First off ---- WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too much shonen there dude.
You have an HOUR dedicated to Bleach, DBZ and YYH. That's three hours.
A good Toonami block is always going to be diverse. Dedicating more then an hour to shonen series is painful and uncalled for. Heck, no shonen series should have an hour unless you're trying to burn through episodes for another reason.
I'm sorry if there seems like too much shonen, but I don't really know many new non-shonen series that [adult swim] would be interested in or would pick up. I gave
DBZ and
YYH hours because, yes, I wanted them to burn through the episodes so that they could keep rotations fresh by bringing in new series. I chose them as the two classic series I though [adult swim] would pick up again because both are Funimation licensed shows (since
DBZ is synonomous to Toonami I figured they might as well take two classic series from Funimation again rather than going to another distributeur) that have a lot of episodes to last at least one year without repeating. I really don't see [adult swim] picking up more than two classic series a year if they bother to do so at all, because, really, the acquisitions budget should be spent on new stuff, and considering the paucity of
that right now, I don't want them to bother wasting money on shows already run.
I gave
Bleach an hour just because it has enough episodes to air two new episodes for the next year. My goal was also to make a schedule with no encores or airings of shows that would repeat more than twice a year (I gave
Panty & Stocking slack because it would be newer than stuff like
Big O, and thus the repeats less bothersome).
I don't understand what's "painful and uncalled for" in having more than an hour of shonen series. I take it you dont really care for shonen series, but that's the main anime action genre, and isn't Toonami about the finest action cartoons? On [adult swim] we wont get straight up american action shows like when it was on Cartoon Network, and even then stuff like
Justice League can be classified as shonen. I don't think you'd want slice of lifes, comedies without action elements in setting and plot, or milder kids action properties on a new Toonami, even if they were anime. Really, that leaves just shonen, shojo, and senin stuff at the end, and I dont think the target demographic of a new Toonami on [adult swim] would embrace the latter two genres as much as shonen anyway. Come to think of it, a lot of Toonami's programming
was shonen stuff even back in the golden era, or at least they were the most popular. The longevity of
Dragonball Z in premieres and reruns on Cartoon Network until their anime purge in 2008 is a testament to that.
I didn't make that schedule as a schedule that I would like much so as one that I thought they would do based on what they had, popularity of given shows, and content of said shows. In a more ideal schedule, I would have no double premieres, five straight hours of new and varied programming, followed by four hours of half-year rotating former content. The schedule I made isn't what I want them to do, but what I figure they would do, with a little optimism in having no encore slots.
You'll also doing a major disservice to the new acquisitions and basically dropping them in a time zone very few people will watch them. That's horrible treatment for those series unless you really want to kill them off or send a clear message to the viewership that you aren't interested in those properties.
Aside from
Panty & Stocking, the new acquisition premieres are in very watchable timeslots. But even the slot I gave to
Panty & Stockingisn't bad for saturday night premiers, and there have been shows in the past that have premiered in that timeslot. Also, I figured
Panty & Stocking was rather...mature content wise, and it wouldn't be very good to air it right after a standard shonen series like
Inuyasha: Final Act, so I used established shows like
The Boondocks to transition to it properly.
As for
YuYu Hakusho, it isn't a new series, and doesn't have the ability to draw ratings and doesn't have a lot of merchandise like
Dragonball Z, so I scheduled it right after the premiering shows. People overestimate how well reruns of shows do. Fans of
YuYu Hakusho and a lot of other old Toonami shows haven't exactly been troubled to find dvd's of those series. Forget about new generations, because [adult swim] targets teens and adults, who have had ample time to watch and discover Toonami shows from ten years ago. So it shouldn't have priority over premiere shows or a ratings powerhouse like
Dragonball Z, and honestly, 2am isn't a bad time to air these reruns anyway. There'd be plenty of people willing to watch it at that time.
Remember the mentality that works BEST for blocks like this: bring someone in to see the shows they want to see then encourage them to explore other shows.
Bleach is your anchor series and DBZ can serve as one too to some degree. A good schedule make good use of attracting people to watch those and have shows that appeal to their interests around there.
