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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.

Been a while since they ran a Crunchyroll service ad during Toonami but a you said about movies, last month they bought a lot of ad-space to promote Jujutsu Kaisen 0's theatrical run. I wouldn't put it past them to run an ad for Spy x Family or other CR licenses soon.

CR buys ad space on Toonami from time to time. It’s not like Disney puts their Marvel series on FX. Amazon and Netflix don’t like to share their originals with cable either.

According to DeMarco Rick & Morty: The Anime will air subbed. Now that’s a bold choice.

Thanks for looking into the 18-49s. Colt’s chart stopped listing those at some point so I was only seeing the total viewers and basing it on that but those don’t always correlate.

One could argue the bigger Toonami news here is that they got the director of Jujitsu Kaisen on tap for an original ninja anime. When Crunchyroll cock blocks you from a big show, just get the director to make you a show instead. It might have actually been CR people who introduced DeMarco to Sunghoo Park and Takashi Sano. Though Sano is a professed Rick & Morty super fan. So perhaps the CR relationship had some lasting value for Toonami after all.

There's been something kinda off about Ruff's Fujiko this season. I don't remember thinking the voice sounded off in prior parts but its definitely bothering me in this one.

Honestly it might be my favorite episode of Lupin in general. The hard-boiled film noir discussion was so captivating that before I knew it the episode was already over.

Primal got 0.14 and 287,000 Let me put that into perspective. A rerun of Primal episode 1 did better than 6 episodes of Fena after Family Guy left Saturday, all of Black Lotus and all but 1 episode of Shenmue the Animation. At least in total viewers if not also 18-49. I’m frankly shocked. It might be a fluke but if this keeps up then maybe Primal reruns actually do interest more people than the anime on Toonami does.

More “wonderful” news… Crunchyroll got Chainsaw Man. Well, at least it didn’t go to Netflix but it’s still very unlikely that it will air on Toonami.