C&C - Toonami Talkback [4/1]

[bigddan11]

CN has now posted the entire Toonami on [adult swim] promo run on Youtube. This includes the video game review and a tribute segment I was unaware they aired.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=AUGEkYb5LMI

[adult swim] is continuing to encourage fans to go on Twitter and let them now if you want Toonami back since I just got the tweet about it today from them.
https://twitter.com/#!/adultswim/status/187004036824834049

 

[KYO'NYUU IMOUTO]

I'm a little surprised by the haste that has been made to be...'largely positive' about this latest turn of events. Adult Swim has said it before--and it still rings very true--there's little reason to air Japanese cartoons. Much of the built-in fandom and culture already expects to only get this stuff on home video or through streaming. When you have that sort of culture you weaken the base's willingness to support broadcast. So, already, the broadcaster is making a risk in airing a niche program in addition to doing so without a fully powered pre-established base.

To speak more simply: Japanese cartoons that air on US TV these days are already in the red as they first air. The network is solely airing this program on a whim or kindness, unless otherwise paid (Japanese-style) for the slot. This generates more risk for the licensee.

For any sort of success to come out of a possible revival Toonami is going to have to air at a time of the day when children--who aren't savvy like we adults--will be able to come across this stuff. Midnight to six in the morning isn't going to cut it. That said, nine to midnight is successfully filled with popular, mainstream American titles. There's no reason to change that, espicially on the scale Japanese cartoons would need to gain popularity. That is to say, at least nine to midnight (which is Adult Swim's turf) for at least five days of the week need to be available to Toonami. That...just doesn't make sense for a company trying to make money.

So, Giving Sunday nights/Monday mornings to Toonami in addition to Sat/Sun would be a miracle in of itself, let alone the full-on strips your One Pieces and Fairy Tails would need to be successful to an audience that doesn't already have it on their shelf or their Hulu que.

I'll cut this WGA-infringing post short here. What Toonami needs to 'live' (rather than just be a once-a-week re-run schedule in the same vein as April Fools 2012) is something that it has no right asking for unless it actually aims to create or house original content, or at the very least content that will make up for not just airing re-runs of mainstream titles.

If the WGA calls, I wasn't here.

 

[Paradox295]

For any sort of success to come out of a possible revival Toonami is going to have to air at a time of the day when children--who aren't savvy like we adults--will be able to come across this stuff. Midnight to six in the morning isn't going to cut it. That said, nine to midnight is successfully filled with popular, mainstream American titles. There's no reason to change that, espicially on the scale Japanese cartoons would need to gain popularity. That is to say, at least nine to midnight (which is Adult Swim's turf) for at least five days of the week need to be available to Toonami. That...just doesn't make sense for a company trying to make money.

Again.

This isn't Toonami. It's Toonami on Adult Swim.

It won't be a brand new thing, and it won't target kids, it simply just will be ASA spiced up with the old Toonami bumps, with a few new shows and some classics thrown in for good measure.

Imagine Toonami promos airing for Bleach and Steins;Gate airing during Family Guy. That would be so awesome.

 

[The Man in Black]

CN has now posted the entire Toonami on [adult swim] promo run on Youtube. This includes the video game review and a tribute segment I was unaware they aired.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=AUGEkYb5LMI

I don't think that that is any kind of official CN youtube account. Also, what tribute are you talking about?

 

[Angilasman]

^It basically boils down to the fact that they're airing 6 hours of anime already. It's not a huge ratings grabber, but it has audience enough to support it for all these years - why not simply make it Toonami?

 

[The Man in Black]

^It basically boils down to the fact that they're airing 6 hours of anime already. It's not a huge ratings grabber, but it has audience enough to support it for all these years - why not simply make it Toonami?

I also feel like if it's a no-brainer that slapping TOM bumpers and promos around what's basically already there for the most part and getting THAT much more worth of ratings...that they're really stupid if they don't.

 

[AndrewSP]

Angilasman, I read your entire post, and I am in agreement. But I only have one thing to say in response...

