Clownfish TV posts anti-Toonami video, accuses block of getting woke

[Jman]

Expect the usual anti-woke videos to be pissed off as fuck at Toonami.

[PokeNirvash]

As good as the message was, I'll admit that it was a little too heavy-handed for my liking.

[Top Gun]

Giving incels like this more than a single neuron's worth of thought is a complete waste of effort.

[The1gairon]

Nope.

[Jman]

  On 8/30/2020 at 9:48 PM, PokeNirvash said:

As good as the message was, I'll admit that it was a little too heavy-handed for my liking.

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People are dying in the street.  I kind of get why some are being heavy handed.

Not that it keeps the content police from getting in your face.

[Sketch]

Fucking Clowns. They love to rage.

[Chapinator_X]

This dude types like Mr. Demartino from Daria. 

"Toonami goes POLITICAL! Calls its Audience RACISTS!?"

[HardcoreHunter]

  On 8/30/2020 at 9:48 PM, PokeNirvash said:

As good as the message was, I'll admit that it was a little too heavy-handed for my liking.

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The message had good intent, but yeah it was laying things on thick imho. I think there could have been a better way of asking "what are you doing to help", or actually suggest foundations that can use help; than telling people to soul search and just being coy isn't a good thing to do. Lets be really vague so if they took this as kill John Lennon we can't be sued! Then the group of naruto runners saying to fight against injustice gave me kyle area 51 flashbacks. 

[CountFrylock]

  On 8/30/2020 at 11:54 PM, Sketch said:

Fucking Clowns. They love to rage.

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that channel is a piece of crap and the comments prove it's fans are the exact same

I Mean Jeez some of them outright act like social justice is a plague and this is a conspiracy to rewrite the facts

 

[Sketch]

  On 8/31/2020 at 2:13 AM, HardcoreHunter said:

The message had good intent, but yeah it was laying things on thick imho. I think there could have been a better way of asking "what are you doing to help", or actually suggest foundations that can use help; than telling people to soul search and just being coy isn't a good thing to do. Lets be really vague so if they took this as kill John Lennon we can't be sued! Then the group of naruto runners saying to fight against injustice gave me kyle area 51 flashbacks. 

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Naming organizations to contact would probably be considered a bridge too far. Endorsing particular ones and not others would be a bad look and everyone has a different opinion on which organizations should be supported right? Like there's lots of people who say the organization named Black Lives Matter isn't trustworthy.

I believe the key phrase in that whole thing is "have an honest conversation about racism" and I think that's a very good thing to present to their audience. "I don't see color" and "maybe racism exists but I don't base how I treat people on their race" are things we hear all the time but prejudice based on difference seems built into the human mind and its very easy to be influenced by what other people say about minorities. So it's good to combat that with honest self-examination.

They're also saying bluntly stating that the shows we see on Toonami constantly discuss prejudice, classism and racism so TOM saying "black lives matter" shouldn't be offensive if you think the messages in those shows aren't offensive.

[Jman]

They made a follow up video using the poor treatment of Frylock’s VA as a “gotcha, now shut the fuck up” argument.

[Sketch]

They would do that. Though I gotta say, Carey Means got a BAD deal. No royalties despite how often ATHF plays and how it airs in multiple countries. It seems like he's black listed or something because he rarely gets work now. I don't know what might have happened between him and the network and if he even tries to get more acting gigs but between that and how some part of Turner never paid C. Martin Croker for his work on various shows... I just don't know about the corporate culture within Turner.

[PokeNirvash]

I blame CAC Lazzo.

[Top Gun]

Lazzo is absolutely a complete piece of shit.

[MasqueradeOverture]

TOM be turning into an SJW soyboy beta-cuck now that he's forced to watch Sara fuck a sentient Production IG Surface Pro pen every night before bed.

Yes, cry you libtard robo-wittol bitch.

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And by crying I mean out his penis.

 

[mochi]

the Irony that he's named after a species of Fish that practices transgenderism and he's railing against "woke" culture

[PokeNirvash]

Alright, after much thought, one rewatch of the speech itself, no views at all given to any of the response videos, and too many looks at the comment sections, I've managed to put together my thoughts on TOM's BLM speech in the form of a megapost analysis. Due to length and potential controversy, I've put it under a spoiler tag. You don't have to read it if you don't want to, and if you do and wind up hating what you read, you only have yourself to blame for clicking it.

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It wasn't perfect.

