10 Years Ago, Toonami was cancelled on CN...

[3ngag3]

On September 20th, 2008, Toonami had its final broadcast on Cartoon Network.

 

Where were you on that day? Did you know the end was coming? How did you handle the cancellation?

Edited September 21, 2018 by 3ngag3

[PokeNirvash]

I handled it better than I did [as] moving Geass and Moribito down to the 5AM hour, I can tell you that.

[The1gairon]

I don't remember being so angry before. I had the guts to chuck my TV set out the window.  ... of course I didn't have the strength to do it, I never want to be a criminal, and it wasn't exactly my TV set either.

[Top Gun]

I didn't watch Toonami, so mostly with vague indifference.

[OwlChemist81]

I had mostly moved on to Adult Swim and paid Toonami little mind, though I DID occasionally watch it during the era from 2004-08 where it aired from 7-11 on Saturday nights!

[naraku360]

On 9/21/2018 at 7:57 AM, elfie said:

I don't remember being so angry before. I had the guts to chuck my TV set out the window.  ... of course I didn't have the strength to do it, I never want to be a criminal, and it wasn't exactly my TV set either.

Lol

 

Toonamites

[Mr Owl]

didn't care 

[rpgamer]

"Eh, that was kinda inevitable, with all the random shit they were picking up lately."

[Daos]

• Is this seriously what they were airing for the last few years before being cancelled? Or am I looking at the wrong data? 
• Yeah I definitely didn't watch Toonami when it was cancelled.
•  
• D.I.C.E.
• Zatch Bell!
• The Batman
• One Piece
• Transformers: Cybertron
• Yu-Gi-Oh!
• Naruto
• Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo
• IGPX (television series)

2006

• Wulin Warriors
• Pokémon Chronicles
• Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes
• Pokémon: Battle Frontier
• Yu-Gi-Oh! GX
• MÄR
• The Prince of Tennis

2007

• Mega Man Star Force
• Storm Hawks

2008

• Bakugan Battle Brawlers
• Blue Dragon
• Ben 10: Alien Force

Edited September 24, 2018 by Daos

[3ngag3]

Samurai Jack should be on that list somewhere.

[rpgamer]

Dark times, indeed.

[The1gairon]

Yep.  By 2008 One Piece (the Funimation dub) was the only remaining thing I deemed worthy of watching every week.

[Ric]

I didn't even know Toonami was cancelled for quite some time after.

 

[Daos]

1 hour ago, 3ngag3 said:

Samurai Jack should be on that list somewhere.

It is, its on 2002. I'm sure they were still playing it when they pulled the plug. That list is all the new shows they were airing from 2005. 

Our current Toonami lineup is  absolutely godly compared to that. I've never even heard of most of those..... Fantastic Four? Megaman? Mar? Blue Dragon?  Dice? Gee I wonder why they got canceled.

[The1gairon]

I remember Blue Dragon.

 

It was what replaced One Piece's timeslot.

 

It only lasted two weeks.

[Chapinator_X]

By that point, Toonami was that one block I had to trudge through before Adult Swim came on if I ended up tuning in too early. It was often 4Piece and Bo-Bo-Bo waiting at the finish line before I could watch Bleach or Blood +.

It was sad to see Tom do the Spike Spiegal line, but by then, it was a shell of its former self and I wasn’t hurt that they had to end it by then. 

[The1gairon]

I acted like Toonami was the one thing I thought was worthy of being watched on CN (was in college and my dorm room didn't have TV so I had very limited time to watch it), and now I realize 99% of everything they aired then was fuckin crap.

[The1gairon]

And people wonder why the theory that Mike Lazzo hates anime was a thing.

[Daos]

7 hours ago, imchapp.in said:

By that point, Toonami was that one block I had to trudge through before Adult Swim came on if I ended up tuning in too early. It was often 4Piece and Bo-Bo-Bo waiting at the finish line before I could watch Bleach or Blood +.

It was sad to see Tom do the Spike Spiegal line, but by then, it was a shell of its former self and I wasn’t hurt that they had to end it by then. 