Huh, I thought I did that in my schedule. I had
Tiger & Bunny sandwiched between two popular franchises (
Bleach and
Inuyasha), and had
Panty & Stocking follow accesible comedy-action shows simmilar to it with the likes of
The Boondocks and
The Venture Bros. Listen, I limited my schedule to incorporate three new acqusitions and two old ones. I chose the ones I thought they would most likely pick up given the ease of acquiring them, histories of sucess, content, and just the stuff [adult swim] likes these days. They can suprise me and get whatever, I'm game. The stuff I chose is just an educated guess of what could happen, and believe when I say I was ovelry optimistic in creating that schedule as well.
This has already been said, but The Boondocks, Black Dynamite and The Venture Brothers wouldn't be a good fit on an Adult Swim Toonami. Sure, all 3 shows poke at the action genre, but at heart they're comedies, and that's how AS categorizes them.
Bobobo-bobo-bobo and
The Powerpuff Girls were simmilar, but I felt that they fit in just fine with the rest of the lineups they were in. I feel
The Boondocks, Black Dynamite, and
The Venture Bros. would also fit in just fine. Really, you can't expect [adult swim] to suddenly get a bunch of anime acquisitions for a new Toonami since they barely get any from year to year these days. And it wouldn't make sense to air older action cartoons that they have access to like
Teen Titans since those shows are more suited for younger audiences in content (not to mention they'd probably do worse than anime on late saturday nights). And comedic shows are what the main audience of [adult swim] likes, and if you want to draw people to a Toonami block on [adult swim] that starts at 9pm you need to have something the major audience can be drawn to, and something that will encourage them to stay through the night. Putting
The Boondocks and simmilar shows wouldn't compromise Toonami's mission to show the best action cartoons around because most of its epsiodes have action elements and it's anime-esque in design. If anything, placing stuff like it on the block could draw in viewers who normally wouldn't watch anime and action cartoons and interest them in the other shows on the block, boosting overall ratings. They have these shows at their disposal, and can use them easily without risk or cost, so they can draw in viewers and advertisers to Toonami more easily, which means potentially more money from ad revenue, which means more cash to invest in the block, which equals new anime acquisitions. It's strategy, plain and simple.
And listen, guys, I love
Gurren Lagann and
Soul Eater and a lot of other anime that haven't aired on television in the states, but most of them don't belong on a new Toonami. They have been out in the states for years, and are online legally, and don't have new content comming up soon, or have merchandise other than dvd's that will really sell. The potential isn't there because they have been out before with only modest sucess. And they wouldn't be new, or leech success off of a preexisting installment of some franchise or get big rerun ratings like our mainstream old pal
Dragonball Z, not to mention there is no nostalgia that's gonna draw people to them like old Toonami classics like
Outlaw Star and
Tenchi Muyo! And it costs money to get such shows, and it takes up airtime. Why waste money and airtime for a series with no future potential, instead of investing in a show like
One Piece that still has never before seen in the U.S. episodes under it's belt, longevity, and even merchandising potential that is sustainable. But if everything the show has to offer is out already, there's not a really strong fanbase who will buy merchandise, and if too much time has passed, the ratings and revenue won't be that good. This is why
Neon Genesis Evangelion failed on [adult swim] before. Do you think they'd risk the same mistake again?
Toonami should focus on new stuff, first and foremost, use shows like
Dragonball Z and
The Boondocks to support ratings, and keep older stuff around only for a short while before people take it for granted and get bored with it, rotating every half-year to make the best use of what they have at their disposal. And when I say new stuff, I mean
new stuff. Anime premieres on television that aren't already available on dvd and couldn't have been seen before legally. That kind of inital exclusivity is what really draws in ratings and interest, and that's really what the new Toonami needs to survive. Great anime like
Gurren Lagann have become casulalties as [adult swim] has become the only diverse (not so much these days) anime acquirer, but they are in the past. There is new stuff on the horizon, and Toonami shouldn't try and salvage the past, but seize the future, make it their own, grow, survive, until it returns to its once glorious stature of the home of the finest action cartoons on the planet.
Don't dwell in the past, think of the future.
