Toonami Flashback Friday Episode 10-The First Farewell

By 2003, I was still a fan of Toonami but my time to watch it was slowly getting eaten up by sports team practices and other after school activities.  It didn’t really help that a lot of the shows that I had grown to love through Toonami were eventually taken off of the block in favor of titles that never really grabbed me.  Stuff like OG Dragon Ball was fine but it wasn’t Dragon Ball Z.  I actually wasn’t a big fan of G Gundam compared to previous offerings but after watching it again for review in 2021, that opinion has changed and I think it’s amazing.  Point is, Toonami’s reach was starting to wain not just with me.  Slowly but surely, the signs were becoming clear that it wasn’t the juggernaut it once was…and there were more than a couple of factors that led to its eventual first ending.

 
Miguzi and the Move to Saturday
Come 2003, many of Toonami’s biggest hits had either discontinued their runs or completed them in full.  Gundam Wing had long since been finished.  Sailor Moon ran four of it’s five TV Seasons but Sailor Stars (The Final Season) wouldn’t see a US release until after ViZ attained the US license in 2014.  And on April 7, 2003 Dragon Ball Z completed it’s historic 291 episode run in the US (ok some episodes were edited out from earlier broadcasts but that was eventually rectified in its own way).  New shows were selected to fill the void they left behind.  Dragon Ball Z’s prequel show, Dragon Ball, kicked off right around the time Z was wrapping up.  Yu Yu Hakusho and Rurouni Kenshin also made their Toonami debuts in 2003.  Plus, there were some new American action shows making themselves at home on the line up including long time Cartoon Network favorite, Justice League, and new iterations of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and Transformers (though the Transformers series were all Japanese in origin).  Gundam even kept up a small presence (and I mean small) with a CG Super Deformed Gundam series, SD Gundam Force.  

Then came 2004 and…well something bizarre happened to weekday afternoons.  While it had been teased for several weeks, no one could make out what a mysterious, underwater themed kids program called “Miguzi” was supposed to be.  It featured entirely CG animation centered on a young girl and her various Monster companions in some complex under the sea…but when was it coming and was anyone going to be interested.  Oh, people were gonna be interested but not in the way Cartoon Network had wanted.  In April of 2004, Miguzi debuted as the replacement block for Toonami on Weekdays while Toonami itself was moved over to Saturday nights.  This rocked the community hard.  While Miguzi was seen as a more kid oriented block, offering more kid friendly content such as Code Lyoko, Totally Spies and Pokemon.  The sudden cutting off Toonami from its weekday reach was a move no one thought would ever happen.  Still, Toonami settled into its new weekly weekend format, airing from early evening til right around the time Adult Swim’s Saturday Anime Block kicked off (we’ll come back to that).  It made good use of the new timeslot to offer a weekly movie in addition to familiar action fare such as Yu Yu Hakusho and Dragon Ball GT, plus debuts for new shows such as Gundam SEED and Megas XLR.  It is here where the original Toonami would remain for a time and Toonami even debuted its first original Anime, made in conjunction with Production I.G., IGPX…but we’ll get to that in another way later. 

Adult Swim Competition
Even before the move to Saturday impacted its reach, Toonami had some other competition stemming from a closer to home rival.  2001 saw the arrival of Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim block.  As the name might imply, this block featured more adult themed series such as Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law, Aqua Teen Hunger Force and yes, Anime.  Cowboy Bebop was the first Anime aired on AS and it became arguably the most popular show the late night block has ever known.  This was more than enough of a win for Cartoon Network to greenlight an Anime centered Adult Swim Spin Off: 3 hours of high end adult content laden Anime selections that included Yu Yu Hakusho (which would eventually find its way to Toonami in 2003), Cowboy Bebop and Gundam 0083 to name a few.  The popularity of this late night block was reminiscent of the old Midnight Run Toonami block and, subsequently, other titles that would gain traction and popularity in the States owe a huge thanks to the Adult Swim Anime Block: Trigun, Samurai Champloo, Fullmetal Alchemist, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex amongst many others. 

Thing is…this is what Toonami used to do on a weekday basis and now it faced competition from an edgy older brother figure with more mature offerings.  Very little of the shows featured needed as much editing (though Outlaw Star and Tenchi Muyo’s first Adult Swim airings were their Toonami Versions).  All the “intense violence, sexual situations, coarse language and suggestive dialogue” you could ask for was there and waiting.  It was Toonami for grown ups and…in a way, for many who had started with Toonami at the beginning, this seemed like the next logical route to take once they hit a certain age (high school/college).  Let’s make a note of this as it’ll kind of play into our final episode of the Retrospective.

 

September 20, 2008- The Saturday Struggles & Tom’s Final Speech

Heading past the mid 2000s, it was a tough time for Toonami.  The draw wasn’t working and even with, what many consider to be the successor to Dragon Ball Z, Naruto, becoming the new King of Toonami, it was clear to see its popularity was not what it once was.  By late 2007, the schedule had been scaled back massively from 7-11pm to 9-11pm on Saturdays.  Ratings took a dive and eventually, the order came down from on high.  On September 20, 2008, Toonami aired its final broadcast of its initial run.  To mark the end of an era, Tom himself offered a final speech to Toonami fans worldwide:
“Well, this is the end, beautiful friends. After more than 11 years, this is Toonami's final broadcast. It's been a lot of fun, and we'd like to thank each and every one of you who made this journey with us. Toonami wouldn't have been anything without you. Hopefully, we've left you with some good memories. So, until we meet again, stay gold. Bang.” 

I actually got to meet Steve Blum at Katsucon back in 2018 and ask him about that speech.  Considering he ended it with “Bang”, which is also the infamous final line of one of his most famous characters, Cowboy Bebop’s Spike Speigel, I wondered if that was written for Steve or if he threw that in himself, considering Spike and Tom are two of his best known characters.  The answer was the former and he spoke highly of the Toonami writers and staff who have helped him since he stepped into the role of Tom years ago.  Many of them had gone on to help out with Adult Swim so this felt like the old guard saying their goodbyes to Toonami as well.  Still, even though I hadn’t watched it properly in years, I was still in awe that this was it for Toonami.  Even the prospect of still having a very thriving Saturday Night Anime Block felt empty without Tom to MC the lineup.  But alas, that was it.  Tom flew off into the distance and Toonami was over…damn. 

BUT…as we all know, that didn’t stay permanent.  Next Week, we end our Toonami Retrospective by looking at Toonami’s surprise return one fateful April Fools night…and how it started a movement that would result in three words that would live in infamy, “Toonami’s back bitches!!!”  Join us Next Friday for the conclusion of Toonami Flashback Friday right here at the Gundam Anime Corner.