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Not impossible for Toonami to beat but it’s gonna be tough.

That’s probably just for in Japan Wait for Viz Media to say something or Disney to actually acknowledge this before worrying about it. But if it does stream on Disney Plus outside of Japan, it’s not likely to be censored. They stream R rated movies now.

Anyone who thought the report meant CN/AS, HBO and WBA were going to stop making animated series entirely were way off base regardless. But even that Brew article makes it clear there will be cuts, it’s just not guaranteed to be a bunch of the currently being developed animated projects. Little Ellen is canceled, the Scoob sequel won’t be shown and they aren’t renewing Close Enough. Several live action series and films were cancelled or are soon to be written off and HBO Max will not be making live action kids series or lower cost direct to streaming films. That’s all that’s known so far. We don’t even know if CN’s planned live action series have been canceled but that would make more sense than cancelling live action kids shows for HBO Max. There’s no reason to assume the Batman, Superman and Tiny Toons series won’t see the light of day nor the Gumball movie. Teen Titans Go will keep on truck’n, Craig of the Creek isn’t getting canceled and CN has other animated series still in production including Genndy’s unicorn show. Its far from a sure thing that YJ and Harley Quinn won’t get renewed but it depends on how successful they were for Max. The assumption we tend to make around here is Toonami is expensive to run and doesn’t make much if any money but if that were actually true they surely would have axed it rather than develop new shows for it. It’s almost ironic that I have so many reasons to be mad at WBD right now but “screwing over Toonami” isn’t really one of them. They could stand to throw it more bones but the way WBD is treating Toonami now hardly differs from any other time since the block returned.

This is legitimately the first worrying development regarding Toonami and Adult Swim’s future. I don’t think it means the co-productions we know about won’t air. Hopefully WBD management hasn’t changed their stance on wanting Toonami to be part of their strategy. Even so, they could toss Toonami and Adult Swim out on a whim if they see fit and they are taking completed or mostly completed films and shows and using them as tax write offs. Close Enough was canceled recently but now I’m concerned they’ll pull it from streaming and write it off as well. I’m not worried about the Batman and Superman cartoons set for 2023 but plenty of other things not featuring the big 3 could get axed. DC movie nights will probably still happen. They can be used to promote theatrical releases if nothing else. Though it’s just as likely that they won’t bother. I feel like Toonami will have a hard time justifying it’s existence if WBD does not grant them an adequate acquisition budget but there’s the rub. You need a audience to justify a budget but it’s awfully hard to get and maintain an audience without enough budget to buy worthwhile content.

We’ll have to see how the comedies did that night but they seem to have made a critical error having Primal on Thursday night and encoring on Toonami a few days later. They should have done one or the other because it seems like they have effectively divided their audience with a bit of overlap for people who watched both. Mind you there’s also the viewers who watched it on HBO Max so its at least 3 slices for the potential viewership.

It should go to Arcane but it will probably go to The Simpsons, maaaaybe Bob’s Burgers. Who am I kidding, What If will get it before Arcane.

Even the worst version of the Cowboy Bebop opening still uses “Tank” so it’s a pretty good intro compared to most.

Trying to get it “if it’s good” might be a safer strategy to avoid picking up a flop but waiting to see in this industry all but assures you will lose a shot at getting the show before it’s a hit and that much more difficult to get and less likely to be a hit specifically for a TV block.

Saturday Rick & Morty missed the list as well so you can’t really expect Primal to get on there much less Shenmue. American Dad had a pretty good July 2nd but not the other comedies. The performance of KOTH and Futurama both before and after Toonami makes a typical night of Toonami look pretty good by comparison. Though maybe the holiday weekend hurt those as well and they possibly do better on regular Saturdays? We might never know. Looking at this Saturdays and Sundays ratings, Lupin beat Birdgirl in some demos and totals and Tuca & Bertie barely missed the top 50 on Sunday and lost to One Piece in 18-49 and totals. The 2nd Tuca & Bertie was in Shippuden’s range. I feel bad for T&B because I thought they were good episodes. Hopefully it did/does well on HBO Max to make up for it.

