Double MHA and dubbed One Piece crossover to air March 4th

[Toonamiguy321]

5 hours ago, Sketch said:

I don’t think that’s a fair assumption given how tight the budget could be this year. We can’t just assume anything Sentai has is on the table either.

I think I have said it before, but if the block is already in budget crisis in February, that’s a more damning statement for the future than anything else. If that’s the reality of the situation, all we should expect is to bounce between originals, with all in between time being like it is now. And it will never improve. 
 

4 hours ago, PokeNirvash said:

IIRC, the problem with Sentai isn't that they don't want their stuff on Toonami like the case is with Sony/Crunchyroll, but that whenever [as] extends offers to license from them, it takes forever for them to get back to them. In the end, what we have here is a failure to communicate.

[bang]

We only have one side of the story to that claim. For all we know “failure to communicate” is Demarco calling them one time and never bothering again. Somehow they made Made in Abyss happen fast last January, then nailed down S2 before it’s dub even finished releasing. I have a strong feeling the lack of Sentai shows has been a failure to communicate on both sides, primarily because Sentai didn’t have anything Demarco was motivated to pick up. 
 

2 hours ago, OwlChemist81 said:

What DOES set 2023 apart is that we don't know when after 3/4/23 that Toonami will air its next World Premiere or dub premiere. Both 2012 and 2015's late starts were immediately followed by another episode of their premieres on 4/8/12 (though not part of Toonami) and 4/4/15. Will that be the case in 2023?

This is an interesting breakdown, but not something the average viewer cares about. Very few people were waiting for the next dub premier confirmation, but rather just new shows. Similarly, while the OP special is interesting, a single week premier for one episode from 2013 isn’t getting that many people excited, especially since we still have no shows announced for the following week. 
 

1 hour ago, CountFrylock said:

Toei is eager to work with toonami because they still believe American Cable Television is a great place to promote their shows

I don’t think Toei is that eager. Rather, they just use the block for promoting stuff when it’s convenient to them. We are still looking at OP running single episodes per week after this special. If Toei was a true ally we could rely on, they would set us up with the material to go back to 2x episodes. The fact that we dropped down to 1 per week at all proves Toei is only willing to help Toonami out to the extent their budget can buy help, which ain’t much. 

[CountFrylock]

there are better places to promote your content than A Block for Insomniacs on cable television....so i doubt it's the same case as "You Only Get DC Content when we need you to promote DC Content"

otherwise one piece would have completely vanished once Film Red's time in the spotlight was over

 

as for why we don't have any new show announcements...it has to be something they personally enjoy and also something they can reasonably afford

even if they can afford a show...if they don't like it themselves they aren't going to touch it with a ten foot pole

 

 

[Sketch]

They haven't had an affinity for everything they've aired but the ones they didn't have an affinity for were more than likely very popular or very buzz worthy when they went after them. They basically can't get buzz worthy shows now with a few exceptions here and there. They do watch modern anime (mostly ones they can never air because they're licensed or produced by Netflix) but they most likely don't have a good grasp on what lesser known anime are available to license. There's like 120 shows in production in Japan every year and there's no way they've looked into even 25% of that any given year. They're not getting paid to review anime, hell they're not getting paid specifically to AIR anime it's just a small part of their jobs overall. At this point it would be real good to have an intern who at least once a week thoroughly researched shows but fat chance of Williams Street assigning that task to anyone else now.

There are other potential wrinkles that could be keeping the schedule stalled.

While I'm sure the budget isn't any better than last year and might even be worse than last year, there is the possibility that they've already set aside a large chunk of it for Bleach but either can't start it yet or want to hold off until MHA ends as it's the best choice for headliner they can probably get for the 2nd half of the year. We can figure they had at least enough left in the tank to fill 12:30 and 1AM otherwise it made no sense to double up YashaHime and finish it earlier than necessary but maybe coming up with two other shows for roughly the same cost is proving difficult.

Alternatively they're not able to finalize the deals for whatever they're currently going for as timely as they thought they could. DeMarco did mention how a lack of lawyers around the office since all the layoffs has caused delays.