That's not to say it wasn't good. At its core, the speech is a good one, considering the time and place in which it was released. Three months of protests and riots, sparked by the death of an African American man who hadn't even been taken into custody yet, with similar deaths following... It's no surprise that the phrase "Black Lives Matter" is more meaningful than ever. Having grown up interacting with numerous individuals encompassing a variety of races, even having close friends who were black, of course I express the sentiment that black lives matter. It's not a prominent expression, but it's expressed nonetheless in my day-to-day interactions. To some people, being kind to your fellow man, namely those of different races, is obvious. But to others, it can fall through the cracks or, given the wrong upbringing, be a foreign concept. And with the way things are today in this tumultuous landscape that I've somehow managed to avoid prolonged direct witness to, living in central Ohio where nothing of consequence ever seems to happen in comparison to the larger cities, the idea that you should care about black lives especially is one that should be delivered to these others. And for those within the others who primarily digest pop culture in the form of Toonami, it's Demarco and crew's mission, and by proxy TOM's, to inform them that this is important. They don't have to center their lives around it, but it is important.

Of course, it goes without saying that the marriage of show clips and soundbyes to TOM's original spoken word was as excellent as ever. A little dated, considering that it showed clips from Ballmastrz while the speech dropped the week it was traded out for Assassination Classroom, but considering everyone in Ass Class so far is either Japanese (Class 3-E) or beyond conventional racial classification (Koro-sensei), and Ballmastrz has a woman of color as its lead protagonist, I can forgive the datedness in favor of keeping the visuals accurate to the message.

As for the actual words of TOM's speech, it's all a matter of interpretation, especially with the "harmful comments" at the beginning. "All Lives Matter" was, I think, the biggest landmine, one that prompted me to pause partway through the video for over 5 minutes in an attempt at calming myself down before restarting it. I believe that all lives matter, in the sense that it's the amalgamation of each individual race's lives mattering, black lives included. Toonami certainly agreed so in their "Dreams" speech from 2016. But nowadays, the phrase ALM has been perverted into a response to BLM by those who think the latter phrase is racist in and of itself. (Another alternate interpretation for another day.) In retrospect, I believe dismissing "All Lives Matter" as a phrase as opposed to a general sentiment was what TOM was going for here. "I don't see color", meanwhile, is one that's a little tougher to crack. By one interpretation, it means judging people not by the color of their skin, but the content of their character. An excellent sentiment, one that my dad grew up with, and that I follow to this very day. By another interpretation, it's an off-the-cuff phrase used by people who wish to avoid discussions on race. Again, the latter was what I believe TOM was going for. "Racism isn't real anymore", on the other hand, is clearly harmful, no alternate interpretation about that. There's a reason no one was complaining about that one online; it's too straightforward to interpret any other way!

The rest of it is just as straightforward, though two lines do come off as a little bit "off". I'll get to what's so off about them later, so for now, I'll just interpret. First: "If you're thinking 'Maybe, but not me,' you've got some truth to uncover." This can be interpreted as TOM calling the audience racist for thinking that they're not. But he's not calling them racist. At least, not the entirety. The key word here is "if". If you already agree that racism is real, that it's still present to some degree, then congratulations, that line doesn't apply to you. Even to those who are applied to most by that line, the "truth" is never outright identified. It could be a little nugget of residual racism, or it could be something else entirely. The "truth" to be uncovered is whatever the viewer can interpret it as being. It's ambiguously stated on purpose, so the interpretations that can be gleaned from it are practically endless, even if there is a majority interpretation in mind.

Second: "If you're thinking, 'This isn't why I watch Toonami,' think again." Now, this one, on the surface, I disagree with. Discussions about racism and political injustice are not the reason I, or anyone, chose to watch Toonami to begin with. For me, that reason was it had anime I could watch for free, my family's cable bill notwithstanding, without having to go the extra mile to seek it out. It's the reason why I watched Toonami on Cartoon Network, why I watched Toonami on [adult swim], and hell, why I watched anime on [adult swim]. But it is a reason for someone to continue watching Toonami. Seeing parallels between real world events and the shows being watched, be they simple like fighting injustice in general or more complex like actual political stuff - **coughgundamcough** - is an entirely understandable reason to keep watching Toonami, especially when the other cartoons at the time fail to "get" what you're going through. This is especially true now, with the audience having aged up to fully comprehend the politics and injustice going on today and the fullest potential of the parallels within the shows presented. Besides, it's not like he's saying "think again and realize that you're wrong". Just... "give it a second thought". Nothing wrong with that, right? And representative of the speech itself, too!

