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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.

Suits is freak’n great but it’s a shame about Mr. Robot

I would not say he’s evil. He’s certainly eccentric and flamboyant but I don’t recall him being predatory. I do want to see ReZero’s dub premiere on Toonami and the timeline works. The question that remains is if it is on their radar.

As long as nothing airing after Black Clover beats it they probably won't even move it later unless they get a big show to air at 11:30pm. That's just how it goes.

Honestly, though... HxH, Stardust Crusaders and Gundam IBO are written for young viewers and just hide that fact behind some particularly violent moments. The violence in JoJo is particularly ridiculously over the top. Blood spray happens from the tiniest scratch and the characters are usually fine after what looks like a deadly wound. Chimera Ant can be disturbing but is it that much worse than how Cell ate people? It's taken more seriously and with good reason but it's not like we saw the queen eat the kids we just know full well she did it. Gundam is violent because war is violent but violence alone doesn't make something mature. IBO is probably at least more mature than HxH and JoJo and leagues beyond Dragon Ball Super but it's still not really seinin material. For the record I don't think Deadman Wonderland, Akame ga Kill or Attack on Titan are actually any more mature than those shows and they're ridiculously over the top with their violence as well. They are after all still shounen. Cowboy Bebop, Ghost in the Shell, Black Lagoon, Michiko & Hatchin, Dandy, Champloo, Lupin, One-Punch Man, Parasyte and to a lesser extend Hellsing Ultimate and Tokyo Ghoul are the shows that aren't just extremely violent or edgy shounen but actually deal with adult situations, characters with complex motivations or adults dealing with every day adult problems. Attack on Titan and Gundam can border on that when they get into philosophy, politics and war but they stay very entrenched in the concept of a young hero coming of age and fighting for whatever he believes in. In the case of Gundam it's all about idealistic protagonists who think they know better than adults and that's honestly pretty grating at this point. The coming of age story appeals to adults who want to remember youth but those who crave stories that are more relatable to adults tire of the shounen formula. Shounen is however without question the most popular genre of anime in America and plenty of adults enjoy shounen anime. For better or worse, Toonami has incorporated a lot of what made it appealing to young viewers into the current block on Adult Swim. 10 years ago, DBZ airing on Adult Swim would seem unthinkable but now it's one of their top performing acquisitions. Shows like Black Clover which don't even have the kind of grit Hunter x Hunter and JoJo have only made this more apparent. My Hero Academia would cement it even further and that's one reason I'd be totally okay with Toonami never airing it despite how good a show it can be. So while I think Zeni is exaggerating things, Toonami does have a real problem with how teen-centric it has become. That's why Lupin was a breath of fresh air. It focused on adults in adult situations and while it was pretty zany a lot of the time it was still relatable to adults in ways shounen anime are not. So I dearly hope they continue to air at least one new adult-centric anime at a time whenever possible if not more than one given they run 5.5 hours.

I never thought I'd actually suggest they move Naruto toward the front but I honestly think Shippuden would hold DBZ Kai better than Black Clover and with Toonami starting earlier they can feasibly air Naruto Shippuden early without pushing new content into the 2am hour. DBZ audiences don't seem to take to Black Clover but Naruto could serve as a bridge.

I fully except Outlaw Star to be replaced by whatever was going to replace Lupin unless they actually expand the block again instead of waiting until OS will end in March. Of course, Black Clover wasn't actually the intended replacement for Lupin but if the amount of premieres is the concern, we're back to what we had in November. So it's not much of a setback. Dandy is wedged between Outlaw Star and Cowboy Bebop, keeping all the reruns in the back of the block where they should be.

I like Starblazers but that show wouldn’t do any better than Gundam. I still kinda hope they play it though.

Dandy will be at 2:30, it’s not in the middle of new content. It’s not even before Outlaw Star. Opinions on Black Clover aside, it was just added, temporarily taking premieres from 7 or 8 (if you count OS) to 9. Lupin leaves and it’s back to 7 or 8 but there’s 7 premieres before 2am. Remember when Toonami had 6 at the most and two were or three were after 2am? 7 is quite generous and when OS ends it will definitely be 8. So you’re saying 8 isn’t enough? Give me a break. Whether you like all those shows or not that’s a lot of new content to be airing at a time and more than we had in 2016 or 2015 or even most of 2014 much less before that. If you’re focused on checks and balances then consider Black Clover to be Lupin’s early replacement.

It's all a relative scale. When the block got cut, comedy on Saturday was capable of far better ratings in the pre-Toonami hours. That's simply no longer the case for a number of reasons but mainly cord-cutting.

This is one of the few good things to come out of someone other than FUNimation getting One Piece initially. If they had gotten One Piece back around when this test dub was made it wouldn't be anywhere near as polished as the dub was in 2007 and beyond. We'd probably still be hearing Eric Vale as Luffy if Toei approved that test dub. I can't even imagine Vale pulling off most of Luffy's most memorable scenes using that voice. At best the dub would have improved like DBZ's has but it would probably still have some leftover casting, terminology and dub quirks from 2003-era FUNimation like DBZ still does. In the end, while One Piece may have lost its chance at being a bigger name here we get a much better English adaptation out of it.

I'd figure Toei doesn't want Dragon Ball series on Netflix because they don't want Netflix holding a streaming contract to something they can get onto TV. I'm pretty dang sure they held out on streaming DBS until they were sure no kid's network was going to play it.

ShowBuzzDaily's chart only shows premieres and AoT was all reruns. For Toonami in particular because most of it is premieres they include the ratings of most of the shows on that chart and then everything else except the Super encore tends to be added to the paragraph above the chart but on holiday weekends with marathons they sometimes don't list anything.

The irony of this episode title

This false equivalency here is just too much. Because nobody should be arguing that if they wont play premieres on a holiday weekend that they shouldn't air Toonami at all. Perhaps look at this way, they're willing to fall on their swords for Toonami to exist but playing it on certain weekends of the year where they have years of data to prove they wont get desirable results is a bridge too far. It's a bigger waste than spending money on Toonami in general.

That's going quite far. While I think it's unnecessary to do this when 4th of July is Tuesday, the "people will take off Monday and have a 4 day weekend" argument does hold water. Sucks that Lupin is gonna only air two episodes before this preemption but it's already at 2AM so they're pretty much just playing it for the hell of it anyway. Glad it's not a marathon of recent Super, recent DBZ Kai or *shudders* Tokyo Ghoul. Maybe a binge session of all of the currently dubbed AoT season 2 episodes can jump start interest for that show. Maybe we have too many government recognized holidays