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The news actually broke on Deadline, I think. So WB Aimation is starting a division specifically for action animation and anime. The co-creator and current producer of Toonami will be running it. This is like something out of a dream for me. I cannot wait to see what this new division brings to the world of animation. Jason will even be involved in DC projects. Perhaps Toonami’s best days are yet to come.

Sony's press release mentions they intend to offer anime in all the places people consume it including linear tv. Toonami is the only game in that arena. My best guess is this either changes nothing or Crunchyroll shows become a bit easier to get than they were when WarnerMedia was overseeing their business transactions. We all know how ass-backwards WarnerMedia can operate. I'm really hoping it was their influence that made Crunchyroll so difficult to get shows from. FUNimation, Aniplex and Sony have all done more business with Adult Swim than Crunchyroll has. I'm real curious what will become of the Crunchyroll section of HBO Max. Will it add be removed, get rebranded or perhaps get an infusion of FUNimation anime take on whatever name the unified streaming service goes by. And hell if this actually meant all future FUNimation, Anipex and Crunchyroll licenses were off the table, there could do worse than to dig into Sentai's catalogue. I really don't think they're going to be desperate for content, at least not more so than they are from Netflix getting big shounen anime left and right. I honestly expect this to be a net positive for Toonami itself but looking at the broader picture its probably terrible for anime streaming outside of the US, piracy is sure to see an increase.

Normally Netflix takes their sweet time streaming shows after they broadcasted in Japan so I'm glad to see they are going to stream Stone Ocean before it even starts broadcasting in Japan. It's not simulcasting week to week but in some ways its better than that. Even better if they stream it dubbed on day one. I wouldn't worry about dub inconsistences, the Rohan OVAs only recast Rohan for reasons unrelated to who was in charge of dubbing it (it was still BangZoom). Matt Mercer will surely return as Jotaro and the dub will probably be handled by BangZoom like the rest. Pour one out for JoJo on Toonami. The way Part 5 held DBS reruns pretty well had me thinking JoJo could have a promising future on Toonami but alas Toonami can't outbid Netflix. I just hope Viz can still release Stone Ocean and the Rohan OVAs on home video some day or that at least someone will.

It is but that movie could also be summed up as “Harrison Ford gets his ass kicked for two hours”. It had plenty of action and characters doing flips.

That person has no idea what they are talking about. So much is changing at Adult Swim and the expectations for ratings are vastly different these days.

Elle looks a lot like the film version of Alita so I understand the comparisons.

Blade Runner as a franchise never did well in theaters, though that's not saying much since it only had two movies in theaters. It did however do decently well on home video and developed a lot of nerd cred over the years as subsequent rereleases of the original film were made to get closer to Ridley Scott's vision. The Final Cut apparently wasn't even made until 25 years after the original film but even that original film which bombed against E.T. in theaters went on to influence countless sci-fi properties and particularly anime like Ghost in the Shell and Bubblegum Crisis. Both films have a lot more critical acclaim than box office success but have reached a decently wide audience through home video and good word of mouth. I'd say throwing money at a Blade Runner anime at least makes more sense than banking on Schenmue or Uzumaki but not by much. I think they're trying to appeal to sci-fi fans and existing fans of the franchise while not straight up alienating their core demographic which mostly likes shounen fantasy anime. To be fair, Ghost in the Shell did well for Adult Swim for many years and while it's been over 15 years since GITS SAC premiered its been able to rerun on the backend with moderate success from time to time. I think a brand new cyberpunk anime could potentially do well for Toonami and it probably doesn't hurt that it's set in the universe of a existing franchise. At least I hope it doesn't. It is not likely essential to watch the original film or the sequel to enjoy Blade Runner: Black Lotus so I hope the fact that it is set in that universe doesn't make viewers avoid it. This is certainly a gamble but nothing ventured nothing gained, as they say. At the very least it will be a dub that is exclusive to Toonami and Toonami probably gets to show it (any version) before any other network or service in the world.

Many have argued it's stranger for Rick & Morty anime shorts to premiere on Toonami but I'm okay with it one way or the other. This one will encore the same Saturday as the Harley Quinn marathon but it will do so in prime time.

