Sketch

That was KaggyFilms he's in quite a few FUNimation dubs.

I dunno, I thought Popuko blatantly choosing not to give back the pendant was kinda funny.

Ya gotta start somewhere.

Yes let's make Luffy into Captain Jack Sparrow, brilliant. But back on the topic of Pop Team Epic, I eagerly anticipate the general audience's reaction to it.

Theoretically, Jinyu is the part of the original Haruko with reservations while this Haruko aka Raharu is all the evil.

After I heard that Kim Manning likes Pop Team Epic a lot, I was pretty darn sure it was coming, and here we are. I enjoyed it, though the built-in rerun can get grating even with the minor differences to some scenes and different voice casts. That's definitely going to test the attention of the Toonami audience. It would feel appropriate on the comedy block. I kind of wish it was there but Toonami is intentionally trying something out of their action box with this one. I welcome the experiment but I don't have high hopes it's going to be a surprise hit. It will hopefully hold FLCL Progressive just fine. More importantly, DBZ Kai is leaving and we'll finally get to see if Buu Kai was more of a blessing or a curse for the rest of Toonami.

I think it’s fair to say that the idea of a sequel for FLCL wasn’t on a tremendous amount of fan’s minds before it was announced but there’s plenty of FLCL fans that are interested in seeing a sequel. Two years ago this probably would have broke a million after DBZ Kai. Things are considerably lower now all around. But it would not do as well as Jack. FLCL is much more niche than Jack and DBZ.

I would have to imagine the front end will shrink before the back end. It's just easier to keep anime reruns on at 3AM than return that time to comedy. At this point it would probably be a good idea to shift to 11pm, it's not like they're even making use of the earlier time to premiere FLCL Progressive before midnight. If they do that and drop DBZ, it's probably going to help at least a bit. 10:30 is an odd time to start anyway. That said there's still part of me that feels like cable decline remains the biggest factor here and the problem isn't the shows themselves. FLCL Progressive holds MHA pretty darn well so far. There's always been a sizable gap after DBZ Kai, the only thing that really changed is Kai used to hold Super well and even beat it but now it's holding it no better than most shows held Kai. While I can't say I honestly believe any other show would hold Super better short of maybe One-Punch Man season 2 (if that) I do think by eliminating Kai they would only have one large gap again and things would "settle" a half hour earlier and retention would improve because of that. It seems kind of ridiculous that DBZ Kai and One-Punch Man could do so well at midnight and other shows are nowhere near that level at midnight or even 11:30pm. The argument that it's all because of the Dragon Ball hour would make more sense if Toonami started at midnight or even 11:30pm but it starts at 10:30pm and the first non-DB show is at 11:30pm. That's not 1am, it's not that late on a Saturday. People used to stay up much later for their non-DB fix but that no longer seems to be the case. If the problem is the shows I think the main issue there is much of the line-up aren't shows you can simply jump into anymore. JoJo has been on off and on since late 2016, HxH has been on since mid 2016, DBZ has been on since late 2014 and Shippuden has been on since the start of 2014. On top of that, the latest Gundam series were a direct sequel to IBO season 1 which aired in 2016 and a series that is fully entrenched in the UC timeline. To watch Toonami now practically requires you to have at least been watching regularly since 2016. If you fell off any of those shows then you have to catch up through other means and once you do that, why even go back to Toonami unless you really love the group watch aspect and the community? They were wise to push Naruto and One Piece to the 2am hour when they did. It allowed newer or fresher shows their time to shine but when your newest attractions are buried behind glorified reruns people won't notice them even if they are promoted. DBS should be a tool used to draw viewers to other shows but it hasn't really been used for that purpose and it's looking like it won't be unless they separate it from DBZ Kai by July.

You could always look these things up if you're ever skeptical. https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2018-06-02/toonami-delays-flcl-progressive-flcl-alternative-anime-english-subtitled-version-to-november/.132387

I must retract my prior statements about them not getting ads onto Crunchyroll. Glad to hear they play at least once per episode. Was it the general promo or an episode promo? I'm watching an older GGO episode to see for myself since I got behind on it recently.

They did? That's fantastic!

I think if it's on the same network it doesn't cost anything but it is foregoing valuable ad-space. For Adult Swim to promote a show on a different Turner network during a huge sporting event, that would cost a lot of marketing money. You might chock that up to lack of synergy at Time Warner and Turner but I suspect that's how it goes.

And I'm sure they expected good things from it. The timing was bad. Waiting until DBZ Kai or JoJo ended would have been better but if they needed to shuffle for MHA I think they should have kept FLCL at 11:30 and put MHA at midnight. I realize that would tick off some people but it was only 3 weeks before FLCL Progressive. Otherwise, they could have moved MHA to midnight last Saturday and used the marathon week as a buffer for the change-over. Maybe FLCL wouldn't have done any better after DBZ Kai but the new season should have at least been given that chance.

