Times Toonami had to air stuff no one really wanted

[Jman]

Let’s face it, we’re in a content drought.  No budget + a raging pandemic = Less than optimal scheduling choices, such as mega fail Ballmasterz.  But this isn’t the first time Toonami has had to make a block out of less than optimal ingredients.

Like when their late night offerings included the Sunbow G.I. Joe -

And of course, airings of Y7 edited to hell Cardcaptor Sakura -

Any memories of material that...really wouldn’t have been there if the block hadn’t been scraping the couch cushions for every loose piece of change?

[Daos]

I would say Tokyo Ghoul and Dimension W but those were things they actually thought would be good.

[PokeNirvash]

The correct answer for the current era is Tenchi Muyo GXP. Demarco bought it thinking it'd be as action-packed as the Tenchi they aired on Toonami, it wasn't announced until a week before its premiere - and on-air in a lineup promo at that! - and it got shunted off to 3AM after five weeks in an earlier slot where it nearly torpedoed the ratings. You could probably even blame it for them grabbing the rights to uncut Naruto as a form of damage control.

[CountFrylock]

I'm really worried we're just gonna see Fooly Cooly And Cowboy Bebop as the show announcements at the adult swim virtual convention at this rate

[HardcoreHunter]

I don't know if Kekkaishi was ASA or Toonami. I know some people freak out when you mix them up, but to me ASA is the same thing as toonami. 

Either way GIJoe was more of an attempt to fill air time. I don't know if they even had to pay for it at the time, because they had access to a lot of old series though CN. We could even say in that regard that shows like Space Ghost CTC/Cartoon Planet weren't much different. 

11 hours ago, Daos said:

I would say Tokyo Ghoul and Dimension W but those were things they actually thought would be good.

TG has it's fans, and I think they expected it to be a big name series. I do remember a lot of the hype around it at the time. Though it was also around the time where liking shows with "edge" became cringe. DW I really don't know what they were thinking with that show. I remembered them giving it a lot of press though before it aired, then was about as memorable as Pilot Candidate or super milk chan. 

[Jman]

I would argue being an attempt to fill air time makes Joe a lot more like Ballmasterz.  Except Joe maybe had nostalgia going for it.  Ballmasterz only has cringe.

[CountFrylock]

1 hour ago, Jman said:

I would argue being an attempt to fill air time makes Joe a lot more like Ballmasterz.  Except Joe maybe had nostalgia going for it.  Ballmasterz only has cringe.

and to think we all assumed we'd only be dealing with it for 5 weeks not 10....

Edited July 17, 2020 by CountFrylock

[HardcoreHunter]

1 hour ago, Jman said:

I would argue being an attempt to fill air time makes Joe a lot more like Ballmasterz.  Except Joe maybe had nostalgia going for it.  Ballmasterz only has cringe.

Bllmasterz either needed to go further with trying to tell a story or further with trying to be a parody of anime. It kinda stopped half way on both which made it kinda fail at doing anything properly. It's a series that actually would have been well received by anime fans I believe had it come out in like 2008. At this point it's just making very obvious and dated references. Gravity Falls had an episode that dealt better with anime and Dating Sims and that aired in 2014. It did all of that referencing right and even did subtle shit like having badly translated piss yellow subs. 

Amazing world of Gumball even did fanfic and anime references better than ballmasters. Probably because it would commit to doing a satire more on the fandoms, and not just like oh Vampire Hunter D, Sailor Moon, dating sims, Jojo etc are things that exist. That is very early Family/Robot Chicken styles of humor that don't work today.

Like they would make a Kiss, transfromers, or Star Wars joke just by mentioning that they were a thing and that was the extent of the joke.  It was a time when nerds were happy to get any pop-culture recognition. This has been something that those shows were made fun of for, for probably the last 8 years. So the fact that this had to pass some hands at AS/T and everyone felt it was good enough makes me think even more on how out of touch with not just anime but comedy the staff is. 

[Chapinator_X]

The era where they packed the Saturday block with cheap reruns of Pee Wee’s Playhouse and cartoon vehicles for Chuck Norris, Mr. T, and Gary Coleman. 

[Jman]

On 7/17/2020 at 8:15 PM, Chapinator-800 said:

The era where they packed the Saturday block with cheap reruns of Pee Wee’s Playhouse and cartoon vehicles for Chuck Norris, Mr. T, and Gary Coleman. 

I have scoured Youtube for the commercials for that (The Adult Swim Super Nonsexy 5:30 Funtime) and found nada.

Which sucks because I found the Saved by the Bell promos.

There’s a question - Saved by the Bell or Ballmasterz?

[ben0119]

3 hours ago, Jman said:

I have scoured Youtube for the commercials for that (The Adult Swim Super Nonsexy 5:30 Funtime) and found nada.

Which sucks because I found the Saved by the Bell promos.

There’s a question - Saved by the Bell or Ballmasterz?

Saved by the Bell all day long.  EASILY.  

That show was actually good!  Or at least I remember it being good!

[ben0119]

On 7/17/2020 at 2:24 AM, HardcoreHunter said:

I don't know if Kekkaishi was ASA or Toonami. I know some people freak out when you mix them up, but to me ASA is the same thing as toonami. 

