Toonami's Cooked....Long Live AXS TV

[Toonamiguy321]

1 hour ago, Blatch said:

The thing about NFTs is that, while the general public has largely moved on (assuming they ever really took to them in the first place), there's always going to be a niche market of hyper-whales who are willing to stake money on a proof of stake that may or may not pay off. It's like how some anime mobile games stay afloat, the difference being that rolling for SSRs is cut and dry, while NFTs are often a means to an end that the token collectors probably don't care about. So how many people who buy the Anime.com tokens do you think will actually watch the show it's promoting? If something like this didn't work out for Neopets, it probably ain't gonna for you, blud.

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Besides, this is a way more effective marketing strategy:

 

Anime gacha players are a different breed. NFT people at least are thinking about their financial future, even if it’s just scammers trying to out scam other scammers. 
 

Gacha players are just in it for the jpeg. Money does not motivate them, just jpegs. Financial security? Generational wealth? No, there is an SSR I need with 0.5% roll odds, I need to take out another loan. 

[Sketch]

10 hours ago, Blatch said:

The thing about NFTs is that, while the general public has largely moved on (assuming they ever really took to them in the first place), there's always going to be a niche market of hyper-whales who are willing to stake money on a proof of stake that may or may not pay off. It's like how some anime mobile games stay afloat, the difference being that rolling for SSRs is cut and dry, while NFTs are often a means to an end that the token collectors probably don't care about. So how many people who buy the Anime.com tokens do you think will actually watch the show it's promoting? If something like this didn't work out for Neopets, it probably ain't gonna for you, blud.

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Besides, this is a way more effective marketing strategy:

 

I see you are a fellow Mint Fantome and Dokibird enjoyer.

Fuck Nijisanji, all my homies hate Nijisanji. I'm glad they both got out and are thriving.

[Blatch]

On 2/22/2025 at 8:44 AM, Sketch said:

I see you are a fellow Mint Fantome and Dokibird enjoyer.

Fuck Nijisanji, all my homies hate Nijisanji. I'm glad they both got out and are thriving.

Oh hell yeah. I've been posting some good clips (and occasionally whole streams) of various VTubers in the YT thread.

[PokeNirvash]

Just came back from setting up my recording for UBW #1 (the real one this time), and it looks like the Saturday night at midnight encore has been moved to Friday nights at 12:30. Guess they bit off more than they could chew, trying to directly compete with Toonami.

Edited February 27 by PokeNirvash

[Top Gun]

Heh, well that was fast.

[Blatch]

So it's almost time for Episodes 1 and 2 of UBW, except that Xfinity is showing a one-hour slot for just Episode 2... of the 2006 Fate anime. I think it was like this last week, too, though I didn't think anything of it at the time. No unique episode blurb either, just an awkwardly-worded blurb for the DEEN show. Pretty ramshackle, inn't it?

[PokeNirvash]

Ah, so that's why F/SN 2006 was showing up in my DirecTV search results!

Ramshackle or not, AXS TV's schedule says UBW #1, so that's what I'm ultimately trusting.

[Blatch]

Yeah, I wouldn't expect it to abruptly switch to a show Aniplex doesn't have. Not even the most back-alley anime operation in town (so Mnet America) would do that!

[Blatch]

Okay, so that was just Episode 1. Whew! Saw a lot of ads for Jameson whisky, and it turns out they're actually fitting. Also, speaking of which, there was one more commercial break than last week for some reason.

Don't think my rating will diverge from Poke's this time: TV-14LV.

[OwlChemist81]

On 2/26/2025 at 7:15 PM, PokeNirvash said:

Just came back from setting up my recording for UBW #1 (the real one this time), and it looks like the Saturday night at midnight encore has been moved to Friday nights at 12:30. Guess they bit off more than they could chew, trying to directly compete with Toonami.

Are you sure? I saw Saturday Night at 12:30.

[Sketch]

1 hour ago, OwlChemist81 said:

Are you sure? I saw Saturday Night at 12:30.

Sling still shows it on Saturday albeit at 12:30-1:30

[PokeNirvash]

That's early Saturday morning. Which is late Friday night.

[OwlChemist81]

48 minutes ago, PokeNirvash said:

That's early Saturday morning. Which is late Friday night.

No, it's Saturday night/Sunday morning. Same as Toonami.

[PokeNirvash]

No, it's late Friday night/early Saturday morning at 12:30 AM. Don't believe me, click this link and try believing me then.

[OwlChemist81]

On 2/28/2025 at 5:22 PM, PokeNirvash said:

No, it's late Friday night/early Saturday morning at 12:30 AM. Don't believe me, click this link and try believing me then.

