In the late Summer of 2000, Toonami began running promos
for a special event dubbed “The Intruder”.
The premise was simple: a mysterious organism (the titular Intruder)
latched itself onto the Absolution and began spreading throughout the
ship. It was up to Tom, guided by the
Absolutions onboard AI, Sara (marking her debut on Toonami) to find a way to
slow the contamination and save the ship.
The Intruder aired for an entire week of Toonami that September. Programming ran as usual but mid run we got a
new chapter of The Intruder and even got a bit of homework too. Yep, what made this event truly special was
the inclusion of special codes that viewers could use on the Toonami website to
play an interactive side story to The Intruder, taking control of one of the
ships Clyde repair bots (also making their first appearance). This was the beginning of what would come to
be known as the T.I.E-Total Emersion Event.
And usually when one of these came along…something big was about to
happen.
No one saw the biggest twist of The Intruder coming.
And when I missed it and saw the recap, I was
shocked.
Our host and hero, Tom, was
consumed by The Intruder, his damaged hand reaching out one last time before it
dissolved…like I said last week, grizzly.
But we didn’t waste any time seeing Tom Version 2.0 rolled out with a
new body and a new voice, but same memories and general personality.
With the Absolution in dire straights, Tom
and Sara jettisoned one of the ships engines that The Intruder had mostly
latched on to, sending it falling into space.
As the Absolution limped its way to a repair station with Tom and Sara
conducting business as usual, we all had to take a moment to reflect on what
had just happened: A Tom gone, a new one in his place, the ship damaged…Toonami
had a story with it now and it was pretty damn exciting.
“Lockdown”, the second TIE, found the Absolution
responding to a distress signal from a ship graveyard in deep space.
Tom realizes too late that the signal is bait
and the Absolution gets caught in a tractor beam linked to a massive trash
compactor.
With a limited time until the
ship is destroyed, Sara begins looking into the Trash Compactor’s history while
Tom repairs the Absolution.
Where
Toonami Viewers came in was the ability to operate the new Absolution sentry
bots: The DOKs.
Sara would provide
guides and instructions for all missions from reconaisanse of the Trash
Compactor to facing a giant enemy sentry deep within before the Absolution could
pull free.
Lockdown forwent the creepy,
Alien inspired atmosphere of The Intruder in favor of a more action oriented
premise, with the DOKs being given various weapon upgrades further into the
miniseries.
The culmination of events,
the battle against the Sentry Robot, could be equivocal to a MMORPG Raid, with
dozens of DOKS needed to take down the monstrous foe.
It was a very different kind of T.I.E.
but, much like its predecessor, the inclusion
of a story for Tom and Sara never interrupted business as usual for the action
line up…though they cleverly got the viewers attention with initial missions by
broadcasting during the intro to Dragon Ball Z, aka the show everyone would be
tuning into (It was during the Androids and Cell Sagas, arguably when DBZ was
at its peak).
The third and final of the original trilogy of Total
Immersion Events from Toonami’s first era was
“Trapped in Hyperspace.” While jumping into Hyperspace to return to
Earth, the Absolution is attacked by an evil Virus named Swayzack.
Sara is disabled and the ship is sent hurtling
through a Hyperspace conduit, in danger of crashing into Earth at full
speed.
Tom jacks into the Absolutions
mainframe directly to locate Sara and face Swayzack, which is where the viewers
came in.
For the first time, they were
able to take control of Tom, piloting a small ship that could navigate Sara’s
systems.
Unlike “The Intruder” and
“Lockdown”, “Trapped in Hyperspace” had a far shorter story.
While it provided a vocal nemesis for Tom to
take on and a touching reunion between Tom and Sara once the latter was back
online and ok, Trapped in Hyperspace definitely feels like the weakest of the
three original T.I.E.’s.
Strangely enough, the T.I.E.s kind of died down for the
rest of Toonami’s initial run after Trapped in Hyperspace.
I’d say maybe it was a law of diminishing
returns or it had something to do with Toonami’s eventual move from weekdays to
Saturdays, kind of killing the week long momentum each T.I.E. had going for
it.
They wouldn’t be gone for good.
After Toonami was resurrected in 2012, the
T.I.E.’s would make a triumphant return in 2015 with a direct sequel to “The
Intruder”, which saw Tom facing off against the gelatinous foe that destroyed
him long ago.