Either way GIJoe was more of an attempt to fill air time. I don't know if they even had to pay for it at the time, because they had access to a lot of old series though CN. We could even say in that regard that shows like Space Ghost CTC/Cartoon Planet weren't much different. 

TG has it's fans, and I think they expected it to be a big name series. I do remember a lot of the hype around it at the time. Though it was also around the time where liking shows with "edge" became cringe. DW I really don't know what they were thinking with that show. I remembered them giving it a lot of press though before it aired, then was about as memorable as Pilot Candidate or super milk chan. 

Kekkaishi is a legit good show and the series gets even better and truly great past the point where the anime stops.  It's one of my favorite series.  It was definitely something they picked out and not something they threw on because of lack of money.  Kekkaishi isn't a similar case to Ballzmastrz just because people threw a fit ASA didn't get Soul Eater or Eden of the East or whatever other show they wanted instead back then.  ASA STILL should have gotten Soul Eater at some point though.  Big dropped ball there, which Toonami thankfully rectified.  I don't know enough about Eden of the East to speak further on it.  I do believe part of it was done as movies, though?  So that could have been tricky for ASA to do the whole story.

And ASA and Toonami are definitely not the same thing.  Totally different style, packaging, and kinds of shows.  It's why we said something like Mitchiko and Hatchin or Megalobox felt like ASA shows.  More mature and "chill", calm shows, if you get my meaning, and certainly wouldn't have aired on the original Toonami.  Also the fact ASA was morbidly incompetent and made even Demarco and co. look like MENSA members. 

We complain about Demarco a lot, but he still has some semblance of sense about shows fans want to see and where to place them.  The Toonami stuff, bumps, promos, speeches, game reviews, Total Immersion Events etc are typically well done too.  It's where he caters too much to his own tastes and interests and foregoes common sense and good business sense that he gets into trouble.  Which is why we end up with things like IGPX, the FLCL sequels, etc.  Or think of all the effort he made to get Gundam back.  They made multiple in-person visits to Japan to negotiate with Sunrise to end the Gundam embargo.  Imagine if that effort was put towards a successful franchise absent from Toonami that is popular in the U.S. that fans actually like?

He got Tokyo Ghoul because its obnoxious fanbase wouldn't stfu about it.  Dimension W it seems like no one read the actual story before they all went whole hog on it.  Yeah it was bad.  So bad no one was even translating its manga back then, official, or fan-wise.  I hear the anime is so fucked up because it is 90 chapters or something crammed into it.  But I mean, even with better pacing and development, that story wouldn't be good lol.  It makes me think of the people who say the Tokyo Ghoul manga is so great.  It's still a bad story with a ridiculous coincidence setup for the main character turning into a ghoul, and I read about the stuff in the manga that happens and it sounds silly as fuck and just as bad or worse than what was already shown in the manga.  Look up all that Real Owl and Fake Owl shit if you want to have a laugh.

Edited July 19, 2020 by ben0119

[HardcoreHunter]

Kekk was a horrible show. If the manga is good then good for it, but the anime was terrible. I'm pretty sure Soul Eater did air; I'm actually positive it did. 

ASA and Toonami are the same exact block to me. Just remove tom and it's the same block. Hell when Toonami took over it was still showing a lot of the same exact shows that ASA had been airing at the time. 
 

As for the Staff I still think that they're horribly out of touch; or have very particular tastes in series that they don't like to diverge from. I think there is also just an issue with the type of anime being produced today vs when AS/T were starting. It also doesn't help that back in the day they were the only game in town for this sort of content, and now there are a handful of streaming services and the internet to contend with.

As much as I advocate them getting series like Konosuba or Overlord at the same time those are series which have been around for a while now. It would still be new to some people but nothing like it was back in the day. When Cowboy Bebop first aired on Adult Swim. There was no way you'd have seen that unless you had the VHS or a bootleg. When Naruto first aired on Toonami internet streams were 144p (the p stands for potato), and torrents would take over a day to get just one episode. 

I also don't think that they really watch many anime themselves to find out what a show is really like. A lot of series now have added moe, slice of life, and isekai masks onto their series that get kinda subverted if you watch them. For the Toonami staff they have to immediately see some sort of cool factor that appeals to them; like a kid in the 90s picking a movie out to rent based only on how cool the cover is. 

[Jman]

3 hours ago, HardcoreHunter said:

Kekk was a horrible show. If the manga is good then good for it, but the anime was terrible. I'm pretty sure Soul Eater did air; I'm actually positive it did. 

ASA and Toonami are the same exact block to me. Just remove tom and it's the same block. Hell when Toonami took over it was still showing a lot of the same exact shows that ASA had been airing at the time. 
 

As for the Staff I still think that they're horribly out of touch; or have very particular tastes in series that they don't like to diverge from. I think there is also just an issue with the type of anime being produced today vs when AS/T were starting. It also doesn't help that back in the day they were the only game in town for this sort of content, and now there are a handful of streaming services and the internet to contend with.

As much as I advocate them getting series like Konosuba or Overlord at the same time those are series which have been around for a while now. It would still be new to some people but nothing like it was back in the day. When Cowboy Bebop first aired on Adult Swim. There was no way you'd have seen that unless you had the VHS or a bootleg. When Naruto first aired on Toonami internet streams were 144p (the p stands for potato), and torrents would take over a day to get just one episode. 