So did it actually come on last night? Did anyone watch?

[OwlChemist81]

FATE is on AXS now!

[PokeNirvash]

Wait, what sense does that even...

Meh, whatever, my recording for it took in the end and that's what matters.

On 2/27/2025 at 11:16 PM, Blatch said:

Don't think my rating will diverge from Poke's this time: TV-14LV.

And you would be right on that. (Though I was personally expecting at least one S-bomb, but hey, two "bitch" variations and a "bastard" will work just fine.)

[Greener223224]

Plot twist: They're airing UBW followed by MHA tonight.

UBW episode 2 followed by MHA episode, I dunno, 5?

[Blatch]

Wait... I actually missed last night's UBW episode. But I can tape it tonight? Sweet.

[Top Gun]

I haven't bothered looking at these things yet, but I've at least recorded them (when I remember to), and I have no idea what I'm actually getting because the cable guide titles and descriptions are for a different show entirely. We always joked about the [as] schedule monkeys, but this network seems like it's being run by a single hamster.

[OwlChemist81]

14 hours ago, Greener223224 said:

Plot twist: They're airing UBW followed by MHA tonight.

UBW episode 2 followed by MHA episode, I dunno, 5?

Yeah, that's what they did. And your dumb butt DVRs think they got an hour of UBW. 🤦‍♂️

[PokeNirvash]

Guess they realized the whole "different show every other week" thing was a stupid idea after all.

[Blatch]

2 minutes ago, PokeNirvash said:

Guess they realized the whole "different show every other week" thing was a stupid idea after all.

Or maybe this is what they planned on after Fate stopped having hour-long episodes.

[PokeNirvash]

1 hour ago, Blatch said:

Or maybe this is what they planned on after Fate stopped having hour-long episodes.

That, too.

[Top Gun]

So is this thing still actually airing? I forgot to check it to set a recording if it was on Thursday (it's impossible to schedule it on the DVR otherwise because the show name keeps changing), and I'm not seeing a repeat listed tomorrow night.

[Toonamiguy321]

10 minutes ago, Top Gun said:

So is this thing still actually airing? I forgot to check it to set a recording if it was on Thursday (it's impossible to schedule it on the DVR otherwise because the show name keeps changing), and I'm not seeing a repeat listed tomorrow night.

It’s been moved later since TNA Wrestling is airing. 
 

TBH I think they have already written off the block and are just airing out of whatever obligations were paid for. It shuffles around the schedule so much without warning there is zero hope of it building any kind of audience. 

[PokeNirvash]

Doesn't really matter to me how much it's moving. I just set up my recording, watch it when ready to, and that's that.

And look on the bright side (which is apparently impossible for you): it's being given far more of a chance than Chiller's block ever had! To me, that's success enough.

[Jman]

Is anyone surprised?  You’re competing with streamers.  All the anime, all the time.  It’s not a fair fight.

[Top Gun]

Finally found the rerun, tomorrow at midnight for some reason. I haven't watched any of this yet so I should probably cut my losses and delete what I have at this point. 

[Top Gun]

@PokeNirvash Oi, don't you teabag me!

[Sketch]

So they moved the Thursday slot to midnight and moved the encores to Sundays. It has already lasted longer than some expected but its evident by now that they will keep running it because it's paid programming. 

[KageRageX]

Yeah.....stopped watching TNA because of this.

[PokeNirvash]

Welp, seeing how UBW's run is over and it looks like it's all MHA all the time until an inevitable and unceremonious sunsetting, I might as well throw out a couple cents towards the block-watching experience. The half of it that I stuck around for, anyways.

As a veteran viewer of SyFy Ani-Mondays and Chiller's failed take on a block of its own four years after its parent channel terminated the former, I was expecting worse treatment than what we actually got. The amount of commercial breaks was smaller and not nearly as excessive (plus the ability to skip ahead stopped them from feeling endless), it didn't appear that many scenes were cut for time constraints, with only a sped-up ED and presumably excised previews to stand as typical cuts... From what I hear, the Blu-Ray version of UBW had additional scenes that may have meant time cuts happened after all, but I hardly felt confused at their exclusion (callbacks to Fate/Zero aside), so I barely even noticed they were there, unlike on SyFy where scenes from Noein they used for interstitials never showed up in the actual broadcast, or on Chiller where Ayumu mentioned a breakdancing scene that never occurred as if it happened, and closed-captioning was given for scenes that never actually made it to the final cut.

