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I'm pretty glad they didn't start from episode 1 though. We'd only just be getting to Skypiea now and still over a year away from HD episodes and we all know what happens to SD shows on Adult Swim. I'd rather not see One Piece in stretch-o-vision for 4+ years. I do think they should have started right when Aokiji shows up. Sure people will briefly ask "whose that weird guy" regarding Foxy being their briefly but that's a small price compared to the Davy Back fight arc plus the filler after it before they go to Aokiji and Water 7. It arguably would have been good to start at the latest dubbed episode but starting at Eniesobby and not showing any of Water 7 would leave the viewers even more lost than starting after Skypiea. So where should they have started? I guess Jaya wouldn't have been terrible, they'd have been to new to the air stuff in half a year and HD by 2014 but they'd be even more behind the home video release then and likely still lose potential viewers due to that. Waiting to start until Thriller Bark dub premieres probably wouldn't have done great either people would be even more lost after Eneis Lobby. There was also a disturbing lack of activity for One Piece at FUNimation shortly before Toonami picked it up and it's even possible that FUNimation wouldn't have kept dubbing it had it not been picked up by Toonami. The momentary boost in interest it got because of that certainly could have made all the difference there. So I think starting with Water 7 would have been best but starting with Foxy wasn't the worst place they could have.

It took a while for me to warm up to Sabat's Zoro but I do feel he nails the tone and mannerisms. While I do believe Marc Diraison under the right direction could be a great Zoro he definitely sounded too energetic to be a proper Zoro. Naturally a laid back character in the main cast of a 4Kids dub wasn't gonna fly so the upped his sarcasm and gave him a more energetic delivery. It really doesn't suit the constantly napping, constantly drinking swordsman who only takes training seriously and isn't usually sarcastic. That whole clucking like a chicken bit is so incredibly not Zoro. All Zoro says to Usopp being a chicken is that he should man up. And to the opinion that Sabat doesn't sound badass enough as Zoro I must disagree. Eric Vale's Sanji sounds more age appropriate than his Japanese voice I suppose but it's just no comparison. I agree that David Moo's performance was akin to an exaggeration of the Japanese actor but it sounds freak'n terrible and he can't really emote or yell using that voice. I feel Vale does well when Sanji goes into lovey dovey mode but when he gets angry it gets too high pitched and really lacks the bass I would like to hear in Sanji's voice. Regardless of how good the actors portraying the rest of the Straw Hats could be the direction was largely terrible. So I don't know if Jason Griffith, Kerry Williams, Bella Hudson, etc could be really great in those roles with a decent script and good direction but the end product doesn't change regardless. However in recent years I've found the thing that most kills 4Kids One Piece to me is the music. The never ending over the top music that saturates every scene and often overpowers the voices is so freak'n bad that even if these actors were giving the best performances they could it would still greatly drag down every scene. I like the majority of the Straw Hats in FUNimation's dub just fine and might go as far as to say I prefer Stephanie Young to the Japanese actress for Robin and possibly Patrick Seitz to the Japanese actor for Franky. I prefer Japanese Luffy, Zoro, Sanji and Nami and am somewhat even on Usopp, Chopper and Brook. All that said, I can't stand the old FUNimation dub of DBZ anymore or the old dubs of Sailor Moon and even the dub of Gundam Wing (though not inaccurate) has not aged well but lots of people in particular think the DBZ dub was and still is great. I don't think that dub is that much better than 4Kids One Piece. I honestly think if 4Kids One Piece had started airing on US three years earlier than it did then a lot more people would like it and be nostalgic for it but because One Piece's dub started at a point when people had easier access to information about anime and the series had been fansubbed for quite some time, people knew what they were missing out on and that affected their ability to accept 4Kids dub of One Piece. Certainly a decent amount of kids didn't know or care at the time just as was the case with everything before it. With Naruto and Bleach around the goofiness of One Piece was going to be off-putting to the general audience eventually, regardless of who dubbed it. However, I do think when kids could compare Naruto and One Piece back to back on Toonami, Naruto was more broadly appealing because it was more violent, looked darker and overall seemed cooler. 4Kids dub of One Piece insulted its audience with the kinds of toilet humor jokes they were slinging around come Alabasta. A certain number of adults could appreciate it and a certain number of kids could but the broader audience no doubt saw it as obnoxious and a poor comparison to Naruto even at its silliest. The art style had to be another major factor there and likely still is. And while Naruto had a really kick-ass score on Toonami, the 4Kids dub of One Piece was terrible. Everything about One Piece's presentation was inferior to Naruto's on Toonami until the FUNimation dub started. Toonami never even advertised it was a different story arc much less a different cast. I couldn't tell ya if kids like One Piece more in 4Kids hands or FUNimation's but the 4Kids dub definitely hurt it's chances of appealing to the broader audience that latched on to Naruto and Bleach and none of them were able to hold a candle to DBZ. One Piece is a very silly show overall but very little of it's charms were visible in the 4Kids dub, all that was replaced by 4Kids humor that would not resonate with kids for long much less the majority of older anime fans. Think of it like Teen Titans Go. Lots of adults like that show and tons of kids do but it certainly gets boat loads of hate from people on the internet for being obnoxious and lacking what they liked about the early 2000s Teen Titans series that was able to mix comedy, action and drama. 4Kids One Piece lacked the emotional core of the original series that balances out the bombastic action and silly comedy. It appealed to some people and plenty of kids but certainly not all. The biggest difference being TTG is spin-off while 4Kids One Piece was intended to be the original product and fell so incredibly short of that. As popular as TTG is now I don't think it is actually has gotten higher ratings then the better balanced Teen Titans series did but what kids will watch has certainly changed from back then so maybe that's not a fair comparison.