When it comes down to it, I'm glad that this speech exists. But at the same time, I hate that it exists. And that is because of the response.

No matter what combinations of words are used to comprise their thoughts, each bit of backlash towards the speech has one underlying thing in common: simplicity. Instinctive, reactionary complaints compounded by surface-level understanding of what they're complaining about. They think TOM is supporting BLM the organization, and not BLM the sentiment. They think the discussion is out-of-place, or has no place, on the block. There are the occasional attempts at calling [as]'s bluff by bringing up the fact that Carey Means (voice of Frylock and Thundercleese) never got paid residuals for his work on ATHF, failing to realize that he never got that money because he never signed on to work union. But worst of all, you have those who have not only threatened, but gone through with dropping Toonami and refusing to ever watch it again, all because this one speech exists. Some even claimed that if Toonami got cancelled a second time, the fans wouldn't rally behind it to bring it back a third time, if such a thing would be in the cards. Now that is stretching things.

The closest things to sane responses I've seen are the ones pointing out how unlike Toonami this speech was. Not in its addressing of political and racial issues, but by how different it feels compared to your average Toonami speech. Your average Toonami speech treats the viewer as a friend instead of a target. That's why it rang true with kids back in its heyday, and why it does the same with viewers today. So for TOM to tell the viewer that they might be racist and that politics is the reason you should watch Toonami, as meaningful and interpretive as those statements might be deep down, on the surface it comes off as condescending and presumptive; two things that Toonami is not, and should never be. They're the same simple responses that make the backlash run the spectrum from laughable to rage-inducing, but as stupid as their decisions to drop Toonami like a hot potato might be, this simple interpretation at least makes their decision understandable, at least from my perspective. A Toonami that's as patronizing towards its target audience as Fried Dynamite is not a Toonami I want to see come to pass as a regular institution.

The positive half of the speech's reception (frontlash?) is, deep down, more in the right, but the responses I've seen are simple in their own way. They let their hearts do the talking moreso than their heads. They treat the speech as perfection, and respond to even the mildest of negative reactions with dismissal or mockery, without even bothering to consider that maybe there's some sort of logic fueling the backlash alongside the knee-jerk reaction put into words that most of them encompass. As deserving as many of the backlashers are, it's not a good look to treat their opinions as invalid, just because they go against what Toonami intended the overall opinion to be. Be open-minded, and don't act like every negative response is a childish whine, even though most of them totally are.

For what it's worth, Toonami did try to limit the amount of on-air reaction the speech would receive by airing it during slots less likely to be watched by premiere-only Toonami viewers. To my count, the speech aired three times: during Dragon Ball Super (a rerun), Fire Force (also a rerun), and Shippuden (filler and a dump period for music videos). It did seem rather strange that JoJo through Clover didn't get any speech replays when I watched them, and considering how divisive the speech turned out, I can see why. Of course, Super pulls more viewers than everything after it, plus the speech went online in a matter of hours, so it's not like reaction was ever going to be limited. And at least it was just TOM giving the speech. Had SARA chimed in occasionally, I'd probably be so mad at her "yeah, what he said!" attitude that I'd just avoid talking about this speech at all.

To summarize, this speech was technically a good one. Knowing the sentiment, recognizing the usual editing expertise, and holding the right interpretations of what was said, there's technically nothing wrong with it. But between the simplistic extremities of the inevitable feedback, and the understandable reasoning behind some of the more negative comments, it stands to reason that improvements could have been made to piss less people off. But then again, even doing what they could to avoid sounding like they're insulting the viewer, I don't think there was any way Toonami could've avoided this entirely.

Now, I'm not expecting applause for this megapost. Hell, what I am expecting are numerous downvotes, user blocks, and accusations that I'm racist. Even though I hate racism as much as the next guy, and even as a second-grader I disliked it so much I had to leave the room during the alternate universe portion of "Our Friend, Martin". I'm an engineer with an optimistic bent, so I can see both sides without dismissing either, though more likely to like than hate. If you liked the speech, good. If you didn't, give it a little more thought before you wind up spouting nonsense you may later regret. As for me, it exists. There's no changing that. All I'm hoping for is that Toonami doesn't turn into a shell of its former self as a result, one that's as condescending and presumptive towards its audience as some of the negatively-minded claimed it was. I'm sure - no, confident - it'll still be as viewer-friendly and viewer-encouraging as it always has come 2021. If so, then I can just write this anomaly off in the Toonami canon as TOM watching a little too much CNN and needing to vent to someone about the injustice in America today.

