t have the budget. But I won’t rule out the possibility that Toonami can get Daima once the budget resets. That’s just terrible planning on their part. Not so bad if it’s just a week or two but if it’s a month or more they really dropped the ball. Naruto moves to Saturday but no Sailor Moon? Way to get your priorities wrong. If it’s just 40-52 then whatever… they might as well air those. If they start from the top then cut it after Land of Waves ends and don’t renew it. At least we’re saved from double Kai. I’m hoping Sailor Moon being MIA means if anything they will pick up Sailor Moon R and just start there. But instead of a almost entirely pointless Uzumaki marathon (technically the first time Toonami plays the dub) I would have done a speed run of Sailor Moon airing every episode that introduces a scout then have weekly reruns of the last leg of the season after Venus is introduced. I’m rather surprised that Fight Girl is rerunning much less at 12:30am. Maybe it’s a good sign that they aren’t immediately tossing it out of the airlock? I get the feeling that IFG reruns and the Uzumaki marathon are trying to squeeze a bit more out of both with Family Guy around to lift the night. With the fat guy on (albeit hours earlier) they might actually do as well or better than the premieres did. Which is sad but ratings are ratings. Faithful’s advocate… they get something worthwhile by February with the budget reset but in the meantime we get the dregs and that’s not gonna help them retain their dwindling viewership. Their old tricks have long stopped working and they don’t have much of a leg to stand on. They need to look outside the box if they hope to appeal to anyone for much longer.

Sure, Sailor Moon is on Hulu but so are a bunch of other shows that people would like to see on Toonami, including some with over 100 episodes that have never aired on Toonami. I don’t think they should abandon the audience that was watching it on Rewind unless the numbers were dismal enough that they weren’t gonna get more even if they couldn’t bring back Family Guy.

Honestly surprised they posted a confirmation but it is appreciated. Now they had better give us a Saturday block update tomorrow before they F off for the holidays.

Seems like possibly the best outcome to avoid buyouts.

And that makes at least two weeks of the one hour Checkered Past block (still Dexter and Courage). Sunday didn't have encore airings of Family Guy late at night so it might only be airing in prime time now. How long will people sniff the "Toonami Rewind will be back" copium?

Not most recently https://bsky.app/profile/clarknova.bsky.social/post/3ldcnk6v7m22n January 4th is a big 'ol question mark. While it's entirely possible the prelim schedule can change if they want to do a marathon of all 10 episodes of IFG if the plan was an IFG marathon then why not just block off 12-5AM like they did for RATAM the week prior? But let's say it's not a full season marathon of IFG... what are the options? It's not likely they would blow 2-3 episodes of Daima unless Toei really pushed for an event premiere but it cooooooooould happen, maybe. For marathons there's Blue Exorcist which has had 7 episodes air so far, they could do just 7 episodes of IFG or maybe Sailor Moon leading into the show joining Saturday Toonami... it's DBZ Kai isn't?

Ultimately this project accomplished what WB/D needed it to, extend their IP rights. Any money it makes on top of that is gravy but they certainly don't want it to lose money which it could if these numbers drop much more.

Let’s be real even if critics love this movie it’s still wasn’t gonna do well in theaters.

WB/D has a bit of pickle on their hands with regards to kids entertainment. CN isn't attracting kids and neither is Max so what can they even do? They can sell new kids shows to Hulu, Netflix or Amazon or they can just stop making kids entertainment. But what does that mean for Adventure Time and Regular Show spin-offs, the upcoming seasons of Gumball and TTG and the anime-style Scooby-Doo? Most of those might still come to Max or surprisingly enough run exclusively on CN if the cable network business does get spun off. They might also remain shared between Max and CN or CN and Hulu, Netflix or Amazon. But just as likely, WB/D will stop making anything they intend to air on CN as they exit the kids entertainment business. That would leave CN daytime even more destitute. On the off chance that WB/Ds kids business gets entirely funneled from Max to CN, that could actually be a boon for CN. But in Adult Swim's case, Max is competing for the same audience and have little reason to share their wares. Having the two sides of the company split up would probably only make that worse for Adult Swim. AS will have to rely all the more on ad-revenue on linear cable to keep the lights on and pay for the Disney owned sitcoms but since they remain one of the top performing cable networks with young adults and are likely to maintain that position thanks to the return of Family Guy, they can probably hang on just fine even if Max takes away even more potential shows.

Mashle has 6 weeks left for season 1 which would put them in late February and that's about when I'd expect Lazarus anyway. Sure they could roll right into season 2 but they can also pace it out as needed.

Saturday schedule is out. No Rewind in sight of course. Family Guy is on Saturdays too but slightly earlier than the 10-11:30 time it's expected to have on weeknights so it benefits Toonami even less, huzzah... I guess we'll see if Family Guy is also on 9:30-11 on Sundays and Saturday isn't just the odd man out where it inexplicably airs earlier. Either way, we really don't need an hour of Rick before Toonami and frankly I wish Family Guy was directly before Toonami but I'd compromise with 1 Rick before Toonami. Just seems a bit questionable to not keep the Family Guy airing window consistent with weeknights.

Bad call releasing this in December shortly after Moana 2 and only a week before Sonic 3. They're also flatly admitting they fast-tracked this movie to keep the IP rights at WB/D so ultimately it served its purpose while simultaneously hurting the prospects of any other animated drama being made at a major studio. With a 30 million budget and probably like 10 million in advertising, they can possibly break even with digital sales and home media, especially if it can stay in theaters a few more weeks and get at least a couple million each week but smart money says they never expected this to make money, just hopefully not lose a bunch.