Much catchier than that much less the Initial D rap... hoooooo boy was that bad.

What's your definition of popular anyway? To the second point, that's mostly true but over-saturation is starting do drag Family Guy down as well. It used to be able to regularly break 2 million viewers and that's no longer the case. The days when it would break 3 million are long gone with how many people have pulled the plug on cable/satellite. Hell Family Guy isn't even syndicated as much as it used to be probably because the only places it does exceptionally well are the FOX premieres (which are also way down) and Adult Swim. TBS does alright but the syndicated airing in at least my area are no longer in prime time. You can be Netflix and Hulu have given people a lot less reason to rely on syndication, TBS and Adult Swim for their Family Guy fix. But you can get a good idea of how well DBZ would do by itself (or multiple DB series) by looking at marathon weeks. It's doesn't hold itself extremely well. Look at the drop between Super and Kai FC and those are both never before heard dubs with a lot of promotion. Yet not even a DB series avoids the 200,000 something Dragon Ball drop (that's in 18-49s the total viewer drop can be 300,000 or more). So I don't think Toonami can last on Dragon Ball alone nor can AS comedy last on Family Guy alone but by making use of FG and DB Adult Swim can more or less air whatever they want around them and not do terrible. So there's not much of a concern how well some shows do as long as they weren't expensive to air.

Yeah IBO sort of poisoned the well.

Not the least bit accurate.

The first episode of DBZ Kai Final Chapters did the worst a Kai premiere has since about January 2015... 1am-3am are all below recent performances for those slots on Toonami as well. JoJos improved rentention from DBZ, which is great to see but hopefully it can do even better as part 2 ramps up.

I'll admit IBO had some but astonishingly little in the first season. Especially considering all that time spent chit chatting in the lunch room like it was a workplace comedy. Most of that development came down to a character being like "oh I screwed the pooch, woe is me" and then they somewhat progress. HxH makes a point of showing what the characters do in order to learn more, get stronger and conquer their demons. Would have loved to see more of that in IBO season 1 for sure.

Twice actually. Both times it was barely an increase.

YOU are frustrating. Live and let live. It's no surprise slightly used OPM can edge out One Piece on occasion but even with movie hype I doubt GITS will ever manage that.

A couple of 0.05 drops are your concern when JoJos lost 0.08 and Gundam lost 0.09? None of those drops are bad. The greatest concern is DBZ losing 0.20 give or take from Super. As apparently even more Dragon Ball is not immune to the post Dragon Ball drop. But props to Shippuden and One-Punch for edging out their lead-ins. Kind of a lower night overall despite Super getting 0.7 18-49 and holding a 0.8 FG very well. 8pm Super beat 8:30 American Dad but not the 9pm one. Not so sure Jack can match that but it's a freebie so expectations will be lower. Double R&M before Family Guy might lower FG though and in turn lower 11:30 DBS.

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.