January 30th, 2008: Rare, Restored, Recut
Considering the current condition of the Toonami fan framework, I thought it would be best to mirror Robert Guzman's (aka DJ Calus) excellent Toonami: Rare, Restored, Recut project on Mediafire.com. This will be here for anyone who wants it in case the original Rapidshare (curse ye!) expires. This short-but-sweet album is a collection of extended promo tracks such as Chill, Arabic, and Strings - believe me, you'll recognize these - as well as no-vox versions of songs found in the Black Hole Megamix. The project is a fine piece of work, and so far I've really enjoyed it. Although as a Toonami fan I loved the BHM, there were times when I wished there weren't any quotes marring the music. Similarly, the thirty-second shorts from Frederick's interview with Mr. Vigil were largely unfullfilling - most were just long enough to recall good memories, yet short enough to leave me hanging. Guzman has fixed both of those problems admirably; my only wish is that he'd revamped more tracks! Here's the download. From the director's notes:
"The idea for this project started a few months ago (October 2007), mainly from me looking around on YouTube at old Toonami promos. I then started tracking down music from the promos. [...] After listening to them for a bit, I wanted to hear tracks from BHM without the show quotes. I took it upon myself to edit them out, and thus the project was started.
Around December is when I decided that people would enjoy hearing these tracks, and Iannounced online that I would be doing the then-unnamed fan album. I worked on it for a bit, mainly with the 30 second promo tracks, before realizing how hard it would be. I gave up for a couple weeks, due to college starting up. I picked up on it again, and finally finished it this morning. (January 20th, 2008.)
For me this has been a real nostalgia trip into which I poured a lot of love and effort. What can be said about Toonami? It was great, awesome, and kick-ass. These are the things that come to my mind, at least. I grew up in a home with only one parent. They had gotten divorced when I was a baby and I had only my mother. That being said, I didn’t have much male influence in my life. However, Toonami provided an influence on me which I am thankful for. Watching the many valiant heroes and heroines, I learned what it meant to be responsible and morally correct, all while giving me things to discuss at school so that I could make friends.
From Sailor Moon to the Z-Fighters, Toonami aided me when I felt down about myself and when I needed some inspiration. Although the Toonami of 2008 is radically different than the Toonami of 2000, I find that it’s better to think back to our favorite Toonami programming blocks rather than concentrating on the new ones that we may not entirely agree with. As for the future of Toonami, who’s to say what that will be? Sure, they can remove the programming block from Cartoon Network’s line-up, but what they can’t remove are the countless recordings and memories of Toonami."
A special thanks goes to Mr. Guzman for his hard work. Discuss this topic in our forums.