Eureka Seven...was the last action show on AS I really liked.

You're currently my new favorite person for saying this. Thank you.

Again.

This isn't Toonami. It's Toonami on Adult Swim.

It won't be a brand new thing, and it won't target kids, it simply just will be ASA spiced up with the old Toonami bumps, with a few new shows and some classics thrown in for good measure.

Imagine Toonami promos airing for Bleach and Steins;Gate airing during Family Guy. That would be so awesome.

I'm imagining it all right. And it is glorious. Ever since Sunday night I've been imagining "Next week, on..." promos with most of my favorite anime shows.

I'm at least hoping that they still have the raw assets for the TOM 3.0 bumps, so they can make true HD versions of them if Toonami were to truly return.

*by that I mean the CGI TOM segments, they definitely have the rest if they were able to make all those new show bumpers.

 

[Dragnatek]

Even if they don't give us new shows or reruns of old toonami show and just give us reruns of Adult Swim anime like they always do the Toonami bumpers will give it a life all it's own which the Saturday night anime on Adult Swim really does not have anymore.

Sure it would be ideal to bring Toonami back for a new generation but that does not seem to be the goal here. It seems now if Toonami returns it will be fore the people who grew up with Toonami and who remember it fondly. That is a start and we have a chance to make that happen. It's time to make our voices heard.

And hey if it breaths some much needed life in Saturday Night Adult Swim all the better.

 

[GWOtaku]

There are multiple ways Toonami could be brought back, Jacob. Any method would be an improvement on the status quo, though you are right that the best situation is to position it so that it will get noticed by your aforementioned "unsavvy" viewers. A big component of Toonami's success & legacy was how it created animation fans (not just anime fans, animation fans).

Other points:

1. As I never get tired of saying, Toonami was more than anime.
2. To a point, the past doesn't matter. Sometimes the status quo changes. We are possibly on the verge of one of those times.
3. It should go without saying that any rebranding is about trying to reach beyond the current established viewership.
4. You say the "built-in fandom" already expects to get programming outside of TV. If that's true, the obvious question to ask is why so much of it is clamoring for Toonami right now. If you mean the built-in anime fandom that doesn't overlap with people who saw and liked Toonami, realize that (a) that's a rather limited group and (b) those people have largely been there all along and so don't count.

What I take away from your post is "bringing back Toonami might not be such a good thing if they handle it wrong." But of course "if" is the key word there; this is a hefty assumption to make.

I daresay a big part of the positive reaction has to do with how this feels like "wow, Williams Street is acting like they care", which is something a lot of interested parties probably haven't said or believed for quite some time. Very little about any of this surprises me, except for the fact that Adult Swim did any of this in the first place.

Edit:

#BringBackToonami has over 10,000 retweets (hat tip to Lance Heiskell)

http://topsy.com/twitter.com/adultswim/status/187004036824834049

 

[VictoryStar]

I'd love it if they brought back Toonami. The broadcast 2 nights ago was great and it'd bring back great memories of Nostalgia for me and a lot of us I bet. If they did though I'd hope it would be on more than one night or they select shows with shorter amounts of episodes because some shows (Like DBZ for example) wouldn't cut it for me with only one episode each week. I know they only had one a week when they moved to Saturday nights already but like I stated earlier they chose shorter shows to broadcast for it.

Keep retweeting everyone!

 

[bla2772]

Retweet eveyone bring the thunder #bring back toonami

 

[Lighthammer]

I also feel like if it's a no-brainer that slapping TOM bumpers and promos around what's basically already there for the most part and getting THAT much more worth of ratings...that they're really stupid if they don't.

The big problem in all of this is you can't just slap new bumpers around existing shows ad expect them to magically bring in a whole new audience.

Changing the cover of the book doesn't change the contents.

The big problem right now is a lot of the shows on Adult Swim has gotten stagnate. Moreover most of those shows are in the middle of runs. Asking viewers to start watching something in the middle of a series is kind of painful to do --- yet restarting those series is equally as bad as many of them have restarted a billion times.