Honestly, I don't think people will be talking about Devil Man Crybaby for much longer but it probably would have gone over about as well as Space Dandy if it aired on Toonami (obviously not as it is because dang they can't show that uncensored). And more to the point, people are only talking about Devilman and Aggretsuko and the other Netflix original anime didn't create much buzz, including that Godzilla movie. FLCL Progressive going straight to Netflix probably would have done well by name alone if it got on the front page but would be forgotten even faster. It clearly has made some waves given it's keeping up with new episodes of Family Guy and Archer on iTunes and currently the #3 show in animation. Which goes to show there are other was of Toonami getting their money's worth from an original but it also speaks to the fact that (as we all know) television isn't what it used to be and while linear TV is far from dead the "watch anywhere" method is definitely on the rise. Turner seems intent to ride that train even if Adult Swim will continue to focus primarily on the linear broadcast.

Turner networks got the NBA Play-Offs and there was a game last Monday (I think) which had 14 million viewers. During that game, an FLCL promo aired. Clearly it didn't do much good and likely cost more than the billboards because that's mad valuable ad space.

They definitely should advertise on CR and Hulu and more on YouTube than they already do. I swear I saw the FLCL 2/3 trailer on YouTube as an ad at least once more than a month ago but nothing since. Instead of throwing a ton of money out to put an ad on during an NBA playoff they should have spent that money on more internet ads. They'll get 1 or 2 other shows at the minimum but one is probably Attack on Titan season 3.

It definitely has but I try not to let other people's opinions negatively affect my own. I just have come to some (SOME) of the same conclusions as more vocal pessimists. Took me a while but the shounen onslaught has finally worn me down on the variety issue as well as the "this is past it's prime so don't play it" issue. There are other things but it's mainly that I've grown increasingly more bored with Toonami despite the good shows it plays. I'm not unfaithful yet but I might get there if I don't just stop caring in general. If you wanna hear me get just about as savage about AS era Toonami and FLCL as I ever have watch this. Conversation starts around 18 minutes in. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/269909300

It was me. I'm the Sketch on Toonami Faithful and Sketch1984 on Twitter. It was a bit savage, sorry. FLCL Progressive didn't do so bad by the current standards, arguably it did well. It's doing great on iTunes and it had strong demos. Hard to ignore it not even getting 600,000 total viewers but the demos matter way more and it's not really it's fault. The schedule screwed it over. FLCL held MHA great but before that DBZ lost big from DBS and MHA lost even more from DBZ. They didn't plan this well in the end. If you put a world premiere behind two glorified reruns, you can't expect much. So I hope they're satisfied. Daos, they really don't know MHA is on Toonami? Huh. It does get promos every week. Where do you think it could be advertised where they would have noticed it?

Though based on what the scene in the ED seems to imply, that Haruko isn't exactly the Haruko of the first series. It seems like she and Jinyu are either halves of the original Haruko or Haruko has changed some from trying to take the power of ATOMSK. That's my speculation anyway.

How dare you call either of them horrible moms, especially Izuku's mom. She's such a good mom.

There certainly were people who did want more FLCL. The enthusiasm they are getting at the panels speaks to that. There's also people who never thought they wanted more but are looking forward to the sequels now that they're a reality. They don't expect to make money off it and don't place all the blame on DeMarco if it ends up being a bad call, Mike Lazzo has been pushing for more FLCL since the get go. In all likelihood, if Adult Swim hadn't gone after it someone else would have. That could have been far worse.

There’s no doubt in my mind that there won’t be a DBZ Kai finale marathon on June 30th. It lines up just right.

I have to be very enthralled with a show to watch more than a few episodes at a time. I enjoy a binging session sometimes but I don’t like doing them often. I feel like I’m spending too much time on one show that day. Back when TFP was weekly I loved having a week off. The only beef I have with marathons is there’s so many in the last quarter that it makes starting a new show problematic. One week off every 3-6 months is fine. One week off every month for four months is annoying but that’s the nature of our holidays. I think it’s irresponsible to run 7 premieres on a holiday weekend but they could probably run 2-3 before a marathon. That said the ratings are getting so low that they probably don’t need to avoid airing premieres on most holiday weekends (avoid the last two weeks of the year for sure). There’s probably 6-7 weeks any given year that does as bad or worse than a marathon week. That said, if an off week 6-7 weeks in a year legitimately angers you, it’s time to reassess your priorities. Toonami doesn’t have to be your only source of anime if it even is.

Are those all prime time on Monday or Sunday? People will have Monday off but work on Tuesday so they won't go out drinking Monday night, they'd do that on Friday, Saturday and maybe Sunday. If they went out of town they'd leave Friday and come back by Sunday or Monday night. Sports events are their own beast.

They happen 6-7 weeks a year. It hasn't gotten to be more than that and it most likely never will. That means 45-46 weeks of the year there's a regular schedule. Considering Toonami runs more than 6 network premieres a week at this point, it's pretty reasonable for them to take 6-7 weeks off a year as not to waste those premieres on nights when less people are expected to be watching. This is the first marathon they've done this year, aka the first since December. I realize there are going to be 5 or 6 more this year but this isn't the week to start complaining about an excess of marathons. Save that for the 4th quarter of the year when most of them happen. They're not going to happen more frequently and they probably won't cause more people to leave in favor of streaming. At the end of the day if people want to see dubbed Hunter x Hunter or JoJo or Dragon Ball Super or they want to see the other dubs and not pay for more than one streaming service then they'll watch Toonami or pirate stuff after it airs on Toonami.