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That’s true of simuldubs and shows they lump in with those despite not being simuldubs (Lupin and Starblazers) but they tend to post shows right before Blu-ray releases in batches. So it’s a bit unusual for a CR dub to go up one episode at a time when the show came out two years ago.

Smart Phone MC is Josh Grelle Death March MC is Justin Briner The Smart Phone dub is the better of the two IMO but Death March has more of a story to it.

I don't think the first season is too old to air still so they ought to go for it.

He might be referring to Mob Psycho 100 which up until now has been difficult to get. I doubt they've given up on getting it and he may be under the impression that people will be psyched to see it finally air but I that's wishful thinking IMO. Plenty of people haven't seen Mob and it might do fine on Toonami but I don't see a ton of people thrilled about it showing up on Toonami right now. Maybe that's my own bias because I could take it or leave it. I would rather see something else that's either newer or more obscure or at least a dub premiere. Mob is getting a second season though so if they could get season 1 on before that, then it's worth doing.

Hulu extended their contract which keeps it out of the running for at least another year. Netflix has never had MHA. Fervor hasn’t died down, there’s a new season airing right now. However, I’ll never completely rule out MHA for Toonami. It might very well end up replacing DBZ Kai if Hulu’s contract doesn’t prevent that. It just doesn’t look likely for this year unless something has changed behind the scenes.

I think literally only MHA qualifies as a big hit they missed in recent years and not for lack of trying. Maybe Mob but it’s nowhere near MHA in popularity or Sailor Moon Crystal I suppose. They tried to get all of those. Is it so outlandish to think that what worked for Gundam and maybe DB didn’t or would not work for other shows? Meanwhile, they got Super as soon as Toei let them, they got One-Punch Man in a timely manner, they got AoT season 2 within weeks of the Japanese broadcast, they got JoJo and Hunter once they were available and eventually Tokyo Ghoul. They were late on Ghoul but they still got it, we’ll see about Re. Black Clover is usually in the top 5 on Crunchyroll and does well on Hulu. They may not get Re:Zero but it wasn’t even available until now. I really wonder how they managed to get One-Punch Man’s dub instead of Hulu but perhaps Viz felt Toonami was the better place for it, HxH and the JoJo dubs. Now if only they’d fork over Tiger & Bunny. Arguably, they try to get too many of the most popular anime and it leaves no room for lesser known stuff. Just imagine if HxH and/or JoJo were options in 2015, they may never have gotten Parasyte. Totally unrelated to the above but I would also love to see Toonami air Megalobox. Perhaps their relationship with TMS (thanks to Lupin) will make that possible.

For some reason VRV and CR have not gotten any season of Tokyo Ghoul. The sub and dub are on FUNimation’s service and Hulu is the only other legal option for the sub of Tokyo Ghoul: Re. Hulu also has the sub and dub of the previous seasons. I have no clue why CR and VRV do not have it but I doubt it has anything to do with potential plans to air it on Toonami since Hulu has it all.

It's probably also the case that One-Punch Man was around before Amazon and Netflix got gung-ho about anime. I mean for Pete sake, One-Punch ended up on Daisuki (also Hulu thanks to Viz) before Viz handed it to Toonami. With DBZ Kai and DBS, Toei wasn't going to settle for just streaming. They wanted Super on a kids network but probably none were interested while Adult Swim could at least offer prime time to appease them. Whoever calls the shots with My Hero Academia seems content with Hulu for the show's wider exposure beyond FUNimation and now CR but I keep thinking they may have flat out not wanted My Hero Academia to air on a block targeting adults when MHA is intended to be for young audiences. Black Clover's producers, on the other hand, passed that over to Adult Swim right quick and until Crunchyroll gets something else onto Toonami I'm going to figure it was TV Tokyo that pushed for that and CR is playing hard to get with Mob Psycho 100 and The Ancient Magus Bride among other shows.

Oreimo references?