I think the base could be invigorated again by taking a DBZ Kai / FMA Brotherhood approach where it comes to Naruto and Bleach. If both Bleach and Naruto Ship were trimmed down to remove most, if not all of the filler, I think that in of itself would generate a huge surge. Those series are awesome when they stay on target. Also, its going to give us a good reason to throw both on hiatus every now and again to cycle things and a reason to pitch DVDs (for the full experience).

That being said, beyond that, they DO need something new. Bringing back a few old series is not a bad idea, but they need to be able to make money on it for them to consider it.

There are multiple ways Toonami could be brought back, Jacob. Any method would be an improvement on the status quo, though you are right that the best situation is to position it so that it will get noticed by your aforementioned "unsavvy" viewers. A big component of Toonami's success & legacy was how it created animation fans (not just anime fans, animation fans).

You know, I keep thinking about this and I keep coming back to the same conclusion: Toonami would do best if Cartoon Network and Adult Swim and play nice and split the block. It would allow for a neat place to air re-runs of stuff that hasn't gotten re-run exposure and DESERVES IT but more importantly for the maintenance of the block, it allows the costs of the block to be split.

I think Adult Swim could easily make use of the old "Midnight Run" persona to rerun series like Bleach, Inuyasha, etc. Cartoon Network can use Toonami to rerun shows like Ben-10, Thundercats (limitly), Rex and other action shows while throwing in a new (or old) anime here or there. I don't think its a stretch to say Zatch Bell or a rerun of Naruto wouldn't be well received and not particularly expensive.

That being said, I can sit it and toss out all these neat usages for the branding that all make a lot of sense --- the only thing I fear is expanding to too many places at once. The potential is there, but taking on too many things at once could be bad unless some big measures were taken.

For instance: If we go full blow Toonami and say - "Ok we're running Toonami...:"

• Weekdays 5-7 for action reruns
• Weekdays 12-1 for action reruns
• Fridays 5-7 is dedicated to reruns of last week's Saturday Morning version
• Saturday Mornings 8-10 for Ben10, Rex, Star Wars and Thundercats premiers
• Saturdays from 10P - 2A for Adult Swim Action

That's a lot of materialization all at once. It all fits, it all looks nice, but will it cause Toonami overload?

The only way I personally see to avoid that would be to build different themed bumpers for everything.

For instance:

• Weekdays should have a bumper-set with a little lighter feel. Using a package similar to The Reactor wouldn't be a horrible idea here.
• Fridays (if that happens, that would require retooling) should have a more "extreme" feel.
• Midnight Run and Saturdays should certainly have a darker feel.
• Saturday Mornings --- well lets face it --- the Raising Sun was a great package for that! I'd kind of like to see that back.

 

[Rurouni Kenshin]

Wow, it's great to see so much discussion about Toonami again. I didn't realize how much I missed Toonami until I saw the clips on youtube and it really brought back some great memories. Even if Toonami never airs again I'm glad AS cared enough to let it air for one more day.

 

[bla2772]

everyone post something on twitter wit #bringtoonamiback in at 9:30 we need adult swim tr how much we carw

 

[The Talon]

I know most of us are focusing on the nostalgia part of Toonami coming back, but a lot of us aren't really discussing new fans. Nostalgia can be a good & bad thing (in this case, good), but it won't get Toonami on AS great ratings for long. If the Toonami revival is to be succesful, it has to appeal to new viewers. There's a lot of teens now just finding out about Toonami & older adults wondering what the big deal about it was. Well, AS has to find a way to appeal to them to watch Toonami, or else ratings for ASA will pretty much only get a slight bump for the next few weeks at best.

 

[Sketch]

Light AS is not going to use 12-1 on weekdays for anime reruns. Robot Chicken and The Boondocks do exceptionally well there.