I also don't think that they really watch many anime themselves to find out what a show is really like. A lot of series now have added moe, slice of life, and isekai masks onto their series that get kinda subverted if you watch them. For the Toonami staff they have to immediately see some sort of cool factor that appeals to them; like a kid in the 90s picking a movie out to rent based only on how cool the cover is. 

Considering DeMarco probably misses Blockbuster, that’s not too far off.

The fact of the matter is that Toonami, although they’re taking baby steps, cannot control the market the way Netflix or even Crunchyroll can.  They don’t have the budget to join production committees or directly negotiate with studios.  DeMarco’s shit taste aside, if a bigger company wants an anime with Americans in mind, it’s easier for them to get the ball rolling.  “Here’s money.  Go make Kengan Ashura.”  Not an option for DeMarco.

[PokeNirvash]

1 hour ago, Jman said:

“Here’s money.  Go make Kengan Ashura.."

Season 3 when, Netflix?

[Daos]

4 hours ago, HardcoreHunter said:

Kekk was a horrible show. If the manga is good then good for it, but the anime was terrible. I'm pretty sure Soul Eater did air; I'm actually positive it did. 

ASA and Toonami are the same exact block to me. Just remove tom and it's the same block. Hell when Toonami took over it was still showing a lot of the same exact shows that ASA had been airing at the time. 
 

As for the Staff I still think that they're horribly out of touch; or have very particular tastes in series that they don't like to diverge from. I think there is also just an issue with the type of anime being produced today vs when AS/T were starting. It also doesn't help that back in the day they were the only game in town for this sort of content, and now there are a handful of streaming services and the internet to contend with.

As much as I advocate them getting series like Konosuba or Overlord at the same time those are series which have been around for a while now. It would still be new to some people but nothing like it was back in the day. When Cowboy Bebop first aired on Adult Swim. There was no way you'd have seen that unless you had the VHS or a bootleg. When Naruto first aired on Toonami internet streams were 144p (the p stands for potato), and torrents would take over a day to get just one episode. 

I also don't think that they really watch many anime themselves to find out what a show is really like. A lot of series now have added moe, slice of life, and isekai masks onto their series that get kinda subverted if you watch them. For the Toonami staff they have to immediately see some sort of cool factor that appeals to them; like a kid in the 90s picking a movie out to rent based only on how cool the cover is. 

When are we getting Shield Hero, Tanya the Evil, Overlord, Re Zero and Konosuba again?

Demarco has weird antique taste in anime. If he likes a franchise he'll just air new stuff with the franchise tag without watching it, like Gundam or Tenchi.

He never learned this lesson.

 

[The1gairon]

5 hours ago, HardcoreHunter said:

Kekk was a horrible show. If the manga is good then good for it, but the anime was terrible. I'm pretty sure Soul Eater did air; I'm actually positive it did. 

ASA and Toonami are the same exact block to me. Just remove tom and it's the same block. Hell when Toonami took over it was still showing a lot of the same exact shows that ASA had been airing at the time. 
 

As for the Staff I still think that they're horribly out of touch; or have very particular tastes in series that they don't like to diverge from. I think there is also just an issue with the type of anime being produced today vs when AS/T were starting. It also doesn't help that back in the day they were the only game in town for this sort of content, and now there are a handful of streaming services and the internet to contend with.I

As much as I advocate them getting series like Konosuba or Overlord at the same time those are series which have been around for a while now. It would still be new to some people but nothing like it was back in the day. When Cowboy Bebop first aired on Adult Swim. There was no way you'd have seen that unless you had the VHS or a bootleg. When Naruto first aired on Toonami internet streams were 144p (the p stands for potato), and torrents would take over a day to get just one episode. 

I also don't think that they really watch many anime themselves to find out what a show is really like. A lot of series now have added moe, slice of life, and isekai masks onto their series that get kinda subverted if you watch them. For the Toonami staff they have to immediately see some sort of cool factor that appeals to them; like a kid in the 90s picking a movie out to rent based only on how cool the cover is. 

I would've preferred Soul Eater had aired in Kek's place (seemed to be the popular opinion), but Toonami fixed that a few years later.

For someone who doesn't favor Toonami a whole lot, you are apparently coming here a lot more often these days, which I do like.

They kind shot themselves in the feet by always insisting they aim for the newest shows possible, because then there's this self-imposed expiration date for the Toonami crew's interest in a given show before they just ignore it completely. The rights to more and more shows are being snatched up almost immediately, so they're actually just handicapping themselves for the amount of options they have on their limited budget. I'm sure the older a show gets, the cheaper it is to acquire?

Edited July 19, 2020 by elfie

[Distinct Lunatic]

On 7/17/2020 at 2:24 AM, HardcoreHunter said:

I don't know if Kekkaishi was ASA or Toonami. I know some people freak out when you mix them up, but to me ASA is the same thing as toonami. 

Either way GIJoe was more of an attempt to fill air time. I don't know if they even had to pay for it at the time, because they had access to a lot of old series though CN. We could even say in that regard that shows like Space Ghost CTC/Cartoon Planet weren't much different. 

