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Well that would be horrendous Seems I got close with my 8pm Super prediction but am way off for the rest. I get the feeling nothing on AS that night cracked 0.8 18-49 or 1.6 million viewers but we'll see how Family Guy and 11:30 Super did.

Here's my estimated predictions for Saturday's ratings Dragon Ball Super Premiere 0.37 18-49 1.1 million total viewers Dragon Ball Super Encore 0.82 18-49 1.8 million total viewers Dragon Ball Z Kai FC 0.74 18-49 1.6 million total viewers JoJo's Bizarre Adventure 0.61 18-49 1.3 million total viewers Gundam Unicorn 0.53 18-49 1.2 million total viewers Hunter x Hunter 0.46 18-49 1.1 million total viewers Naruto Shippuden 0.43 18-49 975,000 total viewers One Piece 0.39 18-49 825,000 total viewers One-Punch Man 0.40 18-49 870,000 total viewers

Really now? That's a welcome surprise.

Sadly no it did not. It did however manage to beat it's lead-ins on occasion. Not sure if that would have happened if Family Guy was the lead-in and people largely blame Black Dynamite at 10:30pm for the bad performance of the 11pm Boondocks reruns but it sure made Attack on Titan look good by comparison. Attack on Titan got tremendous promotion. Less than a handful of shows on Toonami ever got weekly promos. Dandy, One-Punch, Titan and now Super. DBZ Kai broke 2 million the night Akame ga Kill premiered and they ran a preview for the latest DBZ movie. It was kind of a perfect storm. It's been a while since Family Guy regularly broke 2 million on Saturday night though so even with the might of Super and the fresh Buu saga dub of Kai, I have my doubts it can get 2 million but Super and Titan season 2 airing back to back probably could do it as long as Family Guy does well before that.

True, DBZ is pretty badly written but I also gave the InuYasha example and the Naruto one and you admitted you'd rather watch InuYasha filler than HxH so it seemed appropriate. InuYasha was known to terrorize the people of the land but now he goes around from village to village and not even that many of them seem to care about his past transgressions. So if anything MOST shounen are badly written and cliche right? So it's not such a stretch to say another series with apparent flaws could still be better and that's the stance I'm taking. I think ultimately it comes down to whether or not you have any attachment to the characters or as you claim with DBZ, get entertainment value out of them. One Piece, Hunter x Hunter, Fullmetal, Kenshin and Yu Yu Hakusho are all series that have succeeded at effectively tugging on my heart strings, given me some laughs and had enough exciting moments worth remembering. I personally felt IBO was a snore most of the time and did not flesh out it's characters well despite having plenty of time to do so. It became chore to finish the simulcast much less finish watching it on Toonami. I get a great deal of entertainment value out of Hunter x Hunter though admittedly it's more so in other arcs.

I can't say I agree that it has bad writing overall, a few issues here and there that are largely forgettable as the series progresses. I think it has pretty great world building but it does get off to a slow start and doesn't explain enough early on. You're still hung up on Killua offing that guy during the exam? Hey remember how Vegeta killed countless people and destroyed some planets and they allowed him to stay on Earth and have a family? Remember how InuYasha killed people and they more or less got over it once he was revived? Remember how Gaara killed various young ninja and he ended up as the leader of the sand village? People were told they could die in the hunter exam and many did. This isn't a nice little world. The kinds of threats hunters will have to deal with requires them to be willing to bet their lives on a regular basis. As if the Hunter organization is the only organziation in shounen series with outlandishly reaching power over the world. Because things akin to super power exist it only makes sense for an organization to exist to keep the truly corrupt individuals in check. The basic premise is Gon wanted to become a hunter so he could find his father but he quickly realizes that in order to accomplish that he still has much to learn. Currently he's not satisfied that he was unable to match Hisoka and is aiming to get strong enough to fight him. He wont make use of his Hunter benefits package until he can do that because he feels he hasn't earned it. But he see's Killua as more than a murderer and wanted to stay friends so he took the time to seek him out. Arguably the journey has been sidetracked a few times but that's part of life. One often sets out to do something only to realize the goal is furthur away than they had anticipated and they work toward it however they can. Meanwhile, Kurapika is also working toward his goal of revenge and is also realizing that he still has much to learn before he can fight the Phantom Troupe. I will say the pacing of the show so far has only been decent at best but the pacing does pick up IMO which is a welcome change from Shippuden and One Piece. It had those two recap episodes early on but is otherwise devoid of filler in it's 148 episode run. That scores it points in the adaptation by itself but it's also nicely animated and I like the music. The Heavens Arena is dragging currently but there's some really thrilling stuff by the end of it and York New is freak'n great IMO.