Hell, AXS even left in what post-credits scenes there were; the removal of such being a recurring problem on [as], SyFy, and the viewing experiences of so many paid reviewers who think it's always wise to stop watching a show once the credits start rolling! Those were great. And what's more, there didn't appear to be that many cuts for content, either; you know SyFy or Chiller would've blurred out Ilya's butt in episode 4 and muted Shinji's S-bomb in episode 20. It almost felt like there wasn't as much oversight as there could've been, and I admire the broadcast for that. Unfortunately for my hyperfixation, they didn't even bother with the content ratings, which is all right because I fashioned up a set of my own (spoiler-marked so it doesn't feel like I'm forcing them on any one of you), adhering to my personal standards but loosely inspired by the more relaxed guidelines of SyFy's anime offerings.

Spoiler

0. TV-PGLV
1. TV-14LV
2. TV-PGL
3. TV-14V
4. TV-PGSV
5. TV-14V
6. TV-PGV
7. TV-14LV
8. TV-14V
9. TV-PGDL
10. TV-14V
11. TV-PGL
12. TV-14V
13. TV-14
14. TV-14V
15. TV-14V
16. TV-14LV
17. TV-14V
18. TV-14
19. TV-14DV
20. TV-14LV
21. TV-14LV
22. TV-14V
23. TV-14V
24. TV-14V
25. TV-PGLV

Honestly, this may wind up being my favorite set of personalized content ratings this year, once it's over.

As for the show itself, while it did have the problem of dialogue-heavy scenes being hard to readily recall in memory, particularly if there was nothing plot-relevant in them, I wound up enjoying the show, to the point where I can recognize and consider it to be good. Could've done without some of the deaths, but hey, that's the kind of thing to be expected in a Holy Grail War. At least civilian fatalties were limited overall. (Because oh boy were there casualties.) I never thought I'd get into Fate, to the point that I told some dude that wouldn't stop asking me about it on Ask.fm (remember that?) as much. After this, though? I'm actually interested in venturing further into the Fate multiverse.

So, what's next? Fate/Zero, so all the callbacks in UBW make sense? Or how about DEEN/stay night, so I know how the original storyline went and where UBW diverged? As a hobbyist chef who's grown out of the death game genre of anime, you can't go wrong with Today's Menu for Emiya Family. But realistically, I think the next one I'm gonna watch, barring any more cable TV pickups, will be Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya, for this sole reason:

Spoiler

I'd have preferred if Illya survived the Holy Grail War, even knowing that the plot wouldn't have reached the climax it did if Gilgamesh hadn't killed her and ripped her heart right out of her body. Girl was doomed by the narrative she was created for.

And also to spite Kevin Tarmack over on ANN for unironically telling people to watch season 3 but skip both halves of season 2. I understand his concerns, but as someone who's watched Puni Puni Poemy multiple times, I'm sure I can handle whatever 2wei and 2wei Herz have to offer.

See you all again in this thread when Anime.com Hour shutters its doors!

[Top Gun]

The Fateverse was always this inscrutable impenetrable thing to me as an outsider, so I initially started recording this airing without ever really intending to watch it, but then my nerd group picked it as our next discussion show which was convenient. I think a distinction should be made between how AXS handled the series itself and how the overall block was structured, because as you said they did a solid job with the former. Full OP every episode, reasonable commercial breaks, no actual episode content cut that I could see. The sped-up ED is pretty standard, and the only other thing cut were episode previews, which in this case were just a few lines of episode dialog over generic artwork so you weren't missing much. The one caveat is that the block was showing the broadcast version of the series and not the extended BD episodes, but from what I've read that's the same case with the likes of Netflix so I can't fault them for it. I eventually jumped ship to my acquired episodes by the end of season 1, since there seemed to be more content getting added by then. A few of the first season 2 episodes had lengths of 27 and even 29 minutes, as opposed to around 24 for episodes without anything added. There wasn't anything super-critical in the extended content, but there were some additional character interactions that gave more context to what was happening; in particular Caster's backstory had a whole new introductory scene that was pretty interesting.

Now as decent as the show presentation was, the block management was hot garbage. The whole time the guide listing has shown only the first episode being aired each night, so there's no good way to tell what's on during the second half-hour, and that wasn't just a cable guide thing but even right on AXS's site schedule. Pity the fool who's been trying to keep up with MHA this whole time. For the first several weeks I had to keep setting the DVR manually because the changing listing name defeated automatic recording; at least one of them wound up under MHA's name. There was one time where I forgot to record on Thursday, so I found the Saturday repeat slot and picked that up...only to wind up with parts of Queen and AC/DC concerts instead. (Wound up watching them anyway because they were awesome.) Things seemed to finally settle down halfway through season 1, so I had it set to automatically record and didn't think much about it, but I guess something else screwed up because it didn't snag the second-to-last episode while I was on vacation. As bad as [as] has been over the decades, this was a whole new level of incompetence.