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A kid-targeted network sometimes premieres things on holiday weekends when kids are expected to be home and available to watch the tv. An adult-targeted network usually doesn't premiere things on holiday weekends when adults are expected to be not home and not available to watch the tv. That makes sense right?

Yeah for early 80s television animation that was quite impressive. ThunderCats was likely a very expensive show to produce back then. It makes He-Man look like such garbage in comparison.

The Road to Hero OVA is sadly not included. Viz may not actually have it.

Not flash games per say but mobile games have diminished people’s interest in owning consoles a fair bit. That’s a closer comparison. On the other hand, movies have lost steam to console games which are like interactive movies.

Considering Robot Chicken's latest premiere only got about 1 million viewers when that show used to easily score twice that much, I'd say the decline is getting even worse.

I immediately thought, "that doesn't look like a cat" but then I remembered that ThunderCats don't look much like cats in either the 80s or 2011 show. I'll just say they look even less like cats than they did before. I also immediately thought the creator looked like a douche. He must be real confident in that man-bun / top-knot to actually be video recorded for a preview while sporting it. That confidence is misplaced. At best this will be stylistically awful but well animated and similar to Star Vs. or Steven Universe and I hope that's the case but I'm leaning toward it being not very well animated or well written and just a disgusting display all around. This is such a slap in the face to the people who supported the 2011 series. 1.4 up to 2 million people were watching that show in premieres on CN. That's hardly nobody. It just didn't sell toys (Bandai put out some real shit) and so help me God if this show DOES sell toys.

Nope there’s another five mins to that one I believe but they’re all pretty short. Between 7 and 15 minutes each. None of those six are a full episode length.

I have the boxset. The OVAs are indeed mostly comedy but there are some action moments. Several focus on particular characters such as Genos, Sonic, Bang and Blizzard. They all got dubbed thankfully. They’re worth seeing IMO and the boxset is worth owning regardless. On the topic of dubs. OPM was dubbed within nine months of the Japanese broadcast. This time it could be done within six months or less. BangZoom can do that. Viz might very well attempt a broadcast dub if they can get BZ to do it. Even Sentai is doing some fast dubs now. Aniplex has done it as well (with BangZoom). So it’s not outlandish to think Viz will try their hand at one. A sequel that’s mostly already cast is easier to do those for than a dub of a new show.

We probably all should at this point. I get the strong impression they really don't matter much at all anymore.

A problem that should have been solved with Blood Blockade Battlefront years ago.

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.