TG has it's fans, and I think they expected it to be a big name series. I do remember a lot of the hype around it at the time. Though it was also around the time where liking shows with "edge" became cringe. DW I really don't know what they were thinking with that show. I remembered them giving it a lot of press though before it aired, then was about as memorable as Pilot Candidate or super milk chan. 

Kekkaishi I remember being added back in 2011, it still being ASA back then. Not gonna lie, parts of it felt like a Bleach clone, such as the older brother being a captain of the gotei 13whatever the hell that group is called. There were a few other things that stood out to me, like that one woman that worked for the big baddies that looked very much so like Rukia.

I still liked the series, and I intended to read the manga at one point but never gotten around to it.

Back with "Toonami" on AS, it quite literally was just ASA but with Tom. Back then for reasons unknown they chose to start the block off with DW and Casshern Sins... DW was decent enough, read the whole manga many years ago but it didn't feel like the type of show you'd want to use to launch the block, and especially not Casshern Sins. I watched it all the way through back then, and I'd say a solid 70-80% of everything in it was a literal waste of time and was insanely boring to watch. The only thing worse then that was the Tenchi Muyo series. I don't think the Akame ga Kill anime existed back at that time, but even with how much I fucking hate that series it'd have suited the block better than those 2 shows.

[HardcoreHunter]

4 hours ago, Jman said:

DeMarco’s shit taste aside, if a bigger company wants an anime with Americans in mind, it’s easier for them to get the ball rolling.  “Here’s money.  Go make Kengan Ashura.”  Not an option for DeMarco.

Yeah budget is an issue to an extent. Though I feel that some series prices really shouldn't be as much of an issue. I would rather have getting a couple of good shows a year than 4 complete garbage shows that combined cost as much if not more than what it would have taken to get a couple of good ones. The problem is that DeMarco has to see the value in it himself, which he can't because he has boomer anime hipster shit taste. 

 

3 hours ago, Daos said:

When are we getting Shield Hero, Tanya the Evil, Overlord, Re Zero and Konosuba again?

Demarco has weird antique taste in anime. If he likes a franchise he'll just air new stuff with the franchise tag without watching it, like Gundam or Tenchi.

He never learned this lesson.

Shield Hero, Tanya, and Re Zero I'd say never. SH and Tanya would prove to be too problematic. As well I don't think that SH would fit the block well. I could see Tanya on though. However that show has pretty much been banned from anime cons so I don't think Toonami wants to deal with the sjw backlash of people who can't tell a fictional WWI setting apart from a fictional WWII setting.  Re-Zero has the problem of having the slowest first 12 episodes in any anime ever. The groundhog day nature of it I think would be a turn off towards the majority of viewers.  Overlord probably has the highest chance of getting picked up, but even that show has some casual filter arcs that won't be liked by many viewers. Konosuba I think would work great; but again DeMarco's shit taste I doubt he'd ever air it. 

2 hours ago, elfie said:

I would've preferred Soul Eater had aired in Kek's place (seemed to be the popular opinion), but Toonami fixed that a few years later.

For someone who doesn't favor Toonami a whole lot, you are apparently coming here a lot more often these days, which I do like.

They kind shot themselves in the feet by always insisting they aim for the newest shows possible, because then there's this self-imposed expiration date for the Toonami crew's interest in a given show before they just ignore it completely. The rights to more and more shows are being snatched up almost immediately, so they're actually just handicapping themselves for the amount of options they have on their limited budget. I'm sure the older a show gets, the cheaper it is to acquire?

I like toonami, but I feel that it's held back a lot by its staff from doing better. Yeah I've been more active on here. Kinda the result of the world falling apart and not having much else to do. Really I should be working on my videogame backlog lol. 

I don't think that they ever really imposed that onto themselves. I mean they've shown plenty of older series. It also depends on what the studios are charging them for different series. I think Toonami has been trying to catch lighting in a bottle, and grabbing shows while they're in concept before even getting animated; then hoping it's a hit. Their logic is that this will bring the most profit for them, because after the show is already a hit in Japan, they'll have to pay even more money for it. 

[The1gairon]

To this day, none of the five (six, now) series that have crossed over in Isekai Quartet have been run on Toonami, despite them all having dubs. Sword Art Online is the only recent isekai anime that they still run because it's the Dragonball Z of isekais. I guarantee you than if SAO wasn't even a smidgen less popular than it is, DeMarco wouldn't give it the time of day. I can't remember a single positive thing he has said about it.

Edited July 19, 2020 by elfie

[HardcoreHunter]

19 minutes ago, elfie said:

To this day, none of the five (six, now) series that have crossed over in Isekai Quartet have been run on Toonami, despite them all having dubs. Sword Art Online is the only recent isekai anime that they still run because it's the Dragonball Z of isekais. I guarantee you than if SAO wasn't even a smidgen less popular than it is, DeMarco wouldn't give it the time of day. I can't remember a single positive thing he has said about it.

Yeah without a doubt about SAO only being on the block due to having a large fandom. I don't care what DeMarco says; he 100% doesn't like isekai series. It's been like half if not more of all the anime being produced for the last five years. Toonami has only managed to get the one; which also happens to be the least isekai of them aside from season 1. 

