Toonami returns

[SAMAS]

This past April Fools' Day, Adult Swim replaced their programming with a block of some of Toonami's biggest hits, complete with some of their classic promos and a new game review (Mass Effect 3, fittingly enough). The response was overwhelmingly positive.

http://www.adultswim.com/shows/toonami/

So much so, that they've decided to bring Toonami back later this month.

[Tanasinn]

There was never really a reason to dump Toonami in the first place. It's like they deliberately crashed it last time.

[Majin Gojira]

I admit it, I squeed like a little girl for a moment.

But only a moment.

Also, ANN has the Press Release promising (eventually) new anime content.

Start Speculatin'!

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

There was never really a reason to dump Toonami in the first place. It's like they deliberately crashed it last time.

Are you kidding? What did they play on Toonami? Fight shows aimed at teenaged boys with slow-moving plots and more padding than is found around the waistline of the average American. Almost entirely forgettable fare . . . especially since you could pirate that shit straight from Japan with the average broadband connection of the mid 2000s. Toonami dying out was more a symptom of the times . . . especially since this was around the time where the American anime bubble was just about to burst.

Fast forward to 2012. Anime in the United States has returned to its parents' basement. American anime distribution has fallen off a cliff . . . Pioneer/Geneon, ADV Films, and Bandai Entertainment have all gone the way of the dinosaur and disco. The current biggest name in Western anime distribution, FUNimation, streams a lot of their content. You can get that shit right off Netflix and Hulu too . . . and you can pirate that shit straight from Japan even easier than you could a few years ago (seriously, the time delay for fansub has fallen to something like twelve hours after first airing in Japan.)

Cartoon Network undoubtedly realizes this. No doubt it's why Toonami will only air from midnight to 6 AM on Saturdays. Why did they do this? I don't know . . . guess there's only so many Family Guy reruns a single network can play in one night, and anime licenses are probably cheaper than producing another season of something like The Boondocks or Metalocalypse.

You know what I'd like to see on Toonami? K-ON! Just to see the tears of despair and nerdrage when American audiences see what sort of anime is popular in Japan these days.

[One Two]

There was never really a reason to dump Toonami in the first place. It's like they deliberately crashed it last time.

Are you kidding? What did they play on Toonami? Fight shows aimed at teenaged boys with slow-moving plots and more padding than is found around the waistline of the average American. Almost entirely forgettable fare . . . especially since you could pirate that shit straight from Japan with the average broadband connection of the mid 2000s. Toonami dying out was more a symptom of the times . . . especially since this was around the time where the American anime bubble was just about to burst.

Fast forward to 2012. Anime in the United States has returned to its parents' basement. American anime distribution has fallen off a cliff . . . Pioneer/Geneon, ADV Films, and Bandai Entertainment have all gone the way of the dinosaur and disco. The current biggest name in Western anime distribution, FUNimation, streams a lot of their content. You can get that shit right off Netflix and Hulu too . . . and you can pirate that shit straight from Japan even easier than you could a few years ago (seriously, the time delay for fansub has fallen to something like twelve hours after first airing in Japan.)

Cartoon Network undoubtedly realizes this. No doubt it's why Toonami will only air from midnight to 6 AM on Saturdays. Why did they do this? I don't know . . . guess there's only so many Family Guy reruns a single network can play in one night, and anime licenses are probably cheaper than producing another season of something like The Boondocks or Metalocalypse.

You know what I'd like to see on Toonami? K-ON! Just to see the tears of despair and nerdrage when American audiences see what sort of anime is popular in Japan these days.

Oddly enough, they just announced season 4.

But yeah, when I actually think back to the last days of Toonami, the only thing I cared to watch was Naruto and then I realized that it really wasn't worth all the time they took to tell the story so now I just read the manga. But maybe it'll work for a while if they stick to the older shows and play off of everyone's nostalgia. Start from the very beginning with DBZ (hell, maybe even Dragon Ball also), Gundam Wing, Yu Yu Hakusho, and whatever else they showed on April Fool's day and they'll be good for years.

[Darksider]

I want to see robotech on T.V. again, just to hear the rage from the Macross fan community.

[SAMAS]

There was never really a reason to dump Toonami in the first place. It's like they deliberately crashed it last time.

