Sketch

It certainly can feel that way.

Advanced schedules are showing double One Piece will stick around for at least 3 weeks. It will however move down a half hour on February 5th when Shenmue bumps AC and MiA down a half hour as well. Shippuden drops one episode and only airs at 3am followed by Bebop reruns. Place your bets on whether or not the extra One Piece is keeping a spot warm for something Black Lotus reruns, something else or is actually something they'll keep going for a while. With 500+ episodes to air (250+ that are currently dubbed) they have plenty of episodes to run for years if their deal with Toei is so good that they can afford to run two episodes a week. There are certainly worse ways to fill the 2am hour and only Naruto and reruns would get stuck airing after it so that's fine by me. But that said, I wasn't expecting double One Piece to last more than one or two weeks so I can hardly judge what their intentions are but you wont see me complaining. The pacing of Fishman Island onward would greatly benefit from back to back episodes, maybe they think so as well.

So I just wrote up a spoiler loaded summary of the arcs Toonami skipped. Read it if you want but there are serious spoilers in this. https://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1srug6o?new_post=true

So it would seem we aren’t getting a new addition on 1/29 so we can’t take that promise of a new show every week for a month or so verbatim. Granted, that schedule could change by next Thursday if they suddenly land a show. However, that would force an expansion if they intended to rerun Black Lotus. As it stands, Shenmue would drop a One Piece on February 5th and Black Lotus reruns would drop a Naruto on Feb 12th. Black Lotus makes way for Titan. So probably no new show on 1/29 much less Demon Slayer but on the plus side, we get two weeks of double One Piece.

Toonami never seems to “give up” on getting older shows they have had their eye on. Case in point, One Piece. I swear they will try to get JoJo back if Netflix ever releases it’s death grip on it.

DeMarco on why One Piece is back: In short. FUNi/Sony bad. Toei good. I figured as much.

With Shenume going to 12:30am, it’s all but assured Titan will get midnight. I think Demon Slayer will finally return when Titan ends and be the headliner in late Spring.

Never say never they say. I don't know how the hell they pulled this off. Toei must have been feeling generous. I'm a huge fan of One Piece so I'm naturally stoked that this is happening but I'd be lying if I said I thought this was the best show they could have picked up right now. But I'm cautiously optimistic. One Piece is arguably more popular in the US now than it was between 2013 and 2017 and the bar is real low now. But this will surely test the limits. Starting at the time-skip is a gamble to be sure. If the prior viewers didn't continue where Toonami left off nearly 5 years ago then they have quite a lot of episodes to watch before... Saturday. It's a very tall order. And if those viewers did continue it, did they stop at 516? I highly doubt it. There's even a One Piece watch-a-long on Twitter that formed when Toonami took it off the air which is 200 something episodes further than that. Their best hope is people want to watch those episodes again and also that new viewers will find the show approachable enough. To that I say, it's at least a better place to start than the Davy Back Fight and the Foxy Pirates. But you're still missing huge moments that define the series. At least thematically it will feel right that the Straw Hats are reuniting in these episodes.

Talk about a plot hole.

The leader? He certainly isn’t putting in a good performance here.

They are probably trying to keep things vague but I still think they should have picked different dialogue for the promo. That is literally some of the worst in the first episode even if it does explain some things.

😭

That promo was weak sauce... Like of all the voices to use in a promo you pick that guy and his flat reads? I hope people give the show a chance because that promo is anti-hype.

Sentai picked up the dang phone for once! Leave it to Toonami to put the assumptions of the AMC deal immediately to bed by announcing the best title Sentai has. Made in Abyss is phenomenal but not for the faint of heart. It’s a crying shame this wasn’t announced via a promo last Saturday but it should make for a nice surprise for people tuning in this weekend. I’d say this greatly ups the chances that Titan and AC are the only sequels among the incoming shows but it could go either way.

They have listed that incorrect time for a while. Bebop is still double stacked for now.

It’s totally understandable if they could not do the promo in time to air it yesterday but I really hope they don’t make us wait till Thursday night to confirm the next schedule. I don’t want to have to keep recording a 4.5 hour of American Dad.

AC might end up settling into the 1am slot when it’s all said and done. Or maybe even 1:30 or 2am. It’s at 12:30 and 1am now because it sort of has to be.

Finally! I hope they never beat this record of barely two days before broadcast. It’s a nice start with tremendous room for growth. And they’ll be filling out this schedule one new show at a time every week for a month or so. That’s very exciting!

And now it’s past 2pm EST on Thursday and still nothing. I can’t imagine they will hold off till Friday but then again I was pretty confident they would post by Wednesday. Edit: it is now past 4pm EST Edit: it is now past 6pm EST

Well it was a recap so maybe that’s why.

The second season hits way harder IMO, especially the ending. But I honestly can't remember the names of most of those kids. Nagisa (memorable because it can be a boys name or a girls name), Karma (also memorable), Terasaka (was a bully, just kinda stuck out to me), Ritsu (the computer girl), Rio (the blonde) and I just had to think real hard to remember the green hair girl's name (it's Kaede). Beyond that I remember Miss Bitch, Mr. Kurasuma and the Koro Sensei. I remember the Principal but not his name.

Finally a new addition. Finally the 2nd half of the series. Finally a glimmer of hope that Sony isn't absolutely screwing over Toonami right now. But that only fills one vacant slot. So unless they're starting it with a double episode premiere (certainly not uncommon at this point) we might see another show get announced before the end of the week or DeMarco was just being coy about YashaHime season 2. We should get that schedule by Tuesday or Wednesday at the latest.

Discotek generally does not obtain TV rights to anime. Toonami got Lupin through TMS but Discotek did serve as the middleman in those instances. Surely they can get some shows from Sentai if FUNi, Aniplex and CR series are absolutely out of the question. But Sentai does have a bad habit of not picking up the dang phone.

If they don’t even have YashaHime, then they need at least two shows immediately to even maintain 4 premieres. What the frick is even happening? If they had shows fall through then they should still have the money they were going to spend on those. Do they simply refuse to walk away from those suddenly complicated deals and use that money on other shows or are they waiting for the budget to reset so they can pay for those shows? (Perhaps pay more than they anticipated because Sony is playing hard ball) So are they just being stubborn or do they literally have no money for anything till the budget resets? This is exasperating. But bemoaning the point doesn’t accomplish anything. Whatever happens happens, when it happens. It’s trying our patience but bitching about it changes nothing and Toonami communities that are trying their darndest to stay positive don’t want to hear or read more venting about the situation. Nobody likes the situation. All we can do is wait it out.

These words are not reassuring at all. Toonami will be back EVENTUALLY but that doesn’t make the past few months any less frustrating. And at this point it would probably be better to announce a couple of rerun filled weeks than to keep holding off on showing a schedule in hopes of something working out in time. They are really banking on people tuning in no matter what they air if they are giving us a week or less notice of what will air on 1/8/2022.