[Top Gun]

I am 100 percent in favor of Demarco continuing to avoid fucking isekai shit. It's the laziest goddamn premise for a series, and I hope the fad dies in a fire. 

 

[HardcoreHunter]

1 hour ago, Top Gun said:

I am 100 percent in favor of Demarco continuing to avoid fucking isekai shit. It's the laziest goddamn premise for a series, and I hope the fad dies in a fire. 

 

There are still a hand full of good ones. 

[Top Gun]

I have zero interest in any that aren't so old that they predate the term "isekai" in the first place. Twelve Kingdoms, Escaflowne, Rayearth, that's the good shit. 

[HardcoreHunter]

2 minutes ago, Top Gun said:

I have zero interest in any that aren't so old that they predate the term "isekai" in the first place. Twelve Kingdoms, Escaflowne, Rayearth, that's the good shit. 

Konosuba and Overlord are good. I mean refusing to watch any of them is kinda like saying DBZ, One Piece, Black Clover, Naruto, and Bleach were the exact same show so you'd only ever have to watch one of them and you'd know exactly what to expect from the others. 

[Jman]

6 hours ago, HardcoreHunter said:

Yeah without a doubt about SAO only being on the block due to having a large fandom. I don't care what DeMarco says; he 100% doesn't like isekai series. It's been like half if not more of all the anime being produced for the last five years. Toonami has only managed to get the one; which also happens to be the least isekai of them aside from season 1. 

No he doesn’t.  

Which would be fine if he had something to substitute for them.

Judging by the continued presence of Ballmasterz, he does not. 

[Jman]

All that being said, when it comes to sloppy leftovers from the content fridge, you occasionally get some good moments.  The aforementioned GI JOE bought us this piece of patriotic insanity lovingly nicknamed “War on Terror - The Musical” that’s still better than the entirety of Rise of Cobra.

Or the Hamtaro promos -

So at least there’s that.  Ballmasterz can’t even do that much.

[HardcoreHunter]

I like how there's all this high tech shit going on, jet packs, laser weapons. Then Lady Jaye throws a fucking spear. 

 

[Daos]

13 hours ago, Top Gun said:

I have zero interest in any that aren't so old that they predate the term "isekai" in the first place. Twelve Kingdoms, Escaflowne, Rayearth, that's the good shit. 

Fair enough, Freezing and Infinite Stratos it is. Harem time!

[Sketch]

On 7/17/2020 at 12:24 AM, HardcoreHunter said:

I don't know if Kekkaishi was ASA or Toonami. I know some people freak out when you mix them up, but to me ASA is the same thing as toonami. 

Either way GIJoe was more of an attempt to fill air time. I don't know if they even had to pay for it at the time, because they had access to a lot of old series though CN. We could even say in that regard that shows like Space Ghost CTC/Cartoon Planet weren't much different. 

TG has it's fans, and I think they expected it to be a big name series. I do remember a lot of the hype around it at the time. Though it was also around the time where liking shows with "edge" became cringe. DW I really don't know what they were thinking with that show. I remembered them giving it a lot of press though before it aired, then was about as memorable as Pilot Candidate or super milk chan. 

G.I. Joe was a interesting situation. It was like one day Ted Turner woke up and decided to buy the rights to the old G.I. Joe cartoon for CN and Boomerang. It was entirely out of the blue and at a time when 80s cartoons other than Dragon Ball were not particularly common on CN or even Boomerang. I figure that Toonami ran it on The Midnight Run (exclusively) for the nostalgia. At the time the daytime block was heavily depending on Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball and was also airing G Gundam. G..I. Joe and G Gundam was an interesting pairing for the last Midnight Run block in the CN era.

It is my understanding that by around mid-2001 the Toonami crew didn't get nearly as much say in what the block was going to air. They could make suggestions but ultimately they had to air whatever CN wanted them to. That's around when they aired Card Captors. Sometimes they would get shows they would have liked to air but they would receive less than optimal versions of those shows (4Kids One Piece being a big one of those but DeMarco also likes Card Captor Sakura). Kenshin might have been something they sought out but the majority of whatever aired on Toonami after Outlaw Star and The Big O in 2001 was basically whatever Bandai or some other company threw at Cartoon Network (for better or worse) and you might even say they mainly got OS and Big O simply because they were shows Bandai had on hand. Tenchi was probably one of the only anime franchises that the Toonami crew brought to the table without a distributor getting the ball rolling. In 2002 they ended up airing Hamtaro simply because it was anime and Toonami was where they felt all anime should be airing at the time. Once they acquired Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh, CN wasn't so gung-ho about limiting anime to Toonami blocks and instead used those shows in prime time among other places on the network.

[Sketch]

There was this strange era of ASA when they went from relying heavily on FUNimation shows to avoiding working with FUNimation. Maybe they felt real burned by Detective Conan, Shin Chan and I dunno... Trinity Blood I guess. It's frankly a good thing they didn't give up on FUNimation after Blue Gender impressed no one and Yu Yu Hakusho better with kids. The fact they didn't get Soul Eater or Baccano or Darker than Black never sat well with me. They eventually got Soul Eater but the other two never got a shot before FUNimation lost the rights. Actually I should factor in that around the time ASA stopped acquiring shows from FUNimation was also around the time that CN pulled One Piece and Dragon Ball Z both on-air and on Toonami Jetstream. It really seems like something soured between CN/AS and FUNimation around then. AS still got FMAB but I mean there was no way they'd let that one slipped by them if they could prevent it. Their relationship with FUNimation didn't seem to get patched up until Toonami returned in 2012.

