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I’ve been hearing those reports don’t have reliable sources. Though I don’t doubt AT&T is considering that sale, why would they do this right before selling it?

Toonami “powered by Crunchyroll” has come to pass. This could be a sign of things to come, both internationally and in the US. I am very intrigued.

If you're talking about episode 10. Toonami didn't promise to it wouldn't be edited and you probably thank me for informing them that the content was gross (I told Jason on ask.fm and suggested that airing that episode before the premiere of The Promised Neverland wasn't a good idea). They didn't even censor it in the flashbacks because they probably were not aware of it.

Toonami could be like Toonami Jetstream again if anyone with money believed that was even worth perusing.

I don’t think any other company is all that interested in owning the Toonami brand, TOM and Sara. Maybe Crunchyroll or Viz if anyone. The online future I could see for Toonami is a subsection of HBO Max.

You might chock that up to the simple matter that Toonami as is doesn't make a whole lot of sense in the streaming era where more and more people are ditching cable. It's great tat Adult Swim and even WarnerMedia see's the block as worth airing but the moment they decide HBO Max, Crunchyroll or something else suffices for scratching their anime itch, Adult Swim could unceremoniously pull the block off the air. I don't live in fear of this happening but I accept the reality that it could happen on a whim. We literally have no idea how long Toonami could last in the current climate, hell we have no idea how long Adult Swim or Cartoon Network the channel can last in the current TV climate. As Spike said, whatever happens, happens. That said, I think WarnerMedia will at least see how the 3 upcoming originals pan out for Toonami and Adult Swim before they consider cutting their losses.

Hard to say whether that would be better or worse for Toonami’s future. But the CR section of HBO Max could easily be relabeled as Toonami if CR is sold to Sony.

DC Universe seems as good as dead with all the layoffs they just had. They could certainly restructure to being a fan hub that focuses on the digital comics library and fork over all the TV series and films to HBO Max. Adult Swim continues to do good business but CN as a network has been struggling in the streaming age. Toonami could be in for some changes as more layoffs occur at WarnerMedia but I kind of doubt the staff will see a big shakeup unless they are layoffs specifically at Adult Swim in the on-air department.

Huh... I didn't see Milky as a Lupin reference but maybe he was one.

I tend to feel a bit conflicted over whether or not I think DeMarco is the right guy to run Toonami. On one hand I believe his years of experience working in television means he's more than qualified and he far better understands what the network wants out of Toonami than any of the armchair quarterbacks. On the other hand I do feel he often lets his personal tastes dictate what Toonami does and doesn't air and that can be to the block's detriment. At the end of the day it is his block so I don't really fault him for airing what he wants most of the time but when they rarely air anything that isn't a JUMP series or what folks have deemed "old man DeMarco picks", its a little hard to dismiss that critique entirely. We have no idea what 5-10+ year old anime were not picked up for Toonami due to licensing complications but things worked out for Gundam, Lupin and recently Paranoia Agent. The fact that those three "old man picks" did air while so many other anime didn't, does makes me question whether or not various shows were passed over simply because DeMarco was unaware of them or didn't fight to acquire them when they were available. He negotiated with Sunrise and TMS directly for Gundam and Lupin respectively so that might be the biggest reason why he was able to get those franchises back on US television. That likely never would have happened if DeMarco didn't make the effort to secure those deals. I don't believe DeMarco is oblivious to modern anime but he doesn't seem to pay attention to very much of it. I do not expect DeMarco to know about all 40 something shows that are airing in Japan every season (less currently due to COVID-19 but still more than 20) but I feel it does Toonami a disservice if he's not aware of numerous anime that would fit Toonami. It really seems like if a distributor doesn't push for a show to air and its not one of his "old man picks" then any show will be hard-pressed to get on to Toonami. On top of that, these anime distributors are usually more than content with just streaming anime, unless the Japanese companies push for a TV airing. That's likely another reason why we see so many JUMP anime (aside from popularity), those are the kinds of shows that Japanese companies want to air on television. 4chan has a faction of probably racist and sexist good old boys who think DeMarco is a soy boy feminist who is pro man-service and anti-fan service. Their opinions of the man are laughable and should be ignored. Food Wars and Fire Force should be proof enough that Toonami will air shows that are heavy on fan service if they're deemed worth airing. So I don't personally want to subscribe to the though that something like KonoSuba won't air because of T&A but I do subscribe to the opinion that it won't air because DeMarco probably has not seen it. I've been requesting that show for years now and it is frustrating to feel like suggestions I am very passionate about are falling on deaf ears. So I can at least understand the frustration that other people feel when they request various shows that are not even considered for airing due to preferences of just three people. Supposedly, Toonami shows are picked by DeMarco, Austin and Manning. I can't help but feel like they need an intern or someone to keep tabs on seasonal anime and what series and genres are popular in the west. It seems like an additional opinion or two in the mix could help Toonami be a better rounded experience. I'd much rather see that than to have Crunchyroll swoop in take over.