That was a mercy kill at that point. Anyone with any dignity that worked on that block should have been embarrassed. 

On a side note, Fantastic Four had another cartoon back then? Who thought that was a good idea? No one cares about the Fantastic Four.

[naraku360]

7 hours ago, imchapp.in said:

By that point, Toonami was that one block I had to trudge through before Adult Swim came on if I ended up tuning in too early. It was often 4Piece and Bo-Bo-Bo waiting at the finish line before I could watch Bleach or Blood +.

It was sad to see Tom do the Spike Spiegal line, but by then, it was a shell of its former self and I wasn’t hurt that they had to end it by then. 

Your biggest mistake was wading through crap to watch Bleach. That's just cruel and unusual 

Edited September 25, 2018 by naraku360

[Chapinator_X]

2 hours ago, naraku360 said:

Your biggest mistake was wading through crap to watch Bleach. That's just cruel and unusual 

It was during the height of my weebiness, though it’s hard to gauge whether Bleach or Code Geass made me a worse person at the time. If time travel was a possibility and meeting yourself didn’t cause time paradoxes, I’d rather meet the me during my Bleach phase than the me during my Geass phase. 

[rpgamer]

There were a lot of disaster picks at the time, but Prince of Tennis will forever stand out to me as the most out of touch choice they ever made. Most of the other crap at least had the right kids shounen vibe, but damn, whose idea was it to put a sports anime, about tennis, no less, into a block targeting kids (boys), who just want to watch shows like Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh.

[The1gairon]

7 hours ago, rpgamer said:

There were a lot of disaster picks at the time, but Prince of Tennis will forever stand out to me as the most out of touch choice they ever made. Most of the other crap at least had the right kids shounen vibe, but damn, whose idea was it to put a sports anime, about tennis, no less, into a block targeting kids (boys), who just want to watch shows like Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh.

.... boys play tennis in America.   The anime did feel like some of the other shonen at the time too.  I'm not sure where you're getting that Prince of Tennis was the most out of place.

[PokeNirvash]

The real problem with Prince of Tennis wasn't so much its "out of touch" nature, but the fact that Toonami skipped several episodes per week as an advertisement for Jetstream. Same deal with MAR.

Edited September 25, 2018 by PokeNirvash

[naraku360]

13 hours ago, rpgamer said:

There were a lot of disaster picks at the time, but Prince of Tennis will forever stand out to me as the most out of touch choice they ever made. Most of the other crap at least had the right kids shounen vibe, but damn, whose idea was it to put a sports anime, about tennis, no less, into a block targeting kids (boys), who just want to watch shows like Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh.

You clearly don't know the power of tennis.

It killed the dinosaurs.

[Top Gun]

I'll never understand what the hell they were doing with those two shows.  They were fine as more niche-interest series on Jetstream (along with the excellent Hikaru no Go, among others), but who the fuck in their right mind thinks showing random out-of-order episodes will do anything for anyone? The sad part is that I kind of enjoyed MAR: it was a totally-inoffensive tournament shounen with a surprisingly good dub.

[Daos]

10 hours ago, elfie said:

.... boys play tennis in America.   The anime did feel like some of the other shonen at the time too.  I'm not sure where you're getting that Prince of Tennis was the most out of place.

Tennis isn't that big in the US. I play at least once a week and even on weekends just about every court in the city will be open. It has a high skill requirement before it actually starts being fun, when you're starting out you're just chasing balls around like an idiot. It discourages a lot of people.

[rpgamer]

Plus the whole point that tennis fans and anime fans simply don't have a lot of overlap.

[Top Gun]

1 hour ago, Daos said:

Tennis isn't that big in the US. I play at least once a week and even on weekends just about every court in the city will be open. It has a high skill requirement before it actually starts being fun, when you're starting out you're just chasing balls around like an idiot. It discourages a lot of people.

Tennis is pretty damn big in the US, but you have to think about demographics.  It tends to trend richer and whiter, and a lot of those people probably have memberships at athletic or dedicated clubs.  Public courts may not see as much traffic, but even so, they're usually popping on summer nights around here.