Kekkaishi is another curious situation given how things were going with Viz at the time. Viz was Toonami's most significant partner from around 2004 until the block was cancelled. They partnered with CN for Toonami Jetstream as well. Kekkaishi felt like a show that would have ended up on Toonami with minor edits in 2006 but in 2010 CN was done with non-toyetic anime. Maybe Viz tried to stick that one on DXD with Naruto Shippuden or maybe they didn't even bother trying that. Whatever the case may be, you really gotta wonder why they got Kekkaishi but did not get the original Hunter x Hunter anime, Buso Renkin or Monster. All of which were better fits for ASA than Kekkaishi though maybe they felt HxH 1999 looked too old. What a shitty time line we lived in where SyFy got Gurren Lagann, Gundam 00 and Monster and ASA didn't.

[PokeNirvash]

10 hours ago, Daos said:

Fair enough, Freezing and Infinite Stratos it is. Harem time!

I'd be up for that power hour.

37 minutes ago, Sketch said:

There was this strange era of ASA when they went from relying heavily on FUNimation shows to avoiding working with FUNimation. Maybe they felt real burned by Detective Conan, Shin Chan and I dunno... Trinity Blood I guess. It's frankly a good thing they didn't give up on FUNimation after Blue Gender impressed no one and Yu Yu Hakusho better with kids. The fact they didn't get Soul Eater or Baccano or Darker than Black never sat well with me. They eventually got Soul Eater but the other two never got a shot before FUNimation lost the rights. Actually I should factor in that around the time ASA stopped acquiring shows from FUNimation was also around the time that CN pulled One Piece and Dragon Ball Z both on-air and on Toonami Jetstream. It really seems like something soured between CN/AS and FUNimation around then. AS still got FMAB but I mean there was no way they'd let that one slipped by them if they could prevent it. Their relationship with FUNimation didn't seem to get patched up until Toonami returned in 2012.

Let's not forget Williams Street getting off on the wrong foot with ADV after Giant Robot Week, and the only licenses they got from them were the inferior dubs they made/had on hand for Super Milk-chan and Eva.

[Daos]

Would it make Demarco have funny feelings?

 

[PokeNirvash]

You know it.

 

Edited July 21, 2020 by PokeNirvash

[Top Gun]

Fucking hell people.

[HardcoreHunter]

1 hour ago, Sketch said:

It was entirely out of the blue

It aired in Nov 2002...I mean there was a thing that happened 14 months prior that caused a lot of people to suddenly become overly patriotic. Damn that was 17 years 8 months ago that Gi Joe aired on toonami. 

 

55 minutes ago, Sketch said:

Their relationship with FUNimation didn't seem to get patched up until Toonami returned in 2012

I should try asking around and see if I can find any info on that, if anyone even still remembers. More likely than not it was over pricing. Anime used to be super cheap for companies to pick up. When it started blowing up with the anime bubble around 2005 Funi was probably demanding higher prices. 

59 minutes ago, Sketch said:

you really gotta wonder why they got Kekkaishi but did not get the original Hunter x Hunter anime, Buso Renkin or Monster

The only reason they got even the HunterxHunter remake was because it has a large fanbase. It could be thought that it's because of Syfy that we didn't get some series on AS/T. Though Monster took like 5 years to get a dub, and I think only got one because Syfy paid for it. Gurren Lagann was in an odd spot at the time. It had been on Netflix for a while. Adult Swim wasn't a fan of sloppy seconds for anime. I think it's also why they were against getting Soul Eater because it was in the same boat as Gurren Lagann. It was on Netflix which is where a majority of people who watch dubbed anime at the time had seen it already. Now they often put in deals where some shows can't even be updated to Funimations streaming service until they first air on Toonami. The Demon Slayer dub was postponed from being put on funimation now until the whole season finished. Which tells me that Toonami had actually had interest in that show for a long time, as funimation usually would have simul dubbed that series. 

[HardcoreHunter]

13 minutes ago, PokeNirvash said:

You know it.

 

Hygiene is important 

[The1gairon]

Jesus.

You'd think a petty grudge wouldn't be a good excuse to stop getting shows from a company.

[Top Gun]

On 7/19/2020 at 9:32 PM, HardcoreHunter said:

Konosuba and Overlord are good. I mean refusing to watch any of them is kinda like saying DBZ, One Piece, Black Clover, Naruto, and Bleach were the exact same show so you'd only ever have to watch one of them and you'd know exactly what to expect from the others. 