They're inching ever closer to Attack on Titan Final Final Finale Part 1 to the point that starting the next show/s after that airs makes more sense if they can "event program" until then. If that's the plan then it's evident that they either didn't nail down their March 11th stall tactic yet or it will be double MHA and double One Piece which technically isn't a change from March 4th.

Optimistically, they didn't post the schedule yet because they think they can finalize something this week and start 1 or 2 shows on March 11th.

And there's also the possibility that they're going to air Attack on Titan Part 4 Part 3 Part 1 on March 11th and they are not allowed to say so until Crunchyroll announces when the dub will stream. Because Crunchyroll sucks like that.

We are never going to know how the process of finding shows has been going the past month but they've probably been trying their darndest to get SOMETHING and they did what they could to keep the block from becoming 3 straight weeks of double One Piece and double Shippuden.

[Toonamiguy321]

2 hours ago, CountFrylock said:

there are better places to promote your content than A Block for Insomniacs on cable television....so i doubt it's the same case as "You Only Get DC Content when we need you to promote DC Content"

otherwise one piece would have completely vanished once Film Red's time in the spotlight was over

 

as for why we don't have any new show announcements...it has to be something they personally enjoy and also something they can reasonably afford

even if they can afford a show...if they don't like it themselves they aren't going to touch it with a ten foot pole

 

 

This is promotion for a 10 year old crossover special for a show that hasn’t been on the air in 7. Yea there are better places to promote stuff, but this ain’t something worth promoting beyond insomniacs on television. 
 

9 minutes ago, Sketch said:

They haven't had an affinity for everything they've aired but the ones they didn't have an affinity for were more than likely very popular or very buzz worthy when they went after them.

Per Demarco everything they have aired on AS Toonami has been something they at least marginally liked themselves. He has admitted outright if he does not like a show he won’t bother with it regardless of fan demand. Maybe they didn’t love every show, but there was never one they hated.

12 minutes ago, Sketch said:

At this point it would be real good to have an intern who at least once a week thoroughly researched shows but fat chance of Williams Street assigning that task to anyone else now.

I thought they needed an anime research intern back in 2016 when they started saying they preferred long running shonen because it meant they had to do less work researching shows. The whole staff has always been oblivious to modern trends and they really would have benefited from someone with a younger viewpoint on the show selection team. Unfortunately, you are correct that it’s far too late to enlist someone for the job.

16 minutes ago, Sketch said:

While I'm sure the budget isn't any better than last year and might even be worse than last year, there is the possibility that they've already set aside a large chunk of it for Bleach but either can't start it yet or want to hold off until MHA ends as it's the best choice for headliner they can probably get for the 2nd half of the year.

This is a problematic way to run the block though. They can’t just blow their load on one show and leave the block in an awkward holding pattern for months at a time. It’s not even an effective tactic for preserving ratings based on the ups and downs we have seen with MHA. If they really are doing this, maybe it’s time to have a talk about dialing the block down to 2 hours so at the very least they can consistently deliver and not have us in holding patterns every few months. 
 

20 minutes ago, Sketch said:

Alternatively they're not able to finalize the deals for whatever they're currently going for as timely as they thought they could. DeMarco did mention how a lack of lawyers around the office since all the layoffs has caused delays.

When was that mentioned? November? At this point they should know what kind of extra time they need to budget to get things done. 
 

23 minutes ago, Sketch said:

They're inching ever closer to Attack on Titan Final Final Finale Part 1 to the point that starting the next show/s after that airs makes more sense if they can "event program" until then. If that's the plan then it's evident that they either didn't nail down their March 11th stall tactic yet or it will be double MHA and double One Piece which technically isn't a change from March 4th.

Online schedules are blank, so they haven’t made any commitments yet. But I do agree they have now waited too long to start a show and will likely keep stalling till it’s ready. Which a conservative estimate would mean new show announcements would be late March/early April

 

[Toonamiguy321]

Just thought this was interesting. Despite the roughly 730k people who follow Toonami on Facebook, it’s post usually don’t see much engagement. A high end topical post is around 1k likes, and maybe 10 comments from the same people who feel obligated to comment something meaningless to every post just to engage with it. Average like numbers are more like 500 or so. But check out how the first trailer for the One Piece special is doing. 83k likes and climbing, 6.9k comments (nice!) and 25.5k shares? That’s nearly a years worth of Toonami Facebook engagement on ONE post. Hopefully some of these people actually bother tuning in for it, but if nothing else this has reminded a lot of people that Toonami still exists. 