Oh I agree, additional airings are pretty dang pointless and I don't expect them to ever encore more than two aciton shows the same night again. If the 8pm action hour does well then maybe then it'd be great if they moved Shippuden and One Piece to prime time. They probably wont do worse in the 9pm hour than they do in the 2am hour. Maybe I'm misinterpreting what you're saying here but Titan never got 2 million. The best Titan managed was around 1.5 million but it rarely broke 1.3 million, about 8 times out of 25. It didn't have Family Guy as a lead-in though, which DBZ and now DBS have so it's difficult to say how well it might have done if Family Guy was the show before it. Though I think tone-wise The Boondocks made for a better lead-in for a Attack on Titan because it doesn't have the goofiness Dragon Ball series regularly display. The episodes of Family Guy airing direclty before Toonami have been very important to the block's success since 2015. We are nowhere near the point where Adult Swim would consider airing a Saturday without an hour of Family Guy to draw in the general audience and the later Family Guy airs in the 10-12am timeframe the better it usually does due to less compeition. Pushing it even a half hour earlier for Dragon Ball Super poses a risk but far less of one than most anime would simply because it's the first new episodes of Dragon Ball in English in quite some time. That and new seasons of Samurai Jack and Attack on Titan are the kinds of things that can get Toonami 11pm. It's hard to imagine them ever getting 10pm if a line-up as stacked as this one isn't enough to air more than a half hour earlier. 11pm is probably as early as they can manage unless Adult Swim is willing to give the first half of Saturday over to action and let comedy run the second half for the people coming home from parties and bars. I imagine Toonami's staff prefers the lower pressure late night hours though. I honestly think Adult Swim is trying to grow Toonami. They wouldn't be throwing money at original productions for the block and picking up a monster license like Dragon Ball Super if they didn't think Toonami was worth nurturing with their resources. Yes they did scale it back in early 2015 but they've been slowly building it back up the right way but adding premieres rather than reruns. Too many reruns is what sank 3:30-6AM to begin with. Last year they surprised us by shifting Toonami earlier and now they've expanded it a half hour. It seems Adult Swim has realized that 3am premieres are a waste and any additional slots ought to be earlier rather than later. That's the kind of mindset we want Adult Swim to be in for Toonami to feasibly get 11pm and keep it.

What do you consider to be better shounen? I think the argument can be made for Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, JoJo's and Yu Yu Hakusho are pretty close if we're talking anime adaptations. For manga Rurouni Kenshin, Fullmetal and Yu Yu Hakusho are on par and One Piece and JoJos might be better. I don't think Hunter x Hunter deconstructs shounen so much as perfects it and shows the benefit of Togashi's years of experience writing manga and the anime is very well adapted by Mad House.

Nope, it's still Adult Swim no matter how much it feels like "old CN" because "old CN" is dead as you know.

How quickly you forget that some comedies on Sunday prime time dropped below 0.2 18-49.

