The (Ho-hum) Return of Toonami

Toonami is back.


Sort of.



Not really.


Not fully, anyway.

We spent years grieving over the elimination of one of the best spots of all of television. Weekday afternoons were dedicated to that three hour block that gave American audiences one of their first good tastes of consistent anime and teenage/adult-aimed shows. Dragonball Z, Sailor Moon, Gundam Wing embedded themselves into the underground cartoon scene thanks to Toonami. And now that we have gotten the return, it doesn’t quite feel complete. Surely some Toonami is better than no Toonami at all (Especially with Adult Swim heading towards the shallow end in quality) but something is missing.

The Toonami spots in the weekday afternoons, late at night, and extremely early mornings were more than just great cartoons airing one after the other. Much more than that. It was like a subculture for all the kids involved to enjoy. It had a style and a marvelous personality about itself, manifesting with the excellent space bass music, excellent animated montages, and grand commercials about upcoming cartoons. Then there is the lead character Tom who would review video games, introduce new cartoons, and even once in a while throw in a music video. Toonami was more than a block of television, it became a hybrid of different mediums interacting with each other within that timeframe.

Now, Toonami is limited to just Saturday nights, just three hours every week overall. Long gone are the awesome montages, the great commercials advertising the animated series within the block, and we don’t even get the great long introductions that would hype us up before the cartoon even started. Hell, I don’t even see any potential in upcoming movies every once in a while invading Toonami like back in the day.

This might all be premature bickering, but at the same time it’s hard for me to truly believe its back. As of now it looks like a thrown in consolation prize for all the complaining. If Cartoon Network truly believes in Toonami like it did back in the day, they should turn it into a weekend event, or bring it back to the weekday afternoons, and actually put forth some effort in all the promos, commercials, and extra goodies that used to sprinkle the three hour block back in the day. Bring back some more of the classic animes we all grew up and loved, and perhaps bring them uncut since now you are turning Toonami into an Adult Swim staple. Try to throw in some more interactivity with the Facebook and Twitter pages, and lastly don’t be afraid to throw in some surprises.

I think it would be awesome to once in a while do another Month of Miyazaki or throw in some full-length Japanese animated movies like the Dragonball films, Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Grave of the Fireflies, etc. They don’t even have to be Japanese, maybe pit the Batman movies, or other under-the-radar animated films like Iron Giant, Lord of the Rings, Hunchback of Notre Dame, etc.

I am more than happy to see Cartoon Network realizing its mistake for cancelling Toonami in the first place. But, now is the time to actually strengthen it to the level of quality we all remembered.


Cartoon Network, don’t squander this gem again. Please.