True but I think in the context of Batman returning to Toonami "still wear black" would be more appropriate. Anyhoo, we got a 30 second promo for Year One and a full minute promo for The Dark Knight Returns Part 1. Very nice!

Ah come on, TOM didn't even use the "good guys still wear black" tag line for a Batman promo. I hope this isn't the only promo they make for these movies.

Another week, another Black Clover. Very good.

Young Justice obviously. Though I wonder how HD Batman: TAS, Justice League or Batman Beyond might do.

It could go either way. The two weeks off has put them in the position to either run a LBW marathon and finish JoJo on October 31st or run the regular lineup on LBW so they can finish JoJo on October 24th and be able to start a new show and Fire Force season 2 the weekend after Halloween. They can also run marathons on LBW and Halloween, leaving the final episode of Golden Wind for the first Saturday in November. I think given the current state of things they will forego a LBW marathon and do a Halloween night marathon but that would mean starting another show (probably a rerun) on LBW. Ballmastrz will finish on August 29th. If it’s a rerun, they probably won’t be hesitant to start a show that weekend. But it seems equally likely that they’ll do a LBW marathon to buy another week for Black Clover and Fire Force season 2. And then they can still choose wether or not to have a marathon on Halloween night.

Let’s be real. They are probably (wisely) going to put off starting Fire Force season 2 until November. But I suppose a week or two with double FF reruns could also happen. JoJo won’t finish until October 24th or 31st or November 7th depending on LBW and Halloween marathons.

DBS on managed 0.18 so JoJo getting 0.17 is good retention but it’s still yikes across the board. Perhaps two weeks of Batman double features will convince WarnerMedia that Toonami needs a DC show as its headliner.

That helps but I don't think it will be enough for them be able to continue Black Clover without any additional multi-week breaks.

They likely needed to be behind Japan a few weeks so they had materials for dubbing and now can dub 2-3 episodes a month. Maybe consistently 3 a month. Definitely not just 1 a month.

I guess a reasonable expectation would be... SAO WoU Part 2 and Fire Force season 2 both start on October 24th. SAO is replaced by Mob season 2 or something else early in 2021 while Fire Force continues another 13 weeks. Then both Fire Force and SAO's replacement could be replaced by season 2 of Neverland and Dr. Stone respectively. At some point Clover probably has to take a break for 6-12 weeks before it can continue airing without another break. It probably won't be replaced by anything new so Toonami would be down to 3 premieres temporarily. If Yasha-Hime does indeed start airing in Japan this Fall, it could probably start airing on Toonami in Spring of 2021 maybe sooner if Ocean Group can dub it quickly over in Canada (I certainly hope they don't switch recording studios). That show might actually end up being a long runner. By the end of the year they might actually be up to 5-6 premieres again if they get Bleach's final season and either Blade Runner or Fena are ready to air. And I'm just gonna plant this thought now. September 2021 will be the 20th anniversary for Adult Swim and also the 20th anniversary of the broadcast of Cowboy Bebop. I've gotta figure they wouldn't pass up that opportunity to run Bebop again but just around 2:30 or 3am. Even if they do that they can still fill 5-6 slots with premieres by September. But with COVID-19 around a 3 month turnaround for Neverland and Dr. Stone may not be in the cards. The start of 2021 will probably be better than now but far from great. But they should be able to build from there. Unfortunately they're all but certain to keep DBS leading off Toonami until it reaches episode 131 again. At the rate of once a week with some weeks off, that's gonna last into next Summer. However, if they have a large enough budget they could potentially expand Toonami so DBS is back to 11:30pm and free up 12AM for fresh content. I definitely hope we don't have to wait until October for new episodes of anything other than JoJo, BC and Shippuden but that is likely all we're gonna get unless Toonami was actually planning to start a new show whenever Black Clover needs to take a break or when Ballmastrz finishes. Fire Force will be at 1am for now but since it's a rerun they can always move it to 1:30 and either demote JoJo or place a fresh show at 1am. But I kinda figure if they had something else coming it would have replaced Mob or Paranoia Agent in August. That's still not out of the realm of possibilities but I think we'd be deluding ourselves if we actually expect Ballmastrz or Black Clover to be replaced by a network premiere. But yeah, 2021 should be much better than 2020 and maybe even better than 2018 if they have the money for the sequel seasons and still have some left over for other acquisitions.

