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Tell me about it.

According to Douglas, various networks have been cracking down on ratings info being offered to the public. The days of seeing the exact 18-49s may be over.

I get that. I really want to see Godzilla vs Kong on a huge screen but I’m not risking it at this rate.

I will not. I’ll wait for digital.

I mean you say shounen but there’s quite a range of genres among shounen manga/anime. Food Wars, Neverland and Assassination Classroom are rather different beasts than Dragon Ball and Naruto. Ass Class is probably the closest thing to Dragon Maid aside from Tenchi GXP and maybe FLCL. Horror anime wise it’s really just been Parasyte, Tokyo Ghoul, Demon Slayer (if you count it) and Neverland. All but Neverland had plenty of action. Uzumaki is a horror story that won’t be action oriented and they’re co-producing that one. FLCL Alternative was basically a slice of life show outside of the occasional robot encounter. But after Pop Team Epic, I think just about anything is possible if they like it or it’s requested enough (if they can acquire it of course).

At this point, it wouldn't surprise me very much. They seem increasingly more open about trying other genres and Dragon Maid fits in a Tenchi kind of way.

I really didn't want to see Shaman King end up on Netflix first. It won't be simulcast here and I'll be honest I have no qualms about hitting the high seas to keep up with the Japanese broadcast.

I'd probably say Food Wars but I like Gridman the most at the moment.

If they were anticipating a two week delay or longer, they wouldn't be rerunning the latest episode first. Hell it would have made sense to rerun at least two episodes unless they were very sure they only needed one week. Granted, another power outage could happen but that's not their expectation. Meanwhile, the probability of Dr. Stone coming soon isn't looking quite as good. There's no episode this week and there wasn't one last week of either. There will probably be one next week but that's anyone's guess.

Well... that Cosmo Samurai thing might be helping ratings right now but that's still mostly true.

How do you propose Toonami migrates to streaming effectively? Almost everything they air is already streaming dubbed on various services. Toonami would be even less likely to get shows from FUNimation, Sentai and Crunchyroll if they were considered a streaming competitor. The fact that they're television focused is probably what allows them to get some of the most popular new anime around the same time as those anime streaming services do. The most probable use of the Toonami brand on a streaming service is through HBO Max but they still need the 3rd party content unless they limited the selection to just their original series. They could rebrand the current Crunchyroll section as Toonami for instance and keep the Aniplex and Viz shows that are currently on there. InuYasha, FMAB and Hunter x Hunter are all Toonami alumni after all. You could add Toonami bumpers to the videos but that's more likely to polarize new viewers who aren't already Toonami fans. The majority of anime fans want the whole show as it was presented in Japan and don't care for extra packaging that can take them out of the experience. But Toonami shows with some Toonami bumps already exist through Adult Swim on-demand on various cable and satellite packages. Single on-demand episodes isn't a Toonami block by any means. Streaming an entire block live is a novel concept but not very practical and possibly difficult to fill advertisement space during. Making that their primary broadcast method probably wouldn't pan out. They used to stream encores of the entire block on Adult Swim's website but they stopped doing that. There's probably a reason they didn't continue doing it. Don't get me wrong If Toonami had it's own service with a decent backlog and weekly premieres, I'd subscribe to it in a heart beat but I'm already a Toonami fan for life. It's not so easy to convince other anime fans to subscribe to another service unless it has a sizable library for a competitive price. WarnerMedia isn't going to do that just for Toonami, they're going as far as selling off the most successful anime streaming platform around to Sony. Toonami could be part of HBO Max if WarnerMedia wills it but it is likely to lose much of its identity in the process. I think we're better off with Toonami continuing to be the only place for this kind of content on US television. That still serves more of purpose than being another streaming service in a sea of many. Cable isn't dead just yet. They can still introduce shows to wider audience, they just have to be original works or more obscure titles. But its evident by the success of Demon Slayer, Attack on Titan, My Hero Academia and other anime outside of Toonami that chasing after all the latest hits, isn't the best use of their budget.

How well it did will no doubt hike up the price significantly. If they couldn't throw down for DBS Broly or either of the MHA movies, I can't imagine Adult Swim being able to afford the #1 movie in Japanese box office history. Not unless Sony is being surprisingly generous.

If DeMarco is lucky, they get first right to refusal for the dub premiere of additional seasons like they seem to have with SAO. How things pan out with The Promised Neverland season 2 will be a good indication of how things will go for Demon Slayer. But this is picking up right after the movie and that complicates things for Toonami.