I'm not saying that every single solitary entry in this genre is worthless or anything, but I do genuinely believe that it lends itself to incredibly lazy storytelling and bad writing.  "Hey, let's take this sad-sack nobody, introduce him to Truck-kun, and have him reincarnate in *INSERT GENERIC JRPG SETTING* where he has *INSERT X RANDOM QUIRKY PREMISE* happen to him!" At the end of the day it all feels like wish fulfillment for pathetic lonely otaku.  And I'm not just saying it out of pure ignorance: I've read enough season previews and reviews and general premises of these series to the point where they all legitimately blend together in my mind.  And they just. keep. pumping. them. out.  This whole isekai wave is just the latest in a long string of overplayed anime fads, right up there with moeblobs, cute-girls-doing-cute-things, harems, and every other flavor-of-the-week.  Like those others, it does next to nothing for me.  I'll grant that Overlord looks at least somewhat more interesting than most, but I can't say the same for Konosuba, which reads like it's trying to have its cake and eat it too by parodying a genre while indulging in all of its tropes at the same time.

The thing that really sets those older in-another-world series apart is, first and foremost, the writing.  Instead of just lifting generic RPG mechanics, they spent time and effort making their alternate worlds into living, breathing places, with their own rules and histories and politics.  The protagonists taken to them didn't fall ass-first into an idealized new fantasy life, but had to deal with serious issues, and very often wanted nothing more than to go back home.  And said homes weren't just ignored after the first chapter, but remained part of the story, with people there missing the protagonists and wishing they'd return.  Hell, even Inuyasha of all things handled a lot of these elements better than your average generic isekai does today.  And if you want to look at the trapped-in-a-game variety, .hack//SIGN told a far more compelling story than anything SAO has managed to crap out, and it did so without its protagonist having an entire harem fawning over them.  At the end of the day, what I want out of a series above all else is good writing and story development, and at this point in my life I'm pretty confident in my ability to seek out entertainment that provides that opportunity.

All of that being said, there is one modern isekai that I'm genuinely interested in checking out, and that's Ascendance of a Bookworm.  But the reason for that is how different its approach seems when compared to the vast majority of what else is out there.

[HardcoreHunter]

2 minutes ago, Top Gun said:

it all feels like wish fulfillment for pathetic lonely otaku

That's kinda 90% of all anime. Most shows are wish fulfillment or power fantasies. Hell it's depressing when you think about how many anime focus on having friends because making friends is the real fantasy. 

7 minutes ago, Top Gun said:

This whole isekai wave is just the latest in a long string of overplayed anime fads, right up there with moeblobs, cute-girls-doing-cute-things, harems

Harems would be good if they actually did a harem. A love triangle (regardless of the number of girls) with only one girl winning is a shit harem in my book. moe blob and cute girls doing cute things ie the Seinfeld of anime were all pretty bad though. They can be good when mixed into other types of series. Like School Live starts out as this slice of life moe blob cute girls doing cute things series. Then suddenly you realize that the main girl is delusional and living in a hellscape filled with zombies, and her friends are just playing along to keep her from having a mental breakdown. 

 

As for Isekai I'd say at least give Konosuba a shot as it mostly makes fun of Isekai series and is self aware. Overlord is kinda a reverse Isekai. The MC pretty much gets .hack/SAO'd into a game as his avatar and is pretty much the new demon lord. The difference is that in other series that have someone become a demon lord, they try and be good and humane. Ainz only cares about being good to the NPC characters that his guildmates made though. He is fine with murdering the humans of that world. The LN makes him a lot more darker than the anime does though. Like his one servant has a happy fun farm that he uses for harvesting human flesh to use to make scrolls. He even has two families starving kills their kids then feeds them to the other family in the same room so they can watch their kid being eaten. Though everyone made fun of him for being such a nice guy and not just having them eat their own kids. Ainz is just like whatever about it. The most humane thing he does is request that the women and children be killed when they abducted the majority of a city.  Also the breeding experiments that are done to find race compatibility, and the guardians want to find a way for their dickless overlord to have children. 

[Daos]

Don't like Konosuba? This is your fate

 

[Jman]

The isekai genre has been pretty ran into the ground, although my whole thing is sort of like my issues with a lot of the Webtoon comics.  They don’t take advantage of the myriad of settings one could be placed in and always opt for vaguely medieval like how Webtoons (when they aren’t shitty unfunny Western comedies) are usually urban fantasy or European flavored fantasy.  Even Knights and Magic did that and it was supposed to be a mecha isekai, the first notable one since Rayearth (still a better mecha show than Voltron).

Personally I think the concept has run its course.  At the least, the medieval setting has.

Edited July 21, 2020 by Jman

[HardcoreHunter]

1 hour ago, Jman said:

Personally I think the concept has run its course.  At the least, the medieval setting has.

For the most part I'd agree with that. There could be more done in a medieval setting, but studios I think are more looking for the most generic cookie cutter shit they can find for it. I think we're going to have at least a few more years of reinvented isekai stuff before studios move onto the next big thing. I think we might see a return of mid late 2000s romcoms. Welcome to Demon School Iruma-Kun just gives me flashbacks to 2008 era anime.  So we might just end up with a short period of anime being produced that mimic older styles to try and see if anything is resonating with people. Teens and Young adults though really like isekai. We're also going to be going through an era of Isekai edge shortly. I have read a few Isekai series that are edge as fuck and I know one got a greenlight. The other one I think will get an anime in time. 

[Top Gun]

Someone wake me up when "well-written sci-fi" comes back in vogue.

[Sketch]

5 hours ago, HardcoreHunter said:

It aired in Nov 2002...I mean there was a thing that happened 14 months prior that caused a lot of people to suddenly become overly patriotic. Damn that was 17 years 8 months ago that Gi Joe aired on toonami. 