[Daos]

53 minutes ago, Top Gun said:

Tennis is pretty damn big in the US, but you have to think about demographics.  It tends to trend richer and whiter, and a lot of those people probably have memberships at athletic or dedicated clubs.  Public courts may not see as much traffic, but even so, they're usually popping on summer nights around here.

No, it's not. Most sites that try to rank which sports are the most popular in the US put it behind Soccer, Hockey and Boxing.

Generally, the US doesn't give a damn about Soccer, and 99 percent of the US probably can't name the Heavyweight champion, as boxing's glory days seem to be behind it.

Worldwide it's much bigger. Soccer of course is number 1.

http://biggestglobalsports.com/

Describes it as a "medium" sport in the US. As opposed to being huge in a number of other countries. Seems about right.

This one puts golf ahead of it. https://www.dailynewsegypt.com/2018/03/08/top-10-popular-sports-united-states/

The number of players that play 21 times or more a year is 5.1 million. That's not a lot of players, and people that are playing less than once every two weeks are basically going to be at the beginner level. 

[scope]

On 9/21/2018 at 10:50 AM, PokeNirvash said:

I handled it better than I did [as] moving Geass and Moribito down to the 5AM hour, I can tell you that.

That was about where I stopped watching adult swim religiously.

[The1gairon]

So if sports anime isn't successful, how come you see like 4 new sports anime every season?!

.... don't MOST SHONEN stories involve a sport of some kind, even if it's one that doesnt exist??

[Daos]

38 minutes ago, elfie said:

So if sports anime isn't successful, how come you see like 4 new sports anime every season?!

.... don't MOST SHONEN stories involve a sport of some kind, even if it's one that doesnt exist??

Japan loves that stuff. I think there was one about badminton this year, and one about sidecar racing recently. It doesn't matter if the US likes it, they don't care.

[Zenigundam]

I was in college, yes I knew it was coming for they announced it at Anime Weekend Atlanta and there was a thread about it, and it saddened me, but Toonami was only really good during the Moltar and TOM days and that's because I was a kid. When I got introduced to Adult Swim as a 12 year old, I realized that Toonami was total bullshit compared to more teen and adult geared content. I still like G Gundam, DB in the TOM 2 days, and Rurouni Kenshin for a short time in the early TOM 3 days, but it was really hard to go back having advanced to a far greater maturity level. I mean I was turned off Gundam Wing and Tenchi Muyo and whatnot when I was 10, but the discovery of ASA turned me off seriously because that opened my eyes to how geared toward pussies Toonami actually was.

[Zenigundam]

And they were idiots to run PoT and trash MAR on Toonami instead of Hikaru no Go, which was obviously better and whatever happened to Zoids Genesis? A promise without a delivery, probably sucked anyway 

[scope]

The US fan base doesn't like sports anime? Yuri on Ice, Free!, Haikyuu, Kuroko fanbases are fucking rabid, what are you smoking?

[Daos]

They can be as rabid as they want, they're small in number. If anime was being made solely to cater to US desires sports anime wouldn't even exist.

But Japan loves it.

[Blatch]

14 minutes ago, scope said:

The US fan base doesn't like sports anime? Yuri on Ice, Free!, Haikyuu, Kuroko fanbases are fucking rabid, what are you smoking?

YoI is a special case, as it attracted as large a crowd it did because of something other than the actual sports aspect. Free! is a similar case, although it's never really rose out of cult status. As for the others, Haikyu!! is at least popular enough to have been dubbed, but Kuroko's has never come out on home video in any form.

Sports anime can be a crapshoot for anime licensors. For every show that manages to get IRL figure skaters talking, you get one like Big Windup!, which was an ignominious failure for Funimation when they tried releasing it. If you average all of them out, you'll generally get more unpopular shows than popular ones, unless we're dealing with boxing or martial arts.

[scope]

15 minutes ago, Blatch said:

YoI is a special case, as it attracted as large a crowd it did because of something other than the actual sports aspect. Free! is a similar case, although it's never really rose out of cult status. As for the others, Haikyu!! is at least popular enough to have been dubbed, but Kuroko's has never come out on home video in any form.