Considering they are occasionally outbid for a hit property I gotta ask, do you think it's reasonable for Adult Swim to pay whatever it takes to get shows like My Hero Academia and Sailor Moon Crystal? Considering acquisitions are something they cannot pay off through merchandising, sublicensing and home media putting a ton of money into an acquisition only makes sense if it's a slam dunk like Family Guy or Dragon Ball. They can only use acquisitions to get ratings and potentially prop up their original series with a strong lead-in. Obviously, DBS and DBZ Kai were not cheap but I figure all the 100+ episode series cost quite a bit to acquire and so would some shorter shows like Attack on Titan and One-Punch Man. It's very likely that they could not have afforded their current line-up back in 2014 much less 2013. For a while, they had 8 premieres going, even 9 temporarily. They probably got a great deal on some of those shows but none the less the network had to have been paying a lot to maintain even 7 premieres. I'd say they're definitely spending plenty of money on Toonami outside of original productions. However, having exclusive shows is important and that's why Netflix and Amazon produce anime now and it only makes sense for Toonami to do the same if they want to have exclusive content as well. When most of what is airing on Toonami already simulcast when it aired in Japan there's not much incentive to tune in unless you will only watch dubs and even then several of those dubs are streaming, will be streaming shortly after airing or already streamed legally much less illegally. The more people abandon traditional cable the more people will get their anime fix where it's more convenient and less costly than a cable subscription. Simuldubs and original anime are the best ways to stay relevant in this global market. Simuldubs are great but if there's a production delay (and those happen all the time) its tough to make that work on a weekly television schedule. With an original series or co-production, the network can make sure they'll have a smooth roll-out. I'm sure someone like yourself who dislikes a deviation from your routine would be pretty annoyed if they started a new anime and then had to preempt it a week or two because of a production issue. And the nature of American television where shows often enough will only air a few episodes before getting pulled from the air has cemented the mindset that if a show is not on for even one week much less a few then it's probably not going to air again. So there are some definite hurdles when it comes to airing simuldubs that are not co-productions overseen by the network. Anime fans would prefer a Toonami that's closer to the Japanese season model but acquiring anime is not Adult Swim's primary venture by any stretch so they cannot be expected to pick up a bunch of anime every season like Crunchyroll or Sentai. Though I do wonder if they could potentially license anime directly like Netflix, Crunchyroll, Sentai, FUNimation, Viz Media, etc. I would think that would at least allow them to make money off of the license depending on how the contract is structured. Going way back to 2008, I do believe Cartoon Network licensed Bakugan directly from the Japanese producers. Perhaps one-day Adult Swim will do the same for something that isn't an original co-production but they'll probably stick to either co-funding so they have unlimited usage like with GITS and Dandy or co-producing like with IGPX and FLCL 2/3.

They'd probably double up Super or do something dangus for two weeks than drop 10:30 for just two weeks.

It's probably just moving down because they don't want to shake up more of the schedule and have shows lined up to replace Gundam and JoJo respectively but I can't help but grin at the fact that Black Clover is getting the One Piece treatment. FLCL rerunning at 11:30PM is a bit of a tough pill to swallow and I don't think it will do very well but maybe better than Black Clover. None the less, FLCL is very important to Toonami this year and giving people a visible presentation (ie not after 2AM) of the original is probably a good move. It warms up the audience rather than starting them cold turkey with an abrupt schedule change. FLCL will probably occupy 11:30PM until mid-December between premieres and reruns. We'll see how that pans out.

How about a new season of Attack on Titan?

That could replace Gundam but they could start a show this week or next week so it COULD be ReZero.

Except when it's new Lupin apparently.

I'm not so sure fanservice shows would definitely equal ratings especially since Adult Swim would have to air censored versions of some of the most popular options due to the no nips policy.

You saw an FLCL promo as a YouTube ad?

Kai beat Super every now and then in 2017 while Super was in the movie arcs but it's been quite a while since Kai did that. Viewers seemed to have forsaken Buu Kai. It's holding Super little better than most shows held DBZ Kai. Maybe it's because it's all on Bluray, maybe it's because it's not as nicely remastered as the rest of Kai, maybe it's because the Buu saga has some serious problems that nostalgia is no longer hiding or maybe people have simply moved on to Super and don't care to relive old DBZ as much anymore. Whatever the reason may be, Kai has lost a great deal of its luster with this audience so I rather hope they don't rerun it. But speaking of rerunning things, they may actually intend to rerun Bebop in one slot after the inevitable April Fools stunt that will pre-empt 12AM onward. If they intend to rerun the original FLCL before June 2nd then I could see them double up Bebop on April 7th and drop it back to one episode on April 14th allowing FLCL to take a slot for the 6 weeks before Memorial Day Weekend. I know most folks around here won't be thrilled to see Bebop run again but considering pretty often outrated Outlaw Star and Dandy airing before it in recent months it's not the worst idea to keep it around. It would most likely move to 3:30 when GITS ends. However, I'd definitely prefer a scenario where both Bebop episodes are replaced by something fresh, or at least one of them is new and the other is FLCL.