Extra airings cost more money, so they're rather reluctant to have them in such a dead time for Adult Swim. Yes 8pm-9pm is dead time to Adult Swim and that's why it's usually occupied with King of the Hill or another largely PG comedy. Adult Swim has prime time hours now but it still puts its premieres after 10pm and usually after 11pm to avoid network television premieres. Even channels like Comedy Central don't use 8pm for new stuff and start premieres at 10pm. DBZ Kai encored at 8pm for a time just to see how that would do but it seems that Super premieres at 8pm is a mandate from Toei and Adult Swim is not acknowledging that airing at all. Jack reruns joining it does indicate they want to try to take advantage of the mandate though. I imagine another thing to consider is the content of the shows. Samurai Jack is Y7-FV and fit for any time. Dragon Ball Super and DBZ Kai will be largely TV-PG and totally safe for 8pm. One Piece was tried briefly at 8:30pm and it is also pretty tame most of the time. JoJos regularly reaches TV-MA and the rest of the shows on Toonami regularly reach TV-14-V. So on top of costing a decent amount of money to air the likes of Hunter x Hunter, Naruto Shippuden, Gundam Unicorn, JoJos, One-Punch Man, etc. The'd have to be edited to air at 8pm directly after Cartoon Network time and editing also costs money. If this 8pm hour does exceedingly well they could feasibly air One Piece, DBZ Kai, Shippuden and maybe Hunter x Hunter (at least for now) 8pm-10pm but shows like JoJo would have to be after 10pm or even 11pm. I do hope some day that Toonami could air entirely in the first half of Saturday night starting with their shounen onslaught and continuing into more mature series. Comedy could have the other half of the night for all I care. Premieres after 2am are the pits anyway.

The man does have health issues. Back problems if I am not mistaken.

Hold up now, the Buu saga of Dragon Ball Z Kai should have aired years ago (and was dubbed quite a long time ago) and we are only just getting it now. So even Dragon Ball series have their fair share of hiccups when coming to America. That's largely due to Toei of course. But also consider DBZ didn't air in America until all 291 episodes had already aired in Japan. We get Dragon Ball stuff much faster now but we still didn't get the Super simulcast until over a year after Japan started the series. Meanwhile, One Piece has been simulcast since 2009. It was not until just a couple of months ago that we were regularly getting the newest Dragon Ball content the same day as Japan. When Toonami started One Piece at episode 207 in 2013 it was only about 60 episodes behind the FUNimation release. FUNimation has been very diligent with releasing the series and now the gap has significantly widened to about 140 episodes. I certainly don't blame FUNimation for not waiting for Toonami to catch up. What we're seeing now was released on DVD in April of 2015. That gap has widened largely because of FUNimation churning out the dub faster and partially because Toonami doesn't even air an episode every week a year. One Piece was off US television from 2008 until 2013, this is true. DBZ was only off from 2008 to 2010 because of Kai and hasn't left since. It's a pity Nicktoons didn't pick up One Piece (and Fairy Tail and SGT Frog for that matter) but One Piece simply isn't the hit with kids here that DBZ has been and lacks the powerful nostalgia for adults who aren't anime fans. There's no question that One Piece was dealt a bad hand from the get go but FUNimation and Toei have done a fine job making up for lost time and I am thankful for that. I'll agree the one attempt at a One Piece marathon was pretty sad or at least poorly timed given what episodes aired, however Toonami has given One Piece plenty of chances and Adult Swim even tried it at 8:30pm briefly. The fact that it is still airing shows how much they value the series. No other TV venue would treat it better and frankly no other TV venue wanted it. So the Toonami crew certainly doesn't deserve any ire for how they treat One Piece.

It kind of isn't. Adult Swim avoids premiering shows in prime time. It's a stealth premiere intended to fly under the radar likely only happening due to Toei's wishes. They seem intent on pretending that airing doesn't exist. The show is going to even get weekly topicals but they'll only acknowledge the 11:30pm airings because that's when it's on Toonami.

Violence and language isn't really an issue up to TV-MA after 10pm and is especially fine at 11pm. While it may seem bonkers to run something as tame as DBS after an episode of Titan, they did run DBZ after Titan despite largely being TV-PG. Not too mention all of season one was allowed to premiere at 11:30pm so content shouldn't be an issue. If CN takes back 8-9pm Super will likely shift to 9pm if a prime time airing remains a Toei mandate and I don't think Toonami would lose 11:30pm if that happened either. I think we can all see the real reason why Toonami shifted later wasn't just because CN reclaimed 8-9pm for a stint.