IMO even if they were to extend to weekdays it probably would be 5-6 am maybe if they felt like shaking things up they would sneak it in at 2 am and have less encores but weekdays as is works exceptionally well except for the 9 hour. 9 pm - 10 pm would be ideal though, particularly if CN does not have their own Toonami block. King of the Hill does better at 5 am anyway.

As for CN 5-7 action was a lot more do-able when they had more prime time hours to rerun their top rated comedies so maybe they'd be willing to use 4-6 pm but if they granted 2 hours it would be more likely 3-5 pm or 7 am - 9 am.

CN might consider it a good idea to repackage their morning action hours as Toonami but I'd expect nothing more. The only place I could see Toonami get 5-7 pm and 12 am - 1 am is Boomerang and that channel never does anything.

I'm really not counting on CN to split Toonami with AS. I'm not so sure splitting the audience is a good idea either. The bumps they can make should not be that costly and working out deals to review games, music and films or otherwise plug those things could help with that financial burden.

 

[bla2772]

Light AS is not going to use 12-1 on weekdays for anime reruns. Robot Chicken and The Boondocks do exceptionally well in them.

IMO even if they were to extend to weekdays it probably would be 5-6 am maybe if they felt like shaking things up they would sneak it in at 2 am and have less encores but weekdays as is works exceptionally well except for the 9 hour. 9 pm - 10 pm would be ideal though, particularly if CN does not their own Toonami block. King of the Hill does better at 5 am anyway.

As for CN 5-7 action was a lot more do-able when they had more prime time hours to rerun their top rated comedies so maybe they'd be willing to use 4-6 pm but if they granted 2 hours it would be 3-5 pm or 7 am - 9 am.

CN might consider a good idea to repackage their morning action hours as Toonami but I'd expect nothing more. The only place I could see Toonami get 5-7 pm and 12 am - 1 am is Boomerang and that channel never does anything.

I'm really not counting on CN to split Toonami with AS. I'm not so sure splitting the audience is a good idea either. The bumps they can make should not be that costly and working out deals to review games, music and films or otherwise plug those things could help with that financial burden.

It would be awsome but we dnt even know of as or cn will even have toonamI

 

[Sketch]

I know most of us are focusing on the nostalgia part of Toonami coming back, but a lot of us aren't really discussing new fans. Nostalgia can be a good & bad thing (in this case, good), but it won't get Toonami on AS great ratings for long. If the Toonami revival is to be succesful, it has to appeal to new viewers. There's a lot of teens now just finding out about Toonami & older adults wondering what the big deal about it was. Well, AS has to find a way to appeal to them to watch Toonami, or else ratings for ASA will pretty much only get a slight bump for the next few weeks at best.

Yes, they can't live off nostalgia. ASA actually does reasonably for hours it airs but any improvement would be helpful in ensuring AS does not give up on action programming.

Toonami was usually capable of introducing old shows to new people while also bringing in stuff that had never aired in America before. They could still do both. Just enough nostalgia for people to not reject the concept of ASA becoming Toonami and just enough fresh material to draw new viewers all the time.

Streaming doesn't make enough money. TV makes for more exposure even at 2 am on a Sunday morning. You had better believe being on AS helped sales for Kekkaishi, Durarara, Code Geass and Moribito. FMAB maybe not as much but people who watched the dub on AS probably bought the DVD/BD when AS fell behind the home video release.

For this to work out as advertising for anime FUNi and/or other distributors will have to get involved and maybe even sponsor half hours and include ads to the other anime they want to plug. It could end up costing AS little more than what they pay to run AS now to pull this off if anime distributors work with them to make it profitable for all parties. Profit beats out ratings pretty often so even if ratings are not as good as Robot Chicken it can still be a worth while investment for AS.

And if it is not than it is truly a labor of love to merely repackage ASA and pick up fresh titles more often. And they're asking if we want Toonami so no reason to say no.

 

[Lighthammer]

Light AS is not going to use 12-1 on weekdays for anime reruns. Robot Chicken and The Boondocks do exceptionally well there.

