Sketch

Looking better. Toonami Faithful posted May 15th today. May 23rd will be posted on Thursday and June 5th hopefully soon. We got the hookup for the two missing weeks.

Getting Yoko Kanno or someone else who can create amazing music was a must, so I'm glad they did the smart thing and got Kanno. Cowboy Bebop with sub-par music simply will not do. I'm starting to wonder about Ed. We have heard nothing about someone being cast as Ed so far. Maybe they aren't even going to include Ed in this version or at least this first season.

I very much doubt it will air in Canada first. It will probably be the same day or a day to a few days after Toonami airs it in the US. If it has to line up with a Japanese broadcast season then it will start in October but if it doesn't have to do that then I'm thinking November.

Well played sir and thank you for helping us out.

Thanks to the diligent work of AmbientVirus and WJBraden on Twitter, Toonami Faithful now has a new source for ratings info. As far as I know, the site we'll be getting the data from won't be posting it on their own blog or anything so Toonami Faithful will get this data before Reddit or any other site or forum. They unfortunately cannot get the ratings for May 15th or May 22nd but they have May 29th and should be able to get each week going forward. For May 15th and May 22nd we'll have to hold out hope that showbuzzdaily can post that somewhere eventually. https://toonamifaithful.com/toonami-ratings-for-may-29th-2021/

We're not nearly as powerless as you think. In current times most (legal) viewership is counted in some manner. It's not as cut and dry as "Nielsen or nothing" anymore but a good many slim packages have data collected specifically by Nielsen unless you choose to opt out of data collection. And trending on social media absolutely is a metric that matters. It's how Jason and can show his bosses tangible evidence that a lot of people are engaging in the block every week. If we're all in agreement that cable ratings data has shown a steady decline but can also see that Toonami has been granted funds to produce original content and continue to acquire popular anime, you gotta figure they can see the viewership that isn't apparent in the cable ratings data that is posted publicly. Adult Swim doesn't tend to throw money at sinking ships. So have a little faith that your viewership does matter.

According to Bronx, the networks have cracked down on ratings data so Programming Insider doesn't post Saturday cable ratings anymore. ShowBuzzDaily supposedly still gets the info but they borked their website and haven't been able to post anything for weeks. It might be the end of an era but rather than fret about things all we need to do is watch the block, talk about it on social media (especially when it's airing) and let other people know the block is airing.

It was at the very least a double-edged sword. It got people watching in droves after Toonami had a rough year (2014) but it proceeded to set the ceiling too high for any other show to compete with it. It was like Family Guy or other FOX reruns in that regard. I do think getting Kai in late 2014 to replace Bleach was something of a necessary evil but I kind of wish they never got Kai Final Chapters or Dragon Ball Super. DBZ KFC just felt like schedule filler and airing it back to back with Super was so monotonous in for a year and a half. Super definitely helped keep the lights on, so I can't really begrudge it. I just want them to move on to other things now that it has no fresh episodes to air. Rerunning Super in 2020 was sensible overall because the block was loaded with reruns (maybe MHA reruns could have sufficed instead but I digress). Keeping it as the first show when the block has 6 premieres though? That's squandering the potential of six other shows. They should have let MHA season 5 have midnight from the start but I'm glad they finally are giving this lineup a shot. Hopefully the results are favorable. Up until now Toonami has operated mainly with one flagship series playing every week. It was Bleach, then it was DBZ Kai, then it was DBS. Now the most popular anime in the US aren't airing non-stop in Japan so at the very least Toonami has no choice but to rely on a tag team of series like MHA and Demon Slayer as their headliners along with their original series. They have to trade stability for variety. If they want to renew DBS and rerun it on weeknights to make up for the loss of Family Guy, then I'm all for that. Its a series that works for better on a weekday strip anyway. If it does well at 3:30 and they want to keep it for capping off Toonami every week the way InuYasha once did, then that's fine too. But as long as they have it on hand they'll probably always be tempted to put it in the first slot of Toonami again. So I'd rather they just let the license expire.

It’s nice that they confirmed it. Some people were taking bets on whether or not they had the contract for episodes beyond season 3. FUNimation must be confident that they won’t need a break.

Unless MHA does considerably worse than Super did (and Super outrates a bunch of the premieres despite airing last), they will probably let air the rest of the season at the top of the block. Barring if Fena is able to air before October.

Only if it’s your special edition.

Who cares? “Let the past die, kill it if you have to” There could be another series a few years from now but until then, I say let the rights expire.

Now that’s a lineup! Hopefully it does well and they don’t go crawling back to DBS/DBZ when MHA’s season ends. Also that means no marathon on Memorial Day weekend despite the fact that Rick & Morty has a marathon the day after. So I really hope people do tune in for Toonami that night.

I'm more excited about getting our first Superman solo animated series in around two decades than a new Batman cartoon but hey at this point it's been close to 10 years since Beware the Batman was dead on arrival. I'd sure love to see that Batman series at least encore on Adult Swim (particularly Toonami) if it's going to CN daytime, seems to be going for an older audience than My Adventures with Superman. Most of all I'm excited that WBA is making two action cartoons for Cartoon Network. It's been close to a decade since action animation has been given a good shot on CN daytime.