JoJo is the only one that would plausibly get seasonal breaks and that probably comes down to the structure of the deal. If they only got the first series initially then there may be a break before Stardust Crusaders. The other hang-up can be dub production but if Viz can keep up with Hunter x Hunter then there's no reason to assume they cannot do so with JoJo as well. Since they started with Part 1, Viz has had plenty of time to get a decent chunk of Stardust dubbed. BangZoom had about 20 episodes of Hunter x Hunter dubbed before Toonami even started airing it. They would probably drop One Piece and Shippuden before taking breaks. Both series are more than 100 episodes behind their dub releases. If we are to believe the rumors, then Kai Final Chapters has been completely dubbed already. It's just 69 episodes as well. One thing does stick out to me though. The IGN report for Super mentioned Adult Swim would be airing the first 26 episodes for now. Due to Schemmel voicing Goku among other complications it's possible Super would have to take production breaks. However, since they are more than a year behind Japan I figure they can have Schemmel record large chunks of Goku dialogue in a short span of time and not need production breaks if the show airs at the rate of 1 episode a week. They certainly wouldn't want their golden goose to take weeks off other than holidays weekends. That said, it is also rumored that Schemmel was the last one to finish recording for Kai FC so he might slow up dubbing Super at some point. So yeah... probably just JoJo and even then it will probably only be between Parts 2 and 3 and parts 3 and 4 (if that). It depends on a number of factors though.

They've been advertising Super like crazy and also took the time to advertise Kai FC and Gundam Unicorn. One can only wonder if all that extra promotion will pay off. Could tomorrow out-rate the perfect storm of the Akame ga Kill / Resurrection F preview night from August of 2015? I have my doubts they can match that but at the very least the turn-out should be the best it has been in quite some time.

I fully expect Jack to get 11pm or alternatively shift everything down a half hour and for Attack on Titan to replace that. Jack only lasts 10 weeks but it is an original production, it's going to get top billing and the benefit of a Family Guy lead-in. Attack on Titan probably wont get stuck behind Kai. It's a huge property in its own right and one that they were willing to air reruns of AHEAD of DBZ Kai initially. We can all agree that was a bad idea but it shows you what they're willing to do for Titan. I don't see a lack of 2017 shows as a notable concern for them though. It never really has been and very few series on this Toonami have started less than a year after the Japanese broadcast as is.

You think Jack wont air on Toonami? Nonsense. With the total lack of promotion the 8pm showing of Super is getting, I'd say chances of Jack premiering outside of Toonami are slim to none.

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I didn't notice a change in Luffy's tone but I suppose I wasn't listening for it. I don't think they replaced the ending song but I don't honestly know if they did or not.

I wonder what kinds of ratings they would be getting if they were dub premieres rather than being over 100 episodes behind. A zip forward would certainly put off some viewers and confuse many but would a larger part of their dedicated audiences showing up for dub premieres make all the difference? Hard to say. At any rate, it's clear that considerably more people watch One Piece and Shippuden online than will ever show up for a TV airing. You can probably thank the original cancellation of Toonami for that. When both series started simulcasting in 2009 and left their dub releases in the dust, so many fans switched to the Japanese casts that they'll never see a worthwhile reason to go back to watching the dubs. And both series are notoriously pirated with insane viewership numbers on piracy sites. Compare that to Dragon Ball Z, a series that has rarely been off US television since the mid 90s. It is one of the few anime where people will wait for a dub. Super quickly became one of the most streamed series on Crunchyroll but it has only rarely beat One Piece much less Shippuden. The dub will garner much more attention no doubt. Dragon Ball will continue to rule television while the streaming kings remain One Piece and Shippuden.

If the problem was marathoning on a holiday weekend then they're kind of up a crick without a paddle. Airing the regular line-up that night would have been disastrous and movies would be a waste of a premiere as well. So there's really not much that can be done short of doing theme marathons which I recommend they try one of these days. One-Punch Man's marathon did great though. It really depends on the day, the competition and the show that is getting a marathon. I also would have figured DBZ would do better than that but give how comedy did it's not that surprising.

A fine hour of television for some but a rather odd one for most. If you think the general audience isn't taking well to JoJo on Toonami even parts 2 and 3 wouldn't have done well after Archer. The cross-over audience for both wouldn't be anywhere near the level the cross-over between DBZ and JoJo audiences theoretically could be. Even next to Archer, JoJo would entirely stick out in a bad way on FX no matter how good it is.

I don't think SD Gundam was that bad. ThunderCats 2011 is on the fringe and Transformer Armada wasn't very good but He-Man was great IMO. It's good that you noted which series you have not seen though of those only Wulin Warriors is worthy of the bottom 10 IMO.