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Overall a great line-up. It's a bit cold to move Neverland to 2am but it's not a good adaption anyway. Though for consistency I would have opted to move Food Wars to 2am and leave Neverland at 1:30. It's not a big jump regardless. I'm thrilled to have Dr. Stone back and having it air right next to MHA. But you know... that fark'n Dragon Ball Super rerun just sucks the life out of any good change the block makes.

Yeah this probably isn’t at least mostly Jason’s decision. AS programming decides the schedule and contracts often dictate when shows can air. AS schedules are a bunch of stubborn nimrods though and Jason will defend anything they do.

Oh man... they’ll probably recast Haru too.

Landon McDonald actually sounds a lot like Vic and took over for Rohan and a character in Bungo Stray Dogs, I also think Xander Mobus can do similar voices to Vic's but FUNimation's go to Vic replacement seems to only be Johnny Yong Bosch. He took over for Broly and Sabo and now he's filling in a Scythe as well. I wonder if Vic gave Johnny his blessing for taking all his FUNimation roles or something or if the directors at FUNi just think he's a good substitute. Johnny certainly has notoriety and that's one reason why Vic got the roles he did so perhaps they feel it's an "equivalent exchange". Now just imagine Johnny returning as Ichigo but also taking over Ikkaku in Bleach. Yeah... probably not gonna happen but it'd be interesting. Xander would be a good choice for Ikkaku though. Regarding the first segment of the episode: I appreciate we're getting a chance to see how recent revelations for Company 8 affect Iris. It only makes sense for her to have a crisis of faith after finding out the Holy Sol Temple was created by one of the White Clad. But that one guy from Company 1 made a good point about what they're really putting their faith in. It was also good to hear Shinra talk about how difficult it is for him to put infernals to rest but he's grateful that he hasn't become numb to it. And they juxtapose that thoughtful segment with Assault's special training to defeat Tamaki. That was certainly a choice. I do appreciate that they show a goofy side to many of the members of the White Clad but not so much that the group loses it's threatening aura.

This isn't the first time Warner has attempted to reboot ThunderCats as a movie. I remember that old screen test. I'm more than a little bit concerned that this is also the guy who directed Netflix's Death Note movie but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

That'sa nice! I do not tolerate this Gridman slander and count me among the people who feel physically pained by how well GXP is ranked.

I dunno about that. The visuals for OPM season 2 were a huge let down but the story was basically there. Tokyo Ghoul Root A is fair comparison here but I have to say I managed to get more out of Root A then I've gotten out of the 2nd anime season of The Promised Neverland and that's a dang shame because the first season was great. If you thought they stood around and talked a lot in season one, season two take that to a whole different level. There's a bunch of scenes where they kids are just standing around as something is explained to them where in the manga the reader was treated to a depiction of what they're talking about. So it's pretty dull even when the story takes interesting turns. On top of that the anime by-passes what a lot of people consider to be the best arc of the whole story and that's just a waste. And the viewers won't even see the disappointment coming because the first few episodes are thrilling. So I expect plenty of people will watch the first episode and be like "oh people didn't know what they were talking about, this is good" but they'll see soon enough that the anime is writing checks it can't cash.

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.