[Blatch]

On 2/19/2023 at 7:24 AM, PokeNirvash said:

Separating art from the artist and all that nonsense. Also, I don't think he really knows and/or cares about the creator's past controversies.

What Shimabukuro did may have been less inherently cancellable than Watsuki's crime, but it's not like I'd be caught dead reading Toriko either. Still, if you're gonna watch this weirdo crossover episode, I hope you have a good time.

Now for a general comment: nobody's brought up yet the fact that March 11 is when we lose an hour due to DST. I wonder if [as] might use this as an excuse to schedule another weirdo two-hour Toonami, and who knows how stalling could play into that. My idea was that they'd air the last few episode of Made in Abyss S1, either three or five depending on how they want to play it, and use that as an excuse to throw on a rerun of S2 in the back, because at this point I doubt we're getting anything more than FLCL Grunge once the schedule is ready to ramp back up.

Personally, I see them stalling all the way through March 18. Helps that it's ZUN's birthday the weekend of Toonami's anniversary, plus the new AoT thingy should be ready to go by then. The only problem with all this is that it would be weird to go back to a full-scale stall since we're getting new One Piece back even outside of the crossover. And maybe Grunge will be ready by then too? I figure recording for it should be done by now, but I've thought that for, like, a few weeks?

[Jman]

The only show that DeMarco expressed interest in these past few months that wasn't off-limits for whatever reason was Urusei Yatsura, which is set to debut on HiDive tomorrow.

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2023-02-27/new-urusei-yatsura-anime-english-dub-streams-on-march-1/.195380

Granted, I think airing Yatsura is a really bad idea, but it's the only dub that DeMarco has expressed interest in that's actually available and ready to go.

 

[Toonamiguy321]

1 hour ago, Blatch said:

Now for a general comment: nobody's brought up yet the fact that March 11 is when we lose an hour due to DST.

Thanks to the block cuts, Toonami itself should not fall within the missing DST hour. So the lost hour is just going to be whatever airs right after Toonami. 
 

1 hour ago, Jman said:

The only show that DeMarco expressed interest in these past few months that wasn't off-limits for whatever reason was Urusei Yatsura, which is set to debut on HiDive tomorrow.

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2023-02-27/new-urusei-yatsura-anime-english-dub-streams-on-march-1/.195380

Granted, I think airing Yatsura is a really bad idea, but it's the only dub that DeMarco has expressed interest in that's actually available and ready to go.

 

Yea, since seeing this news I’m thinking that’s the answer. Would somewhat explain the stalling if they were waiting on Sentai to get it moving, and we know Demarco just can’t resist falling back on something familiar. Made in Abyss S2 first dubbed episode dropped on Sept 1 2022. Toonami got it the first week of November. So if we did get this, we would only be about a month behind Sentai. 
 

If it’s the ONLY pickup, I agree it’s a bad idea. I’m really tired of them refusing to branch outside of titles/creators that they know. This block desperately needs some spice. But if it’s one of two pickups and the other isn’t super predictable I don’t mind it as much. 

[Sketch]

It totally would have been Yatsura and Witch from Mercury if they had their druthers. I’ve been saying as much since the beginning of the year. New series from classic franchises is their MO. I’m still bummed they weren’t able to get the 2014 Yamato series a while back.

That said I don’t recall DeMarco actually saying anything about Urusei Yatsura.

All that activity for the crossover trailer goes to show what an actual premiere can garner, maybe it should have been at 12:30 rather than blowing an MHA. But of course a lot of that interest is from DBZ fans. Goku is here to save the block for one week.

