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They potentially could have waited, if they had another premiere ready to start. Take that as you will.

“See see they don’t have any new shows coming! They’re sunsetting the block quietly.”

As expected, double MHA. Not surprising but still disappointing, Fena reruns replace a premiere. At least for now. The shorts block is probably all the Rick & Morty anime shorts. This forum continues to hate my posts.

Yeah I feel that. Always disappointing when I actually watch a whole Toonami block and feel like it was a great experience and then I see that it did about as well or usual or worse than usual.

Dunno about that but the HD version is what's on Adult Swim's site and app right now, complete (or incomplete rather) with a shortened "Tank" which is just a crime against nature.

Well it only aired after 2:30am and it beat Black Lagoon when it was at 3am (probably due to DVR but still). Who knows how well it might have done at a decent time on Toonami?

Batman Ninja doesn't have a great plot. It's mostly spectacle. But it's pretty entertaining and definitely a sight to behold.

I would think a quick-turn around for Demon Slayer season 2 would be a pretty big deal (and trust me it's possible that's happening in November) but beyond that there's not many big shows out there that they could air and that's fine because lesser known shows are a welcome change of pace from Toonami chasing after every Shonen Jump series they can get. Isn't it more exciting that it's harder to predict what they're going to do? We've gone so many years when Toonami almost exclusively picked up sequel seasons and shows from established franchises and rarely dug deeper. Now they have a good opportunity to flex their creative muscle the way they had to when they first got rolling in 2012 and 2013. I look forward to seeing how they can surprise us in the coming months and years.

Sure, you can always lose impatient viewers by putting a show on a 3 week break but I'm pretty confident that most Toonami viewers who are STILL watching have plenty of patience. But 3 weeks off is habit breaking? Really? That's a very short hiatus for a television program in the US. It's not like they regularly take 3 weeks off in a row and they tend to only take of 7 or less a year total. Any other TV show in the US should be so lucky. You'll be back after 3 weeks so chances are people who dislike this will also be back. As I said, Toonami viewers are already pretty dang patient. If not, then they would be watching everything they care about except Fena's dub on FUNimation or Crunchyroll and not bothering with Toonami. You can't really argue against the practicality of waiting till November to start whatever shows they have coming. Nor the practicality of fixing their schedule dilemma the one hour premiere of Black Lotus creates by running two more Batman movies on the 23rd and a marathon on the 30th. Now they can just run both of the remaining episodes of MHA to fill the midnight hour on November 6th and have a clean break from that into Blade Runner rather than cause additional confusion by displacing a currently airing show when Black Lotus premieres. I think they saw how that didn't pan out so well with the Fena premiere pushing MHA and everything else a bit later that night only for it to snap back to the usual time slots a week later. We saw how that hurt the rest of the line-up and so did they. It's arguably in their best interest to avoid that situation happening again and they can easily do so by holding off on replacing MHA until November 20th.

That's true of literally anything else Toonami could possibly air including the current regular line-up. Toonami isn't just for one kind of viewer. It's good when they are able to branch out a bit and air other action animation than their usual. The usual will always be back because it's largely what they have relied on for the past 9 years.

The timing probably makes this look like scrambling but I very much doubt it is. They had to promote DC Fandome and a marathon of Fena was practically a given. Maybe they could have ran the regular lineup on the 23rd but it’s arguably more sensible to not stick a regular lineup between two weeks of event programming. After all, if Black Lotus had to wait till November 13th they had several issues for filling the midnight hour until then on top of starting the show that will replace Black Clover. We were racking our brains as to how they would do it without resorting to doubling up shows and possibly airing a rerun of Fena or MHA in the midnight slot on November 6th. An extra night of Batman movies is both a nice treat that’s not the usual programming and a good way to fill the holes present till November. It makes for a smoother transition from now till mid-November. I don’t think they need to be in a rush to start more shows. It’s better to do that cleanly than to start a new show in the midnight hour and then move it 1-2 weeks later for Black Lotus. That doesn’t do a new show or the regular viewers any favors.

If DC movies will only air whenever WarnerMedia has something to promote, that also has its uses. I’d rather see movies every few months than every week to be honest. But there’s going to be enough DC stuff to promote that Toonami will probably settle into a trend of airing 6 or so DC movies a year usually with 2 back to back as they have been.

Who knows? Maybe these film nights are a test to see if it’s worth running a bunch of DC movies (and shows) on Toonami. I can’t think of a better way to expand Toonami into prime time in a way that would help it draw a crowd. And they’re willing to run these movies all the way till 4am so imagine a Toonami that caps off with a DC Film at 2am after the anime premieres. Sure beats reruns at 3am.

Yeah it’s kind of bonkers that WarnerMedia is letting them air two movies that came out in June and July if this year. The kind of bonkers I love to see. Not surprising to see a Fena marathon on October 30th. It’s an original that has done well, so a marathon was all but assured. So they can finish MHA on November 6th and either start a new show, double up something or rerun Fena at 2:30am after Shippuden, start Black Lotus on November 13th and then add another show the week after at 12:30am (and at this point I’m banking on Demon Slayer).

Or if they did temporarily, it’s back now. https://www.adultswim.com/videos/cowboy-bebop

Looking good so far. I'm quite a bit more interested now.