Are you kidding? What did they play on Toonami? Fight shows aimed at teenaged boys with slow-moving plots and more padding than is found around the waistline of the average American. Almost entirely forgettable fare . . . especially since you could pirate that shit straight from Japan with the average broadband connection of the mid 2000s. Toonami dying out was more a symptom of the times . . . especially since this was around the time where the American anime bubble was just about to burst.

Fast forward to 2012. Anime in the United States has returned to its parents' basement. American anime distribution has fallen off a cliff . . . Pioneer/Geneon, ADV Films, and Bandai Entertainment have all gone the way of the dinosaur and disco. The current biggest name in Western anime distribution, FUNimation, streams a lot of their content. You can get that shit right off Netflix and Hulu too . . . and you can pirate that shit straight from Japan even easier than you could a few years ago (seriously, the time delay for fansub has fallen to something like twelve hours after first airing in Japan.)

Cartoon Network undoubtedly realizes this. No doubt it's why Toonami will only air from midnight to 6 AM on Saturdays. Why did they do this? I don't know . . . guess there's only so many Family Guy reruns a single network can play in one night, and anime licenses are probably cheaper than producing another season of something like The Boondocks or Metalocalypse.

You know what I'd like to see on Toonami? K-ON! Just to see the tears of despair and nerdrage when American audiences see what sort of anime is popular in Japan these days.

Actually, a good 40% of Toonami's shows were western. Megas XLR, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe(2002 version), Thundecats (original), Beast Wars, as mentioned before almost the entire DCAU (except maybe Static and Zeta), Samurai Jack, and others.

Toonami's focus was always on action, whether western toons or Shonen anime. Hell, just the possibility of seeing several Gundam series' again is fine for me.

[Tanasinn]

You know what I'd like to see on Toonami? K-ON! Just to see the tears of despair and nerdrage when American audiences see what sort of anime is popular in Japan these days.

I seriously doubt you'd see much screaming outside of the /a/ set. Who probably wouldn't watch Toonami these days, anyway.

[Guardsman Bass]

There was never really a reason to dump Toonami in the first place. It's like they deliberately crashed it last time.

Fast forward to 2012. Anime in the United States has returned to its parents' basement. American anime distribution has fallen off a cliff . . . Pioneer/Geneon, ADV Films, and Bandai Entertainment have all gone the way of the dinosaur and disco. The current biggest name in Western anime distribution, FUNimation, streams a lot of their content. You can get that shit right off Netflix and Hulu too . . . and you can pirate that shit straight from Japan even easier than you could a few years ago (seriously, the time delay for fansub has fallen to something like twelve hours after first airing in Japan.)

I'd say it's more that the anime business in the US is starting to look more like how the anime business looks in Japan. The anime business in Japan is all about selling a couple thousand extremely expensive Blu-Ray boxsets to fans who want collectable items (late night anime), or selling merchandise (day time anime). It's surprisingly profitable, probably because you can usually find a few thousand super-fans in a population of 150 million people. The TV shows themselves don't make any money, mostly serving to promote the show (the equivalent in the US would be Funimation, Crunchyroll, and Hulu streaming stuff online, since very few TV channels show anime anymore).

Bandai Entertainment made a shift in that direction when they decided to stop licensing their stuff for US DVD/BRD. Don't be surprised if most anime releases 5 years down the line are really expensive imports.

Cartoon Network undoubtedly realizes this. No doubt it's why Toonami will only air from midnight to 6 AM on Saturdays. Why did they do this? I don't know . . . guess there's only so many Family Guy reruns a single network can play in one night, and anime licenses are probably cheaper than producing another season of something like The Boondocks or Metalocalypse.

Showing it in the graveyard slot lets them get away with shows with more mature content. If most of the audience is going to be teens and twenty-somethings anyways, why not?

You know what I'd like to see on Toonami? K-ON! Just to see the tears of despair and nerdrage when American audiences see what sort of anime is popular in Japan these days.

You wouldn't be surprising many anime fans. Most of them have known this for years.

[Guardsman Bass]

EDIT: "Anime physical media releases"

[VF5SS]

They need to get their hands on Girls Und Panzer