 

I should try asking around and see if I can find any info on that, if anyone even still remembers. More likely than not it was over pricing. Anime used to be super cheap for companies to pick up. When it started blowing up with the anime bubble around 2005 Funi was probably demanding higher prices. 

The only reason they got even the HunterxHunter remake was because it has a large fanbase. It could be thought that it's because of Syfy that we didn't get some series on AS/T. Though Monster took like 5 years to get a dub, and I think only got one because Syfy paid for it. Gurren Lagann was in an odd spot at the time. It had been on Netflix for a while. Adult Swim wasn't a fan of sloppy seconds for anime. I think it's also why they were against getting Soul Eater because it was in the same boat as Gurren Lagann. It was on Netflix which is where a majority of people who watch dubbed anime at the time had seen it already. Now they often put in deals where some shows can't even be updated to Funimations streaming service until they first air on Toonami. The Demon Slayer dub was postponed from being put on funimation now until the whole season finished. Which tells me that Toonami had actually had interest in that show for a long time, as funimation usually would have simul dubbed that series. 

Gurren Lagann wasn't on Netflix back in 2009. I think I heard SyFy actually outbid them for Gurren but I forget where I heard that. Soul Eater did end up on Netflix well before Toonami aired it but it wasn't available there until a while after it was on home video and the FUNimation Channel.

You are probably right about the cost of licensing shows between 2008 and 2012. And Japanese rights holders are likely the reason why DBZ, One Piece, Detective Conan and other huge anime never ran on The FUNimation Channel. Conan was at least on FUNimation's short lived syndicated block on ColoursTV but I'm pretty sure it was never on The FUNimation Channel.

Bandai probably threw Code Geass at Adult Swim and I've heard it theorized that Aniplex gave them a sweet deal on Durarara (they probably also gave them a good deal on the first SAO in 2013). Viz likely gave them a good deal on Kekkaishi but by the time InuYasha: The Final Act and Tiger & Bunny were available to dub, things had changed. It seems crazy that Adult Swim wouldn't pay whatever they had to for the last arc of InuYasha but I suspect Viz lwasn't willing settle on a price that AS was willing to pay at the time. That gave Viz the opportunity to make TFA's dub (and several others) Neon Alley exclusives.

I didn't consider the sudden spike of patriotism as a reason why Turner would suddenly obtain the broadcast rights to G.I. Joe but that was probably a factor.

The broadcast deal for Demon Slayer was secured before FUNimation started simuldubbing shows for Aniplex. Same goes for The Promised Neverland. Both of those deals were secured before Sony started folding Aniplex operations into FUNimation. Aniplex previously only simuldubbed one show for themselves, that being Durarara x2. They usually wait until a series has concluded before they even start dubbing it but they made a few exceptions. It does seem evident that Toonami got Demon Slayer and The Promised Neverland as soon as they could in order to the dub premiere streaming elsewhere first. And those deals with Aniplex seem to keep those shows from streaming dubbed on any service until at least a year has passed. The dub for the first half of Alicization is finally being added to Hulu in August. TPN's dub was recently added to FUNimation. No sign of Demon Slayer's dub on FUNimation's service yet but with the home video release happening this Fall, that seems like just a matter of time.

 

[Sketch]

1 hour ago, Top Gun said:

Someone wake me up when "well-written sci-fi" comes back in vogue.

Check out DECA-DENCE this season.

Did you ever look into the new GITS series on Netflix?

[Top Gun]

23 minutes ago, Sketch said:

Check out DECA-DENCE this season.

Did you ever look into the new GITS series on Netflix?

That one's definitely on my radar.  And no, I haven't looked into GITS.  The look of it is going to be...something of a hurdle.

Edited July 21, 2020 by Top Gun

[Daos]

2 hours ago, Top Gun said:

Someone wake me up when "well-written sci-fi" comes back in vogue.

Can I interest you in a hot new sci fi show from Bandai?

 

[Jman]

4 hours ago, Top Gun said:

Someone wake me up when "well-written sci-fi" comes back in vogue.

Toonami not getting Yamato 2199 still bugs me.

[The1gairon]

8 hours ago, HardcoreHunter said:

For the most part I'd agree with that. There could be more done in a medieval setting, but studios I think are more looking for the most generic cookie cutter shit they can find for it. I think we're going to have at least a few more years of reinvented isekai stuff before studios move onto the next big thing. I think we might see a return of mid late 2000s romcoms. Welcome to Demon School Iruma-Kun just gives me flashbacks to 2008 era anime.  So we might just end up with a short period of anime being produced that mimic older styles to try and see if anything is resonating with people. Teens and Young adults though really like isekai. We're also going to be going through an era of Isekai edge shortly. I have read a few Isekai series that are edge as fuck and I know one got a greenlight. The other one I think will get an anime in time. 

It always puzzled me why most-to-every isekai goes to medieval Europe. Is Tolkien/D&D THAT strong an influence in our culture? At least HACK was more original with a digital futuristic setting. I think anime creators are waking up to how unoriginal anime is so they have been rebooting a ton of classic animes that have all gotten the BROTHERHOOD treatment, as well as adapting original stories from manga that remind you of the 90's.