February 29th, 2008: The Current State of Toonami
Why'd you have to go and let it die?
Since 1997, Toonami has been the first name in action animation on television, and its true fans will always sing of its greatness. But its 10+ year existence could be coming to an end. More specifically, what defined Toonami is coming to an end. Personality, phat beats, entertaining bumpers, and the best action cartoons around - that's what made Toonami great. In the earlier years, Toonami's interaction with fans made it a truly unique action block, and the custom intros packed the entire scene with some serious attitude. Pretty much all of that is gone now - and has been for a couple of years - but at least the line-up has remained decent for the most part, even in the block's darkest times.
We may not even have that to fall back on this year.
Toonami has been in pretty bad shape since fall of 2007, when the block lost two hours to Goosebumps reruns and the line-up became nothing more than 'Shonen Jump Weekly', with an hour of new Naruto, a new episode of One Piece and a classic episode of Toonami's most successful show ever: Dragonball Z. Truth be told, that's a great two hours and I enjoyed them thoroughly for several months, but eventually even that was starting to get a bit stale. (Not unlike previous DBZ-heavy weekday line-ups from Toonami's earlier years.) The block seemed to have lost the ability to offer anything more than proven winners.
I know they have episodes of other shows they could have been airing in order to liven things up a bit, but Toonami has decided to stick with bread winner Naruto and reliable filler DBZ. In the meantime, Storm Hawks moved to 6:30AM on weekdays to finish premiering its first season - and that's the only slot it had until recently, when it gained a place on weekday afternoons. (Soon to be weekday nights, replacing Naruto before Adult Swim. I can't see that working out very well, as the show does not have the older viewership Naruto can boast.)
2007 started out with the great additions of MAR and The Prince of Tennis, but they were only two of failures that Toonami would run in that year. Toonami celebrated its 10th anniversary with some cool movies (including the second animated Hellboy feature, which was quite violent and absolutely awesome) and a new look - which many viewers did not like. One Piece and Bo-bobo both returned after a short break, and the two of them handled well throughout the rest of the year, despite the troubling climate.
As I mentioned above, MAR and The Prince of Tennis were not so lucky, and by summer they were both off the block. Fantastic Four returned to help hype the upcoming movie, but despite excellent promotion the series failed to meet expectations...and was promptly removed. Storm Hawks premiered on CN in June, but it didn't join Toonami until around fall. It really felt like its inclusion was nothing more than an afterthought.
Many viewers were anticipating a return of Zatch Bell throughout the year, but it was not meant to be - despite the series getting at least 27 more episodes that could have aired. To fill the vacant slots, Toonami instead brought back Dragonball Z and Teen Titans. Not long after the Naruto movie premiered to great fanfare, CN seemed to give on Toonami almost completely.
For months CN has ignored Toonami's existence outright. Until just a few days before the writing of this article, there had not been a Toonami ad on CN since around November of 2007. It's nice to know CN is advertising the block again, but the promo is several months old, and fails to feature new clips of Naruto or One Piece. I cannot for the life of me understand why CN was promoting every premiere on the network except for Naruto and One Piece...but at least they kept them around, so I figured they were doing fine. Well, Naruto certainly is doing well, but One Piece and DBZ may not be so lucky.
Some advance schedule information has revealed that both series will be leaving the block in favor of considerably less worthwhile content. [Ed. - Bakugan and Blue Dragon are joining the lineup.] So now we will have a Toonami block which has both a dull line-up and dull packaging. Naruto's filler seasons are bad enough, but to suffer through an hour of that in addition to an hour of other kinds of mediocrity is more than any animation fan should have to bear. If this schedule does not change, then Toonami will be in its worst shape ever, despite having so much great potential at the beginning of the year. (As I mentioned in my theoretical line-up editorial.) If this is what happens when CN acknowledges Toonami, then I guess they should have kept ignoring it after all.
As always, it appears that the network just does not know what to do with Toonami. They are probably aware that the current Toonami line-up would do well enough with teenagers to warrant a change in focus towards the 12-17 demographic, but making such a change will never be in their game plan. Naruto does great with that demographic, but it also does well with 6-11 boys - that's why it's the headliner for the block, and also why CN believes Toonami as a whole should be just as 6-11 targeted as the rest of the network. Those 6-11 kids do not seem to care much for what else Toonami has to offer at this point...and why should they?