I’d rather have Ushio & Tora and frankly I barely consider this an improvement over double Shippuden but it’s nice that they’re finishing YashaHime I guess. That was the lowest hanging fruit from Viz. Maybe this means the money is flowing again and they can add something interesting when the reruns cycle out in August. At the very least this could be seen as some assurance that they can get Bleach TYBW from Viz and Lupin probably will get replaced by a premiere rather than another rerun. I’m willing to believe this was always what they intended to replace AC with but they couldn’t make it happen as soon as they wanted. But if that is the case then the money might actually not be flowing and they had budgeted for YashaHime before the stoppage. We continue to wander in a very uncertain landscape.

Yeah that’s a relief.

AS cancelling shows after a few seasons is nothing new but I’m very bummed about Joe Pera in particular. The Eric Andre Show is the only live action show that is guaranteed to get another season on AS. Some would say AS bailing on live action programming is a good thing but I’m not celebrating.

2nd season gets an hour premiere on Thursday July 21st, will air weekly until all 10 episodes air and finish on September 15th. It sounds like season 2 will be presented as an on-going story rather than being more episodic like season 1 was. Makes sense given there’s an immediate goal now for our wandering warrior and his dino gal. A two episode premiere to start the season… Why do I get this irksome feeling that Toonami will only air one of those episodes on July 23rd and end up being a week behind the premieres because of that? I hope I’m wrong about that because that would needlessly kneecap the Toonami airing. That is presuming they even get to air season 2 that soon.

Okay so American Dad got 0.16 and Rick & Morty got 0.15 that night so the numbers for the 11pm hour are a bit softer than most prior weeks and Primal still held R&M decently. Perhaps the recent decline isn’t just due to AC leaving and Lupin being a much weaker draw after Primal. Either that or AC was somehow also lifting the comedies before Toonami in ways Shenmue and Titan failed to do.

If they expect to get the last part then I don’t think they’ll start Titan over from the beginning. Even doubled up they couldn’t rerun all 87 episodes before February of next year. They could however replay both parts of season 4 if they double it up for at least part of the time between mid August and next February. I do wonder how long their contract for the entire series will last after it ends. Possibly long enough for a rerun of the entire series? That would take two years in a single time slot and is much better suited for a weeknight strip. It would be nice to see those rerun slots go to IGPX and Space Dandy but they could also give Fena and Black Lotus another run or the Fooly Coolys.

Well I'm not surprised. I only had a little bit of hope they would introduce a new show after the marathon week but really had no earthly idea what they could pull in by then.

So it was the normal shows, the question is how did they do? I'm guessing Rick & Morty got less than 0.15 though I couldn't tell you why. If AC was the reason why Primal did so well then at the very least it was evident that AC didn't pair so well with Titan but maybe being the 2nd show on the block was enough to get more people watching the classroom? One night of data won't say one way or another by itself.

Rick & Morty on Saturday was the highest rated rerun for AS that week and 11pm Dad was the 2nd highest. Primal barely missed top 10 but that’s still quite impressive.

As always we appreciate your service.

It’s the first 7 episodes. How very pointless.

SONY!!!!!!!!!!!

So maybe Toonami eventually. That’s what I read from Jason’s response. In short if its an anime series (not film) co-production then WBD is all about putting it on Adult Swim and Toonami but if it’s a western action/drama then off to HBO Max it goes and Primal is the only exception for now. I suppose you could look at it another way. If WBD has to foot the bill for an animated action/drama series then they don’t think it’s worth it if it’s just for Adult Swim and they see HBO Max as the primary platform for that audience. Hence why they’re not sharing Young Justice.

I'd love to see that.

Well that doesn’t bode well for Lupin airing directly after Primal. Probably gonna lose 100,000 viewers from it every week. Nice to see AC finish so high. It came so close to 300,000.

Nah nah nah. Saitama should be played by Moby… or Jim Rash. I joke, they’re both too old.