IMO even if they were to extend to weekdays it probably would be 5-6 am maybe if they felt like shaking things up they would sneak it in at 2 am and have less encores but weekdays as is works exceptionally well except for the 9 hour. 9 pm - 10 pm would be ideal though, particularly if CN does not have their own Toonami block. King of the Hill does better at 5 am anyway.

As for CN 5-7 action was a lot more do-able when they had more prime time hours to rerun their top rated comedies so maybe they'd be willing to use 4-6 pm but if they granted 2 hours it would be more likely 3-5 pm or 7 am - 9 am.

CN might consider it a good idea to repackage their morning action hours as Toonami but I'd expect nothing more. The only place I could see Toonami get 5-7 pm and 12 am - 1 am is Boomerang and that channel never does anything.

I'm really not counting on CN to split Toonami with AS. I'm not so sure splitting the audience is a good idea either. The bumps they can make should not be that costly and working out deals to review games, music and films or otherwise plug those things could help with that financial burden.

Mostly at this point I am more musing at the possibilities more then anything else.

I'll wholly admit I don't follow the comedies too closely and the broad spectrum of things, but here's some of my logic.

To me, personally, I see comedies as being a very good thing to have to the late afternoon. Lets call it an attempt to recapture the Disney / WB afternoons back in the early 90s. To that end, I personally see something sitting in very well sometime in the 3P - 6P block. Moreover, I see somewhere between 5P - 9P being more ideal for action. Even during Toonami's initial run, I tend to think it would have actually did better if they pushed further into the night.

The question would come down to attempting to decide if Cartoon Network has ANY intentions on really trying to build a presence of new episodes during the week or not. Its only a more recent trend that channels like Nick and Disney are showing brand new episodes throughout the week.

I do see your point about 12:00 being too ideal for Robot Chicken / Bondocks and we know in the past [AS] tried to use that time for action and it staggered below comedies.

Lets pretend for a moment that Cartoon Network would willingly snatch up all there shows and make them Saturday premiers (which given, isn't much right now). I wonder if Cartoon Network could make Toonami work from 7-10 with the first two hours focused on things like Ben10, Generator Rex and the last hour focused more on Bleach and FMA.

If Cartoon Network finds a real good reason to want it, I don't think it should be out of the question to give Cartoon Network Fridays back for comedy premiers similar to the old Cartoon, Cartoons.

Here's another question I've been pondering in terms of Saturday Mornings ---- Does DC Nation REALLY have to encompass a mere 1 hour of broadcast time? Wouldn't it be more fun to intermingle DC related stuff throughout the entire Saturday morning lineup?

All of that might clean things up enough to give Toonami full run over Fridays and/or Saturdays. I still find myself thinking it would be fun to give ASA a venue to show last weeks repeats and a Friday / Saturday combo just seems like the right combo for that in my head.

 

[RagnarokSM]

Like most of you have already stated, I don't think that Toonami could do well consistently based off of pure nostalgia. I mean, sure air DBZ, Bleach, Yu Yu Hakasho and whatever else, but some other shows, some people have a vague, if any, memory of them. For instance, I had no idea what the hell Blue Submarine 6 was until that night, I never really watched Tenchi Muyo (the dubs), and I was only merely a fan of Big O. So, in my opinion, they should try to gain the rights of some of today's top animes, i.e, Naruto Shippudden (Does DXD even air this anymore?), One Piece, Fairy Tail, Soul Eater, D.N. Angel, D.Grayman, and whatever else (those were just the shows of the top of my head). As most of you have noticed, some of those shows have NOT aged well at all, and younger viewers will have a "wtf is this?" expression. And, just another opinion (as some of you stated) I was racking my brain (and body) trying to stay up to watch this, so, a better timeslot would be more sufficient. If not weekdays, then start a like 8 or 9 on Saturdays and (maybe) Sudays.


I've read most of your posts, and saw some suggestions of airing on weekdays. So, do you guys want them to show new eps every day? Show reruns everyday? Break-up the days that new eps are shown for each show? Show a new anime every now and again?