Despite Naruto's violence, Toonami does not feel like the edgy action block it once was, when it aired on weekday afternoons and Satuday nights. The new look has more than irritated many viewers, and the constant infusion of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, Pokemon and similar 6-11 series into the Toonami brand have dilluted it into something more like the rest of CN's line-up.
With that paragraph in mind, I would say that the moment Toonami started dying was when Pokemon Chronicles replaced Duel Masters (with just one episode to go to finish the season...what jerks) and later took up the entire first hour of Toonami. I am aware that the Pokemon movies aired on Toonami in the final hours of its run on weekdays, and that Yu-Gi-Oh! had a short run on Toonami in 2005. Generally speaking, howeer, Toonami has avoided these types of monster training/card battle series - with the exception of the tongue-in-cheek dub of Duel Masters. Duel Masters was a cult hit with the older crowd, simply because it poked fun at those very types of shows.
Pokemon soon became a more integrated part of the Toonami brandname when Jetstream began hosting older episodes of the series. For years, CN did not run Pokemon or Yu-Gi-Oh! on Toonami, despite having every opportunity to do so. They seemed to understand that those shows were not appropriate for the block. However, by the time Pokemon finally did show up on Toonami, it was apparent that CN considered any and all anime to be Toonami material. Slowly but surely, more generic toy-hocking kid's anime joined the block, rather than the edgy material of old.
How pathetic is it to say that in 2006 the primary providers of Toonami content were 4Kids and Viz Media? Compared to previous years, when serious anime companies such as Bandai, FUNimation, Geneon, and Media Blasters were providing the block content, it seemed like a real step down in "quality". Granted, Viz Media's dubs that have aired on Toonami were either decent or great, depending on the show, but for a time 4Kids was holding down 3/8ths of Toonami...and that just chills me to the bone. To add insult to injury, Bleach - probably the most highly anticipated show for Toonami in 2006 - ended up going to Adult Swim, thus separating the new shounen trinity of Naruto, One Piece and Bleach. Not to mention esentially wasting a show with a lot of potential on a late night slot, where the teenage viewership does not count towards its success (besides improving the total viewership per household.)
I cannot help but feel that if Bleach had joined Toonami, it would have kept the block strong for a while longer. That said, I suppose that at this point I cannot guarantee Bleach wouldn't have bombed just like MAR and The Prince of Tennis. Still, I just can't imagine that it wouldn't have been able to beat Bo-Bobo's ratings - and somehow that show managed to run with only one short break to dub more episodes. In short, Toonami has lost a lot of thunder to Adult Swim over the past couple of years, but Bleach was definitely the harshest blow to the block's purpose.
In 2007, Viz was the primary content provider and the 4Kids series seemed to taper off. That was a good sign, but Viz's winning streak came to an untimely end when Zatch Bell, MAR, and The Prince of Tennis all disappeared from the block, leaving only Naruto from Viz (besides a one-night of Mega Man Star Force.) FUNimation took back an hour of the block with their new One Piece dub and some good 'ol DBZ, and all the other chaff seemed to have disappeared. But when Toonami was cut down to two hours, even the most optimistic Toonami followers got concerned.
To be honest, I thought the worst was pretty much over. I expected the block to keep up the schedule it has maintained since October until a new superhero show or Clone Wars became available. I was even fully prepared for the untimely removal of Toonami. But it seems Cartoon Network has decided Toonami still has some worth...but only as their all-purpose anime premiere block, and only for two hours a week outside of Jetstream.
If that is all Toonami is capable of anymore, and all the creativity we once saw in the block has been siphoned out, then I guess it's time for Toonami to fade from existence while it still has some pride left. CN could find something else for their anime block. I would rather see them get rid of Toonami than watch it lose more and more of its identity before they inevitably toss it aside.
So it begs the question: why did Cartoon Network let Toonami fall apart like this? Do they not see the value Toonami has as the most notable action-animation platform in the US? Why is Jetstream seemingly thriving, while the Saturday block has been cut down to just two hours a week with nothing but Naruto filler and other shounen fluff? I guess we may never know at this point, but for the time being Toonami may just need to be put out of its misery.
Before the network finds a way to make Toonami completely unwatchable.
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