They probably reached out to Adult Swim or maybe DeMarco directly because they were aware that AS aired animated music videos.

It’s pretty good looking CG, so I’m a lot less worried now. That recent GITS by the same guys had me really concerned how this would turn out. Story seems interesting enough. I’m all the more excited to see this.

Wearing a mask has help make my allergies quite a bit more tolerable this year. So that’s nice.

Probably Blade Runner but maybe Fena.

Wait what?

My mistake, I was looking at a different Facebook post. The original post still lists an hour premiere.

The Toonami Facebook post mentions a 1 hour premiere. EDIT: Actually the post got edited and no longer mentions that but the ANN article does note the hour premiere. So maybe that plan has already changed, dunno.

So it’s a one hour premiere at midnight.I wonder how the rest of the schedule will look. I’m thinking MHA will actually take that week off due to FUNimation recently taking a week off but we’ll get another premiere at 1:30am or maybe 1am bumping YashaHime to 1:30. Probably MegaloBox or Assassination Classroom. Though airing MHA at 1am or even 11:30 on August 14th isn’t out of the realm of possibility. As AL said, the schedule will be extra long the week before so maybe Toonami will get a proper expansion on August 14th. Or maybe just an earlier start time with shows shifting up.

Probably was a bad idea to mention the strike here but geez that’s overkill. And phooey to whoever snitched.

So Toonami gets to catch up by a week. I call that a win.

Iron Maiden on Toonami. I never expected that but it is pretty rad.

As a bus driver in a city 30 minutes north of Seattle, I think I see more anime shirts and accessories than super hero ones but it’s pretty close.

I was at a department store the other day similar to Kohls and saw MHA, DBZ, Naruto, Bleach and Attack on Titan shirts. Sorry CountFrylock I guess I didn’t pay enough attention to your initial post. I’m also sorry that name dropping the particular user probably brought out the mods wrath. I see things are much the same over there still. I guess it is a bit rude to get a second opinion about your ongoing debate on another public forum but hardly worth an infraction on any kind. If someone snitched on us here, I wonder if they ever found TZWatch? 🤣

So I lurked the Toonami news thread on the site formally known as ToonZone and now see where this conversation originated. Here I had thought CountFrylock was having this discussion with some IRL friend. Well I’m not coming out of TZ retirement to debate with Picard Man over there. He’s allowed his opinion and that opinion is allowed to be misguided. The world has changed since he got out of high school.

I wonder if this will actually be the Adult Swim premiere of Harley Quinn or if they'll maybe toss it on weeknights shortly before this. I suppose that might make the Toonami marathon kind of pointless but I'm at least a little surprised that this would have it's network premiere on Toonami rather than on Sunday or weeknights on Adult Swim.

Your friend seems to be entrenched in the history of stigmatization of anime and is also too hung up on ratings. Both anime and super hero content is way more mainstream now than it was in Toonami's hey day and Naruto Shippuden has been one of the top performing shows on Hulu for like a decade now. Manga is kicking the ass of American comics in graphic novel sales. Some anime are regularly in the top 10 for Netflix and as JMan mentioned all the serious animated series on Netflix are labelled as anime because that marketing works. Sure those DC movies had some of the best ratings Toonami had last year but they were 3 weeks out of an entire year, if they ran DC movies every week they probably wouldn't be as heavily watched because they're not something outside of the norm and last year's Toonami was mostly reruns due to COVID-19 so its not a good way to judge the success of those movies. If Harley Quinn outrates a regular night of Toonami this year then maybe your friend isn't entirely wrong but that remains to be seen. But even then that's judging DC content against just what's on Toonami right now and MHA is the only show on Toonami right now that's a BIG hit aside from DBS and Titan which are reruns that are rightfully buried at 3am. Well there's also Naruto which is still popular but the point is most of the shows after MHA aren't all that popular and Toonami is getting them after they have streamed. But Toonami also doesn't have much in the way of stuff you can't see easier elsewhere so they're kind of missing big hits and hidden gems that can appeal to more people. DC animated films are probably an easier sell than a lot of anime but not stuff like MHA and Dragon Ball Z.

There’s nothing wrong with that.