Bare in mind, no JoJo and maybe no Food Wars or Mob. It will definitely be better than most of this year but basically the only non-sequels look to be the co-pros and I don’t think all 3 will air in 2021 at this rate. BRBL definitely seems far off when they are only showing two screen shots so far. I think Fena will air because it looks to have some finished animation if that wasn’t just test footage like Uzumaki’s trailer was. Bleach and Shaman King are hardly guaranteed to be dubbed any time next year. I also don’t expect more than 4 premieres at a time. Maybe 5 when originals are airing but unless they get a nice budget increase they might not even be able to afford all the upcoming sequels.

With the pandemic being far from done in the US. I’m pretty confident Toonami will remain very lean in 2021. Neverland, Titan and Dr Stone and more MHA are pretty much assured along with Uzumaki (probably in March or Summer), Fena (Summer or Fall) and BRBL (Fall if not 2022). DBS is likely to keep the top spot until Summer. I strongly suspect Yasha-Hime will start airing early in 2021 and Bleach might start airing by Fall of 2021. Maybe they’ll get the 2021 Shaman King anime as well but I don’t see them acquiring much else. I’m optimistic that Mob season 2 will air in 2021 and Food Wars could also return. 2021 is gonna be sequel city.

If they already spent most of the years budget on just SAO and Fire Force, then they really have no choice but to air reruns until they can start airing the dubs they already made deals for. They ain’t got no money. And it really sucks because if they had budget to spare they could have filled the block with shows that were bound to be passed over for the upcoming seasons of Attack on Titan, Dr. Stone, The Promised Neverland (all delayed till 2021 but originally set for 2020) and the currently airing seasons of SAO and Fire Force. It would have been a great year to air KonoSuba, Blood Blockade Battlefront, Gridman, ReZero or much older anime like Tiger & Bunny, Psycho-Pass, Jormungand, Log Horizon. Some of which have sequels coming. But nope, they ain’t got no money. So it’s reruns and one show returning from the glory days of ASA.

Even if those companies did want their 2010 shows on Toonami, they probably have minimum expectations to meet for the Japanese production committee (let’s use JPC for short) to be satisfied. And streaming services bid higher than Toonami is willing to for most series. Streaming is where the money is now and JPC really only ever push for bread and butter shounen and toyetic anime to get a TV broadcast these days. DeMarco and Manning had to negotiate directly with TMS and Sunrise for Lupin and Gundam respectively. I’m not so sure anime streamers necessarily even have the TV rights to several of their catalog titles. FUNimation and Viz probably do but I don’t know about Sentai. Sentai doesn’t even have the streaming rights to some anime they sub-license. Discotek and RightStuf usually don’t buy the TV rights and often don’t even maintain the streaming rights to the shows they publish here. CR is possibly the biggest question. I’m inclined to think they usually don’t obtain the TV rights and even when they do have them, I would bet they have to answer to the JPC regarding any TV deals. I even suspect CR isn’t free to do whatever the CR co-pros because they are only part of the production committee and not the sole owner. Basically, due to business bullshit it’s going to be rare for anyone to give Toonami a sweet deal on any anime, even 10+ year old obscure ones. But I also doubt that DeMarco, Austin and Manning usually dig deep when they have an opening to fill. So there are probably still plenty of budget friendly anime that they haven’t looked into. And they probably are of the mindset that newer shows will do better more often than not. I would argue less visible shows that have been buried in the sea of anime from 5-10 years ago could potentially do better than a popular show that recently streamed dubbed. It certainly worked for Michiko & Hatchin in 2015 though much has changed in 5 years. If a dub exists in it’s entirety on Netflix, Hulu or a dedicated anime service then you can’t really expect people to have much desire to watch that same show at the pace of one episode a week. That’s why dub premieres are crucial for Toonami and not being a whole season behind a simuldub is preferable as well. Toonami can still shed some light on more obscure anime though and I think they should.