Sports anime can be a crapshoot for anime licensors. For every show that manages to get IRL figure skaters talking, you get one like Big Windup!, which was an ignominious failure for Funimation when they tried releasing it. If you average all of them out, you'll generally get more unpopular shows than popular ones, unless we're dealing with boxing or martial arts.

Licensing aside Kuroko was still extremely popular in the west

Anime being a commercial failure in the West isn't something foreign, if you average all of anime in general most of them are failures, that statement just applies to the medium in general.

Edited September 27, 2018 by scope

[The1gairon]

42 minutes ago, scope said:

The US fan base doesn't like sports anime? Yuri on Ice, Free!, Haikyuu, Kuroko fanbases are fucking rabid, what are you smoking?

Have any of those aired on cable TV here?

[scope]

3 minutes ago, elfie said:

Have any of those aired on cable TV here?

You act as if cable TV is the main platform for anime nowadays, most anime fans don't watch anime on TV...

Edited September 27, 2018 by scope

[3ngag3]

I miss Hajime no Ippo when it was good.

It's just turned into a clusterfugde nowadays.

[rpgamer]

I think you're confusing the fans of anime that are willing to give shows a try, or seek shows out, or are generally interested in the medium, with the general viewer audience, that is less concerned with what is or isn't anime, but simply wants entertainment.

DBZ got big because it attracted the latter. Sports animes are limited in scope due to the former.

[Jman]

32 minutes ago, 3ngag3 said:

I miss Hajime no Ippo when it was good.

It's just turned into a clusterfugde nowadays.

I literally thought the big twist at Chapter 1210 was the author going “Screw you guys I’m going home.” I’m stunned it’s still going.

[scope]

2 minutes ago, rpgamer said:

I think you're confusing the fans of anime that are willing to give shows a try, or seek shows out, or are generally interested in the medium, with the general viewer audience, that is less concerned with what is or isn't anime, but simply wants entertainment.

DBZ got big because it attracted the latter. Sports animes are limited in scope due to the former.

I mean if you're gonna use one of the most popular and iconic long running shonen as an example then sure nothing else is popular then.

[The1gairon]

1 hour ago, rpgamer said:

I think you're confusing the fans of anime that are willing to give shows a try, or seek shows out, or are generally interested in the medium, with the general viewer audience, that is less concerned with what is or isn't anime, but simply wants entertainment.

DBZ got big because it attracted the latter. Sports animes are limited in scope due to the former.

Psssst. Don't tell any of them that what the characters in DBZ are doing (fighting, tournaments, power-ups) are technically sports.

[Zenigundam]

And sports anime can be done well like Hajime no Ippo, The Prince of Tennis was just mediocre. Was the whole thing even dubbed?

[Daos]

You don't need to use one of the most popular shonen as an example. Basically every major shonen is more popular than the most popular sports anime.

Bleach, Fairy Tail, Black Clover, One Piece, DBZ, Soul Eater, Blue Exorcist, Naruto, MHA, Deadman Wonderland... all more popular than any sports anime ever made. I don't think you realize how small the US sports anime fan base is. It's the main reason why Toonami would air something like PTE before even touching a sports anime.

In the US it's probably somewhere slightly below slice of life.

 

[MasqueradeOverture]

Yes, but what about boxing anime?

Also yes, I'm suggesting Megalo Box.

[scope]

At no point was I trying to argue sports anime were more popular than shonen anime, you made it that, everything is Toonami to you guys and you paint a picture very black and white, "on cable or not on cable, licensed and dubbed or not" the news you don't seem to understand is Toonami isn't very popular anymore, more people are tuning in to Netflix and Crunchyroll and Toonami is doing everything they can to stay relevant. This antiquated stance you take is part of the reason you would think an anime like Deadman Wonderland is even relevant at this point, no one that doesn't watch Toonami even remembers this show, it had a rushed ending because it couldn't even get more than one cour.