Yeah putting all the eggs in one expensive basket isn’t a great idea but they know better than anyone that the first show has to bring in a audience and the only sensible gambles for that slot are hugely popular acquisitions or an actual premiere. Bleach is the former and the originals are the latter. Dub premieres that aren’t originals are out of reach baring very unique circumstances. Though if One Piece beating MHA happens a few more times then maybe it can be the front runner. 🤔

I’d rather they have two reruns than lose the 3rd hour. Hell they could give 2:30 to Venture Bros and I would finally have Toonami style Venture Bros bumps. Though I would prefer IGPX to that. They have all of Attack on Titan, so they could use that and GITS hasn’t been on since 2018. They can probably rerun Lupin Part 6 still. But before they consider a 2nd rerun, I do hope they double up One Piece permanently.

[CountFrylock]

reruns are just filler content if you ask me...most toonami fans are probably in bed by that point anyways

reruns give off the illusion of the block being longer than it really is

 

[ben0119]

On 2/26/2023 at 3:48 AM, CountFrylock said:

probably doesn't help that the toonami crew are iffy on airing anything they themselves don't enjoy....(In A Recent Q&A  Demarco said if Yugioh Ever got a full uncut dub  He'd never allow it on toonami Because He Hates that series)

considering how long it's taking them to find two new shows I'd think it's fair to assume they are being extra picky and refusing to look at anything they personally don't enjoy

He said the same thing about .hack.  Although, this seems like a poor way to do business and please viewers.

They really can't afford to be picky right now.

On 2/26/2023 at 11:10 PM, Toonamiguy321 said:

I think I have said it before, but if the block is already in budget crisis in February, that’s a more damning statement for the future than anything else. If that’s the reality of the situation, all we should expect is to bounce between originals, with all in between time being like it is now. And it will never improve. 
 

We only have one side of the story to that claim. For all we know “failure to communicate” is Demarco calling them one time and never bothering again. Somehow they made Made in Abyss happen fast last January, then nailed down S2 before it’s dub even finished releasing. I have a strong feeling the lack of Sentai shows has been a failure to communicate on both sides, primarily because Sentai didn’t have anything Demarco was motivated to pick up. 

Yes, as soon they pick up a show, they know when it's going to end, and should start planning for its replacement at least that soon.  Having these delays and stalling tactics, holding patterns, is unacceptable.

If anything I am more willing to put the blame on the Toonami side for incompetence and slowness.  We've seen the stupid crap Demarco says online in public, like complaining about Sony not giving them stuff and saying they're locked out of Demon Slayer.  Who knows what goes on in those meetings and correspondence.

Edited March 13, 2023 by ben0119

[CountFrylock]

34 minutes ago, ben0119 said:

He said the same thing about .hack.  Although, this seems like a poor way to do business and please viewers.

They really can't afford to be picky right now.

Yes, as soon they pick up a show, they know when it's going to end, and should start planning for its replacement at least that soon.  Having these delays and stalling tactics, holding patterns, is unacceptable.

If anything I am more willing to put the blame on the Toonami side for incompetence and slowness.  We've seen the stupid crap Demarco says online in public, like complaining about Sony not giving them stuff and saying they're locked out of Demon Slayer.  Who knows what goes on in those meetings and correspondence.

they really do seem to be trying to pry shows from crunchyroll's hands because it's where the hot popular content is and they don't really feel like doing research on what sentai actually has available

i have my doubts they can only air one sentai show at a time....(if that's the case then they gotta hope crunchyroll changes it's tune and becomes more cooperative)

[ben0119]

1 hour ago, CountFrylock said:

they really do seem to be trying to pry shows from crunchyroll's hands because it's where the hot popular content is and they don't really feel like doing research on what sentai actually has available

i have my doubts they can only air one sentai show at a time....(if that's the case then they gotta hope crunchyroll changes it's tune and becomes more cooperative)

It could be an exercise in futility and definitely not something Toonami should be counting one or trying to build a schedule around.  Crunchyroll shows should be shows Toonami can get if they can, not shows that if they can't get, everything goes to shit.  I do hope Toonami looks into the Sentai catalogue more and I'm glad to see Demarco was taking suggestions.

I've never heard that only one Sentai show could air at a time.  I don't know why that would be.  Has it been a pattern?  That sounds like a coincidence.