And those are my thoughts. Apologies if I angered any of you in any way, and I hope we can continue getting along as well as we can on these boards after this.

Edited September 2, 2020 by PokeNirvash

[OwlChemist81]

Clownfish TV is clown shoes!

[Chapinator_X]

Watching through the TOM commercial does remind me of the script I wrote out from the “Will T.O.M. and S.A.R.A. address the protests/riots?” thread.

It’s nice to hear the character addressing our country’s issues with race and show open support for BLM. But the dude who directs these segments couldn’t resist adding awkward anime clips to an otherwise serious conversation. 

Did they need to wedge background clips of ambiguously black anime characters or Naruto characters being sad into the speech? Just because Samurai Jack knows what it feels like to be upset or the Fire Force crew can come together to face adversity doesn’t mean they have any kind of poignant parallel with racial inequality. 

It draws less attention to the message and draws too much attention to which anime/cartoon clip they’re going to pick when TOM talks about black people getting falsely imprisoned or disproportionately murdered by the police. You know you can just have TOM give his message from the chair without the needless clips trying to equate real world issues with goofy cartoons. 

Edited September 2, 2020 by Chapinator-800

[The1gairon]

I also love how Ballmasterz is included in that speech because it's no longer on the block anymore, firmly establishing when this was edited.

[Chapinator_X]

I guess to me, it felt distasteful since like it trivializes real world issues to equate them with anime adventures.

But then I started reading reactions to it and felt bad. You have black fans that are genuinely touched that the same people who introduced them to DBZ and Naruto have their back. Where seeing these characters remind them of the inspiration they might’ve gotten from the adversity they face, especially when characters like Goku and Naruto have overcome issues with their personal identities. 

I can be cynical about the editors conflating a cartoon character being sad with racial inequality, but I’m a lot less inclined to die on that hill when I read comments where fans are moved that they could see themselves in the anime characters that appear on Toonami. 

[EmpressAngel]

Stop giving dipshits like this views and attention.

[Top Gun]

  On 9/2/2020 at 6:26 PM, Chapinator-800 said:

Watching through the TOM commercial does remind me of the script I wrote out from the “Will T.O.M. and S.A.R.A. address the protests/riots?” thread.

It’s nice to hear the character addressing our country’s issues with race and show open support for BLM. But the dude who directs these segments couldn’t resist adding awkward anime clips to an otherwise serious conversation. 

Did they need to wedge background clips of ambiguously black anime characters or Naruto characters being sad into the speech? Just because Samurai Jack knows what it feels like to be upset or the Fire Force crew can come together to face adversity doesn’t mean they have any kind of poignant parallel with racial inequality. 

It draws less attention to the message and draws too much attention to which anime/cartoon clip they’re going to pick when TOM talks about black people getting falsely imprisoned or disproportionately murdered by the police. You know you can just have TOM give his message from the chair without the needless clips trying to equate real world issues with goofy cartoons. 

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I get your point, but at the same time there's a two-decade-old tradition of Toonami making videos about serious subjects which incorporate show clips.  I don't think the intent is to belittle the severity of these issues by comparing them to the struggles of a cartoon character, but instead to say, "We air a lot of shows about people overcoming huge odds and fighting for what they believe in, but this is something real that requires you to actually fight for it."

[korosu]

  On 9/2/2020 at 1:22 PM, PokeNirvash said:

 

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But nowadays, the phrase ALM has been perverted into a response to BLM by those who think the latter phrase is racist in and of itself.

 

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it's always been a response

[PokeNirvash]

In a capitalized format, yes.

[Daos]

He's got a great voice and great delivery .... how the hell is he not getting work?

[Sketch]

  On 9/4/2020 at 8:26 AM, Daos said:

He's got a great voice and great delivery .... how the hell is he not getting work?

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It's a mystery.

Maybe there are some detectives who can crack the case? Maybe they live in New Jersey? Maybe they are sentient assorted food products? Maybe ... 

[Daos]

  On 9/4/2020 at 9:48 AM, Sketch said:

It's a mystery.

Maybe there are some detectives who can crack the case? Maybe they live in New Jersey? Maybe they are sentient assorted food products? Maybe ... 

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Aqua unit patrol squad 1?

[PokeNirvash]

Aqua TiVo Avoidance Plan. I'm still waiting on that one, dammit!