Shippuden is streaming some dubbed episodes on Hulu (only there) but it’s less than 150 of 500. Adult Swim’s site / app has 77 episodes currently.

DeMarco just looks to be jumping on the Invincible meme bandwagon.

I like the idea of a WarnerMedia without AT&T controlling everything and adding Discovery channels to WMs channels would be quite a media empire. But maybe the new bosses won’t be any better. This certainly is an interesting development at any rate.

I noticed a SONY logo before all the anime studio logos. While I was under the impression this was being released by FUNimation Films, perhaps SONY Pictures is also involved. If so that might explain why Broly and MHA: Heroes Rising didn't get regular movie trailers before they played and this one did.

"That was it?" was basically my reaction. Like it was fine. I think I enjoyed the most recent One Piece and MHA movies just as much though. Compared to A Silent Voice or movies that aren't based on franchises it's really not worthy of high accolades. I also felt that arc wasn't that interesting. It was probably best that it was done as a movie with a higher budget for the sake of the battle animation but aside from some emotional moments it didn't really grab me. Interesting enough demon powers on display I guess but not the highlight of the anime thus far IMO. It is essential watching if you're keeping up with the anime and don't just want to read the manga but even though the animation is good I wouldn't say it has to be seen on a big screen. Just buy the digital release in June and don't rush out to see it in theaters, especially if you're not comfortable with going to a theater right now. I will say though, Rengoku is a good character and he was fun to have around.

I would not say they were primarily leftovers from Afternoon Adventures, The Roulette used shows that aired on Super Adventures but unless the Real Adventures of Jonny Quest was on Afternoon Adventures then none of what was on Toonami 1997 was repeats from Afternoon Adventures. Kind of surprising they didn’t use Speed Racer or SWAT Kats and didn’t try G-Force until The Midnight Run in 1999. ThunderCats and Voltron had their CN premieres on Toonami.

I think it’s a bit disingenuous to say the majority of the people watching DBS reruns don’t stay for the other shows currently. When DBS was dub premieres it couldn’t be touched, the ceiling was too high. Lately however, Titan has held 90% of DBS’ turn-out and it’s rare for any show to pull in less than 50% of the viewers DBS did. Even accounting for people coming in to offset DBS viewers leaving it’s still unlikely that the majority of DBS viewers aren’t staying for most of the block now. So we have to look at this two ways. One possibility is that DBS actually isn’t necessary at all because the other shows aren’t doing poorly on their own. If MHA can do about as well at midnight then it can anchor Toonami just fine. The other possibility (and the one AS seems to believe is happening) is DBS lifts everything on Toonami and if they removed it, there would be a 20% or so loss of viewership in at least the midnight hour if not beyond that. The only thing we can garner from prior data is that DBS reruns retain Family Guy viewers better than MHA premieres did. But it’s hard to say how many of the viewers watching DBS were retained from Family Guy and carry into the 2nd show on Toonami or how many viewers show up for DBS and stay for most of Toonami. Frankly I feel the solution is a little expansion. Give DBS 11:30 and move every premiere up a half hour. That should do as well or better than the current ratings. It would be an easy move when Final Space finishes its season or they could dump 1 of 4 American Dad’s.

Hulu is probably where the majority of dub watchers discovered MHA but I think a lot of the fans watch it subbed on Crunchyroll at this point.

It was just used to link to the tumblr but it’s no longer active

Programming just not wanting to change anything else when Toonami lost 10:30 has been my go to explanation because it sounds like something they’d haphazardly do on a whim. You’re probably right about the network being uncertain when they would be able to air season 4. Thankfully that little stunt didn’t convince FUNimation to take their ball and go home.

People watch Shippuden even at 3am and DeMarco and Austin like it, so they want to keep it on as “fresh content” for many many years. Right now they buy 52 episodes a year but to double it up they’d have to buy 104. They’d much rather buy 52 episodes of something else for variety’s sake. (or any combination of shorter seasons) These episodes aren’t streaming dubbed anywhere and most people won’t buy all the DVDs so these episodes are arguably less available than most of what Toonami airs. So that’s another reason to maintain the drip feed. What benefit is there to doubling it up? There really isn’t one beyond ensuring they can finish it before Toonami is yanked off of the air, but they expect to still be airing Toonami in 2024, so they’re not sweating that. You could argue it would be better to finish it sooner and move on to something else but people are still watching it and it’s just one slot at 2:30 or 3am, so it makes sense to keep it around. Not just anything will do decently at or after 2:30 in the morning and it’s not really wasting valuable air time. It would be better to just stop buying more of it entirely because if it’s wasting anything: it is money they could spend on other shows. So it makes more sense to dump it and maybe the entire 3am hour rather than buy 52 more episodes to “premiere” at 3:30 on a Sunday morning. But because people are still watching it week after week, they’re not going to dump it and they’re not gonna speed it up. They have no compelling reason to do either of those things. Thankfully, Shitpudding is pretty easy to ignore after 2:30am. So I say let the Naruturds have it. I’m much more concerned with DBS reruns wasting the best slot on the block until at least September if not October or even beyond this year.