JoJo is supposedly done recording the remaining 10 episodes. It was all done from home. Netflix released a few complete seasons dubbed from home. CR has finished dubbing Tower of God, My Life as a Villainous and Iruma-kun from home. Debatably both CR and Netflix are getting shows dubbed faster than FUNimation. I have every reason to believe WoU will finish being dubbed using the home method. But I don’t think they started dubbing it quite yet. FUNimation dubs a lot more shows than CR or Netflix on average and at the point COVID-19 hit, was in the middle of dubbing more than a dozen series simultaneously. They had to scale that back to a few and then a handful and now have increased that output. They prioritized MHA immediately and then seemed to finish out Winter season shows with smaller casts and started Fruits Basket as the Spring season began. They seemingly stopped dubbing Black Clover for a while, probably because it was taking a production break in Japan but in the past two months they prioritized Clover while trying to finish out more Winter anime and release more Fruits Basket. Railgun also got prioritized during that time. They dubbed two episodes of Fire Force early but then it took three weeks for the 3rd episode. FF will no doubt be a priority now along with Fruits Basket and Black Clover. Aside from continuously dubbing those three and releasing episodes as often as they can (roughly 2-3 a month) they look to be trying to dub an additional 3-5 finished seasons that we’re partially completed before COVID-19 hit. Obviously they try to prioritize their most popular series but they don’t want to leave the rest entirely by the wayside until they can dub in the studio again. I think they are doing an admiral job balancing big and small titles but they simply have a lot more to do than CR or Netflix so they don’t seem as efficient with dubbing from home. The smaller workload makes all the difference. Now that Tower if God is finished, CR will probably be dubbing God of High School and maybe ReZero season 2. Meanwhile, FUNimation hasn’t quite finished every dub that started in Winter but they are close. Some shows continued into Spring. They just started dubbing Love is War season 2 which Simulcast during the Spring season. I think they are dubbing Clover, Fruits Basket and Fire Force just about as quickly as they can due the size of their casts and how much more work balancing the sound of 20 or more home studios is compared to using the same booth. That process probably could not be sped up even if FUNi limited themselves to only dubbing those three series. You can see the full list of what they dubbed and when those episodes were released. They actually released about 10 episodes last week and will release 7 between yesterday and Friday. https://www.funimation.com/blog/2020/04/25/dub-from-home-the-latest-news-on-simuldubs-my-hero-academia-black-clover/ Toonami is indeed rerunning Fire Force ep 15-24 starting next week. It replaces Mob at 1am. One rerun for another. Them’s the breaks. We very well might not see an additional premiere until October unless SAO is ready in time to replace Ballmastrz or Black Clover. I’m really starting to doubt there will be another new show this year aside from FF season 2 and SAO WoU. I’d like to think their budget has enough funds for at least 1-2 more shows that are new to the network but it’s looking increasingly less likely. Black Clover and Shippuden were the only long series they would have had to renew using part of the 2020 budget. 52 episodes of those two, 23 episodes of SAO, 24 episodes of Fire Force, 13 episodes of Paranoia Agent and maybe 13 episodes of Food Wars can’t possibly be all they were able to afford. That’s not much even compared to 2018 much less 2019. But at this point, saving budget for a couple of shows that will start late in 2020 and carry a few months into 2021 would probably be wise. Makes ya wonder how things might have turned out if there wasn’t a global pandemic. MHA would have finished sooner, JoJo would be nearly over, Fire Force season 2 would probably already be airing, Clover would have kept on trucking and SAO would be on soon but what else? They still probably would have crawled back to DBS after MHA ended. Did AT&T screw them badly enough that even without a pandemic they would not have had more than 4-5 premieres right now? It definitely looks that way. AT&T and WarnerMedia and Adult Swim itself have plenty of money but they do not seem to be letting Toonami use very much of it for acquisitions right now. It seems like Toonami’s acquisition budget is getting screwed because it is a much lower priority than original productions, co-pros and acquisitions for other platforms. With 3 million subscribers, Crunchyroll dwarfs Toonami in the revenue department. So they can afford to produce several original series and also license several more anime each season. That said, CR’s pretty lackluster offerings on HBO Max still makes me think they would run a lower quality block than DeMarco usually does.