“The Intruder II” followed
most of the standard rules of a sequel: It had more action, was much darker and
edgier (thanks to the infusion of Adult Swim late night rules allowing for Tom
to swear), and featured the death of the original Sara and the destruction of
the original Absolution to destroy the creature once and for all.
Much like “The Intruder” saw a new Tom take
up his post aboard the Absolution in the wake of his first demise, “The
Intruder II” ended with Tom crashlanding on a barren planet with fragments of
the old Sara in tow.
Together, they
found a defunct outpost from which they can continue broadcasting Toonami.
The Intruder II also had some amazing
animation, making it feel far more cinematic than any of its T.I.E.
predecessors before and was a natural fit for the new Toonami.
One year later,
“The Intruder III” heralded more
new big changes for Tom and Sara.
After
spending a year on the planet known as Shogo 162, the pair found themselves
under siege from the massive native Sand Worms of the planet.
However, these Intruders were in fact coming
to warn Tom of the impending doom of the planet.
In addition to this revelation, Sara was able
to create herself a mobile form, in the style of a digitized Pixie, and
discover that the base she and Tom had been occupying for the last year was
actually a derelict Spaceship, The Vindication.
With barely any time to spare, Tom and Sara escaped Shogo 162 as it
exploded and returned to their broadcasting duties amongst the stars…taking
with them a baby Sand Worm, the last of its kind, along with them…as an
“intern” as Tom puts it.
While not as
darker as The Intruder II, Part III once again changed the status quo of
Toonami.
And with the destruction of an
entire planet and the reveal of a brand new ship, it still felt just as epic.
Another one year later jump found Tom and Sara in their
most dire situation yet.
“Countdown”
saw Tom being flung into the future to stop Sara, who had been corrupted by an
Alien intelligence, from destroying all life in the universe.
This T.I.E. did an amazing job at showcasing
the bond between these two since their earliest Toonami days.
Right until the end, Tom never stops
believing in Sara and declares she’ll always be his best friend, even if she
potentially turns evil.
It’s adorable
and I’m sure Tom/Sara (Tara?) shippers out there were pleased with this
storyline.
That bond was put to the
ultimate test two years later with
“The Forge”.
The Vindication arrives at the titular
station in space and Tom makes a startling discovery: This is the place where
he was created and there are dozens of similar Tom drones in service to cruel
masters led by the vicious Forge Commander…who Tom nicknames Booger.
In the end, Tom sacrifices a body to ensure
the escape of his brethren aboard the Vindication while he and Sara deal with
Booger and establish The Forge as their new base of operations.
The Forge was the most action heavy T.I.E. to
date with a perfect mix of Tom humor, emotional beats meeting
the Yellow Toms and Sara fearing her Tom
might not make it out of this one, and the added bonus of Steve Blum reuniting
with his fellow Cowboy Bebop co-star, Beau Billingslea, who voiced Booger.
The most recent T.I.E. on Toonami has been it’s most
unique and feels like Toonami giving back to the genre it helped make popular
in the US…it’s an entirely Anime feature.
Called “Cosmo Samurai” it’s also the first non Cannon T.I.E. and
has an exclusive Japanese dub. The story
involves Tom being rescued by a group of space fairing warriors, the titular
Cosmo Samurai, after the Absolution is attacked, Sara is taken and Tom is
heavily damaged and left for dead. Given
a new body by his new friends, Tom and Cosmo Samurai strike back at the Space
Pirates responsible in all the glorious Anime spectacle you’ve come to expect
from any Anime on Toonami. It’s like
watching Naruto meets Dynasty Warriors with a hint of Super Sentai with Tom’s
souped up new Anime Mecha body. In other
words, it’s the perfect marriage of Toonami and Anime and it was about time we
got it.
Wow…I’ll level with you all I did not expect this episode
to run so long.
Then again, the only
T.I.E. id seen the most of was The Intruder.
Everything else I caught glimpses of while the events were happening.
So I ended up watching all of the compilation
vids on YouTube and wow I got sucked in. And here we are, aother important
chapter of Toonami history covered.
And
because of the whole not going to Katsu thing, I wanted to have what couldve
been a short panel in and of itself…and this unexpected historical breakdown
seemed like a good way to do that.
In Two Weeks: Cause I’m a Gundam nut, we’re going back to
Toonami’s second dive into Gundam…and learning why nothing has ever been able
to touching Gundam Wings monumental success.
It’s Mobile Suit Gundam and a few others on the next Toonami Flashback
Friday, right here at the Gundam Anime Corner.
See ya then Toonami Faithful.
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