I think people just wanted to believe the stunt threw off Toonami's groove at the time because it personally pissed them off and they wanted a reason to stay mad about it. However, if you look at the actual numbers it tells a very different story. Jack's momentum definitely didn't get derailed, it maintained a 1.3 million average for the most part. I suppose you could argue it might have done even better if the stunt didn't happen but that's probably not the case. The rest of the line-up didn't see much of difference in the weeks following the stunt either. Things didn't really start turning until double JoJo pre-empted Tokyo Ghoul and Attack on Titan season 2 arrived. Then they got worse when Samurai Jack ended and started rerunning at 11pm (a stupid choice that they rectified but not soon enough). April 1st was obviously a bad night for the ratings but it seems to be an isolated incident as far as the ratings are concerned. March 11th (Jack premieres) 1,552,000 1,251,000 903,000 672,000 569,000 569,000 674,000 657,000 602,000 March 18th 1,300,000 1,054,000 973,000 790,000 679,000 660,000 656,000 587,000 559,000 March 25th 1,352,000 1,066,000 1,074,000 938,000 879,000 805,000 720,000 643,000 499,000 April 1st 949,000 (R&M) 818,000 (R&M) 864,000 (DBZK) 679,000 601,000 593,000 548,000 583,000 492,000 April 8th 1,335,000 1,132,000 1,012,000 783,000 820,000 715,000 576,000 514,000 508,000 April 15th (hasty double JoJo) 1,297,000 1,000,000 924,000 829,000 747,000 687,000 555,000 562,000 510,000 April 23rd (Attack on Titan 2) 1,330,000 991,000 976,000 826,000 712,000 659,000 577,000 547,000 487,000 April 29th 1,302,000 977,000 996,000 808,000 719,000 656,000 575,000 560,000 532,000 Source: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16uNaN6-2tjbFaZDubjeLQjJcudRN6ssacWzyT3L6-l4/edit#gid=723728024

Angry folks on the internet made a stink but there was no actual damage from that stunt outside of the night it happened. Compare the ratings for the weeks before and after. Jack didn’t drop and the rest of Toonami was unaffected.

I don’t see ReZero airing directly after Family Guy as a great idea. It should be at least third in the line-up though.

DeMarco mentioned comedy and horror as something they are looking into during the Pre-Flight Q&A back in late January. Johnson is jumping to conclusions with Slice of Life though. I don’t think we’re ever going to see high school slice of life romantic comedies with no fantasy, horror, action or sci-fi element to them.

They actually said it would air somewhere before the home video release? That’s a pretty huge hint.

Dang man, I got some chills when I realized it was remnants of Ein helping Gally. Also digging the redhead who was talking to Julietta. Pretty sure she was voiced by Karen Straussmen. I also cannot understand for the life of me why Iok’s soldiers are so loyal. That guy is such a twit.

Honestly, I don’t think the quality has been much of a factor and most of what Toonami airs is decent to good and some of it is great. There were stinkers but the polarizing shows usually did well. When the top performer is something as mediocre as Super, quality clearly isn’t dictated by viewership. Toonami shows can’t touch what the block once did mainly because of cord cutting and partially because the general audience won’t latch on to anything but Dragon Ball. Anime fans don’t give a shit about Toonami but not because of the shows it airs (though some say it’s too mainstream and shounen and lacks variety) but rather because Toonami only plays dubs (AoT2 sub piracy to dub piracy was like 10 or more sub to 1 dub), rarely has simuldubs and seems archaic and inconvenient compared to streaming. The rest merely aren’t aware Toonami exists but probably would not watch it even if they did because all that it can air is streaming legally or illegally. Piracy ensures there’s no such thing as an exclusive and a lot of people don’t even realize those sites are piracy and others don’t care if they are. Even when this Toonami creates new fans, they eventually discover other ways to fuel their anime obsession either in addition to Toonami or instead of it. To most anime fans, Toonami is a dinosaur and they could not care less about it and to some it’s only good for nostalgia because fresh anime is easy to watch elsewhere in greater variety but I seriously doubt “better” shows would increase the blocks ratings and general appeal. I mean it’s not impossible but it seems like beyond DBS nothing else matters.