Well I suppose it's not impossible that if they prioritize the dub of Demon Slayer, that it could start airing on Toonami by November 6th. FUNimation doesn't really have a bigger show to focus on this Fall and Aniplex has attempted simuldubs before. They might be able to manage being 2 weeks behind Japan and then Toonami can have it a few weeks later. That's a pretty tall order on multiple accounts though. I totally missed the mark with my November 6th and October 30th predictions, go figure. But let's say for whatever reason Demon Slayer is off the table for now. Here's another option and I'm going back to the old ToonZone way of formatting a Toonami schedule for this one. October 23rd 12:00 AM - Fena: Pirate Princess #12 (Finale) 12:30 AM - My Hero Academia #112 01:00 AM - YashaHime #16 01:30 AM - Food Wars #70 02:00 AM - Food Wars #71 02:30 AM - Naruto: Shippuden #360 03:00 AM - Dr. Stone #31 03:30 AM - Dragon Ball Super #31 October 30th 12:00 AM - Jujutsu Kaisen #1 12:30 AM - My Hero Academia #113 (Finale) 01:00 AM - YashaHime #17 01:30 AM - Food Wars #72 02:00 AM - MegaloBox 2: Nomad #1 02:30 AM - Naruto: Shippuden #361 03:00 AM - Dr. Stone #32 03:30 AM - Dragon Ball Super #32 November 6th 12:00 AM - Jujutsu Kaisen #2 12:30 AM - YashaHime #18 01:00 AM - YashaHime #19 01:30 AM - Food Wars #73 (Finale) 02:00 AM - MegaloBox 2: Nomad #2 02:30 AM - Naruto: Shippuden #362 03:00 AM - Dr. Stone #33 03:30 AM - Dragon Ball Super #33 November 13th 12:00 AM - Blade Runner: Black Lotus #1 12:30 AM - Blade Runner: Black Lotus #2 01:00 AM - Jujutsu Kaisen #3 01:30 AM - YashaHime #20 02:00 AM - MegaloBox 2: Nomad #2 02:30 AM - Naruto: Shippuden #363 03:00 AM - Dr. Stone #34 03:30 AM - Dragon Ball Super #34 November 20th 12:00 AM - Blade Runner: Black Lotus #3 12:30 AM - Jujutsu Kaisen #4 01:00 AM - Assassination Classroom #23 01:30 AM - YashaHime #21 02:00 AM - MegaloBox 2: Nomad #3 02:30 AM - Naruto: Shippuden #364 03:00 AM - Dr. Stone #35 (Finale) 03:30 AM - Dragon Ball Super #35

I really think a decent solution for Saturday's ratings woes would be to throw on a DC animated film every week around 10pm. There's about 40 of those things now so they could avoid repeating one for a long time. But that comes down to WarnerMedia throwing Adult Swim a bone. Maybe they'll be open to that without Family Guy to fall back on. On the other hand, Toonami has lasted this long by being self-sufficient enough to keep around so perhaps working with this lower ceiling will pan out because Adult Swim doesn't have to keep renewing a very expensive licenses for 20th Television cartoons. Regardless of how those ratings look, I'm pretty confident that Toonami will continue to broadcast on Adult Swim for several more years. Plenty of other cable networks stay on the air with lower viewership than that. My one hope is that rather than curling up into the fetal position after losing Family Guy and running out of long running anime to rely on, that they will use the lower expectations as a reason to try new things. They have a steady stream of original series coming and if they pair that with a solid mix of new and old anime then they can build a really great block. I have no expectation that doing that will greatly improve their traditional ratings but it should suffice to keep them on the air.

Perhaps but they are airing the 2014 Michael Bay produced Ninja Turtles on their ACME Night block on CN so maybe they could get Batman vs TMNT some day. I think the TV rights might still be with Nicktoons at the moment but I honestly have no idea. I'd sure love to see Batman vs TMNT on Toonami though. Red Hood is fantastic and Batman Ninja is a sight to behold. These are good picks for another DC night. Glad Fena isn't getting pre-empted but since MHA is, they'll either have to double it up on October 23rd to finish the same night as Fena (and stave off replacing Black Clover another week or two baring a marathon). I'm thinking they'll do a marathon of My Villain Academia on October 30th and if they don't double up MHA on October 23rd then they can start the marathon with the final episode of season 5 then repeat the six episode villain arc and maybe throw in the episode right before that to cover 7 slots. Alternatively they could marathon Fena or some other show. I'm pretty confident Blade Runner: Black Lotus will replace Fena but I have my doubts they'll want to do that on October 30th. They could have done this way smoother and promoted DC Fandome before it actually ended if they did so on October 9th. Then they would have really needed to double up Clover. Oh well.

Yep, as of today Sling has the right schedule for Saturday. So minor crisis averted... this time. They really should not cut it so close though, especially if its just to decide which episode to restart DBS on. But since it was just DBS, they didn't post an update on Facebook at all. It's technically not a change and therefore they don't need to post the schedule on Facebook. I would like to another line-up promo before mid-October though. They updated Dr. Stones bumps last week so they might update all the other bumps soon. While I was looking forward to a Toonami without Dragon Ball Super, it's probably for the best that they keep it around for the 3:30am slot. They don't have many good options for recent shows to rerun and probably won't have many good options for that early in 2022 either. Keeping one rotating rerun slot open for Fena, Black Lotus and whatever else is sufficient. While I am all for cycling in FLCL sequels, IGPX and maybe GITS and some Adult Swim originals (namely Primal) they might as well keep using DBS for as long as its still under contract. DBS would be better used for 8pm (if they get that back in 2022) or to give Samurai Jack a break on weeknights but it's pretty ignorable at 3:30am on a Sunday morning.

Well I sure hope they do. Right now Sling lists a single Rick & Morty airing from 11:30PM-4AM. There's not many days left for the grids to get updated.

They clearly have no faith in the other handful of series they can rerun. It’s whatever at this point. I’m just mad that the TV grids might not be fixed by Saturday. They should have finalized this schedule weeks ago.

Early One Piece is at least easier to tackle than DBZ but it’s hard to imagine a convincing Luffy with rubber powers. But I’d love to see them pull it off.

Seems likely enough that a Fena rerun will replace Dr. Stone season 2.

That might happen but they can always run a marathon on Toonami instead.