They could shift everything down for Daima on Jan 11th then back up on Jan 18th if they have nothing else but I am inclined to think they have 2 shows lined up for January, especially if they’ve been sitting on MHA S7.

Baring the extremely peculiar scenario where Toonami not only gets Daima before CR and also runs eps 1-3 as an event to mirror the theatrical release because Toei wills it… all signs point toward an IFG marathon to stall an extra week for Daima (1 day after CR), MHA S7 or another show. So probably IFG marathon on 1/4, Daima on 1/11 shifting everything down at least 1 week and maybe MHA on 1/18 at 12:30 DeMarco has redeclared his intention to leave social media after Jan 1st so expect no answers from him about anything.

Both better and worse than my expectation where Blue Exorcist stays ahead of One Piece and Naruto doesn't have to start over once a week. But a more positive expectation is both Daima and MHA in January, everything shifts down and the block runs till 4am with 4 premieres and 4 reruns.

If they can just run KOTH at 5pm they'll do it. They'll keep the buffer for now and see how it goes but KOTH is all but certain to do better than Checkered Past.

To all the people that said the month of DBZ Kai was "normal" scheduling for the holidays and told me I was jumping to conclusions... They sure fooled you into thinking everything was fine. I'm not sure how because the warning signs were pretty bright and glaring. I'm not happy to be right but I saw it coming and I am basically past the mourning period. I'm only sad about Sailor Moon. Naruto had it's time and DBZ Kai is unfortunately sticking around till the contract expires. Absolutely no surprise that the moment the fat man returned, Rewind wasn't worth the cost anymore.

People always use TTG as the example but besides that ridiculous marathon week for the 400th ep, they only air it a few times a day and not even in the most watchable slots. It’s been that way for two years I think. Regular Show airs more often and Gumball is usually the show filling the most slots. They are nonetheless a stagnant channel which refuses to take risks. MAWS and IFG should have aired on CN time but they were too chicken shit to do it and Michael O is content to let CN starve to fill AS’ pantry as much as he can. I don’t think Toonami gets any better without DeMarco but it probably doesn’t get any worse either. At any rate, I saw the movie on IMAX and it was fine. Left me with no strong feelings one way or the other. I saw it with my father who is in his 60s and he enjoyed himself and didn’t realize it was anime till the credits roll. Prior to seeing it I thought I’d probably want to see it more than once in theaters but to be honest I have no strong desire to do so any time soon which is a true mark of a Jason DeMarco and Joseph Chou co-production.

I’ve been thinking about this and honestly it probably won’t mess with AS as badly as some because how much does AS even rely on WB/D for programming? They almost entirely generate ad revenue using 3rd party licenses so the issue of not being able to buy from another division of their parent company isn’t so different than the current situation. AS will potentially get less shows it shares with Max and Max will continue to get shows that never touch AS. But of course licensing requires money. It’s unlikely they can generate the ad-revenue necessary to keep paying Disney for FOX reruns. So unless the spun off company can financially support AS’ acquisition needs they’re gonna be cooked pretty fast. That said the cable asset company will have few gems as reliable in young adult ad-revenue as AS so it could get some priority at least among the former Turner networks. Its gonna be harder to keep the lights on without a doubt and eventually the WB/D will deem a block largely fueled by 3rd party programming as unnecessary. They can redirect those viewers to Max or at least they’ll think they can.

Well that’s certainly bad for Adult Swim on cable.

If it's just DBZ Kai they can even justify it because the bumps will already have been made for Saturday Toonami. If it's just DBZ Kai and Sailor Moon then they can get by with rotating the same bumps they have been using and never even need to tap Steve to record something much less produce new TOM and Sara footage. The only additional cost then is securing more Sailor Moon for now which they certainly don't have to do unless they really want to but it will be a pretty negligible expense all things considered. You're right about them being cautious with phasing out Checkered Past because its troublesome to un-kill something later.

I didn’t anticipate them merely shortening CKP or Rewind to an hour. That’s certainly a way to keep them around but still make room for earlier FOX. Rewind feels like more of an all or nothing situation to me but given they haven’t been able to secure a 4th show and Naruto looks to be dead weight, they might want to shrink to an hour for just Sailor Moon and DBZ Kai. Seems increasingly less likely that they will buy more Sailor Moon eps though so either they rerun what they have or Rewind carries on as DBZ Kai power hour till they see fit to sunset Rewind. If they do pull Rewind in January then they might let CKP have Fridays back for the 5pm hour and IMO CKP should be on at 5pm on Saturdays as well. Conversely I could also see DBZ Kai becoming the weekday buffer show before KOTH branded as Toonami Rewind or not. Maybe they’ll even run Sailor Moon reruns on weekdays in the 5pm hour if they can rerun those 46 episodes at least once each (exactly 1 ep did rerun so far). I don’t expect Naruto to stick around if Rewind doesn’t remain an 2 hour block but they could toss it onto Saturday Toonami to get their money’s worth out of the contract or just cut their losses. What I’d like to see is MAWS reruns at 5pm maybe paired with DBZ Kai. Having Young Justice or a DCAU show would be preferable but that requires WBD to act friendly for once so far chance. At any rate, I think they will ease into deciding what to do with the 5pm hour. Try a few things then inevitably head for the Hill’s.