Oh you know Toonami... they probably didn't realize they only got half of Ass Class at the time but had sorted out things for Food Wars recently enough that they could slip it in. For all we know, Food Wars was supposed to replace SAO but when they realized Ass Class was also going to go on a break they hastily brought back Black Clover (which is still under contract). Though if that were the case I would think they would have waited the extra two weeks and brought back Black Clover to replace Ass Class instead of having it replace SAO. I guess we'll never know and it doesn't really matter one way or the other. I figure the contract to stream the dub on FUNimation's site keeps it exclusive for 2 years or the contract is so convoluted that they won't be able to get it until the Crunchyroll sale to FUNimation is fully approved. I'm leaning toward that 2 year time window because Mob season 2 isn't even streaming on HBO Max yet, though the dub is streaming on Crunchyroll and it started out exclusive to FUNimation so that might not mean anything really. At any rate I have waited nearly 2 years now. I'm not giving up just yet.

I'm thinking since they list Fuji TV for One Piece, that it's counting not only Netflix but also Hulu, Crunchyroll and FUNimation but regardless that's wild to see on a US chart. I know people have been enjoying Wano but there's no doubt in my mind that Netflix is the primary reason One Piece is doing that well right now. Netflix only ever had the first season of Attack on Titan (subbed) but even that's gone now. Gotta wonder how well it would have done if they kept adding more episodes.

Here's another case of "gee I wish this success helped Toonami even a little bit" https://www.cbr.com/attack-on-titan-most-popular-series-united-states/ Attack on Titan is the most popular show available to watch the US right now (apparently by some metrics) but it can barely manage even 300,000 viewers on Toonami this year.

It was most likely a matter of time, some exclusivity window had to end. I suspect that happened with Gridman and is what is currently keeping Mob season 2 out of reach for now (if it's two years, then it's almost time). I'm bracing myself for the high likelihood that Food Wars season 4 and 5 will not immediately follow season 3 (which is probably good for variety sake) but I'm hopeful that both will be able to air before the end of 2022.

A lot of committees do exactly that but that is not the case here. Episode 23 when it resumes is technically still during their trip but they wrap up the situation they are currently facing by the end of episode 22.

It can complicate things when the two seasons are under different contracts. I do believe Assassination Classroom will finish the current arc before it takes a break.

Nice of him to be that transparent about the situation. I’m excited for Food Wars.

I'm thinking Final Space moving to 10:30 like hurt the 11pm hour of Family Guy and prime time in general. I'd like to see those numbers if we ever get them. Titan held DBS quite well and after it beat DBS in demos last week it really makes you wonder how Titan would do without DBS reruns ahead of it. Seems like people didn't start Gridman and the people who did are decreasing in number every week. It's a shame but it does make their decision not to move it up seem a tad more reasonable. It's probably not going to see a significant increase in viewership even at 1am so there's no sense screwing over the other shows for its sake. I just really wish it didn't turn out this way. Mecha other than gen:LOCK keep getting the shaft on Toonami. Hopefully Ass Class can bounce back with it's move to 1am. If it can't then they really screwed the pooch by pushing it so late when it was doing well.

They've come down to the wire plenty of times so I'm not calling it just yet. They can push it as far as Friday before they confirm that schedule. But if they do contract or add a rerun then I hope they try moving Gridman to 1am. It probably won't salvage it now but I think it would pair nicely with Attack on Titan. And if they do contract it's possible that they could get it back when maybe Dr. Stone, Neverland or something else is ready to air.

And had it gotten on Toonami as either a dub premiere for season 1 or maybe up to a year after the dub premiered on FUNimation, then Toonami might have actually had a notable impact on its popularity back in 2016 and 2017. I guess we'll never know. Now Toonami definitely benefits more for having MHA than MHA benefits from being on Toonami (this is also true of DBS of course). But you can't really say that about many of the other popular shounen. Attack on Titan breaks CR weekly but that's not translating to anywhere near the performance it once had on Toonami. The way things have been going makes me feel like any show that's popular enough for people to watch it in Japanese when it comes out isn't likely to bolster Toonami's performance, especially if they air less than a season behind Japan. MHA is really the only outlier to that, but as well as it does on Toonami, it is unquestionably more of a powerhouse on streaming services. Netflix hasn't gotten Attack on Titan beyond season 1. I get the feeling if they were able to get the other seasons it would have ranked in their top 10 plenty of times even if it wasn't available dubbed. MHA could have cleaned up on Netflix as well even if it was uploaded until 6-12 months after the simulcast. I hate how Netflix doesn't simulcast and how most of their exclusives don't get home video releases but I cannot deny that they the top dog when it comes to offering anime to the general public. Even if they had all of CR and Aniplex's backlog, FUNimation's service won't ever have that kind of reach outside of the anime viewing community.

Yeah I see it's currently #9. And if that just doesn't say everything about how little reach Toonami has now. It happened with JoJo of course and supposedly One Piece. It's a bit of a head scratcher but Adult Swim programming arguably goofed by premiering Demon Slayer at 1:30am. Sure at the time they had OPM season 2 and MHA was just weeks away but they even put it behind Food Wars (which admittedly was doing well at the time). They moved it up once other shows ended but by then it was too late for anyone to care. Way to squander the biggest new show of 2019. Hopefully they learn from that.

So hopefully without UFC to compete with, Toonami will do much better next week.