No Blind Faith (or I Think I Touched a Nerve)

I've been writing professionally since 1998, and over time, my opinions have changed a lot. Then again, that's just life. I'm not the easily-angered 20-year-old I was back then.

In a way, I've tempered a lot in the nearly three decades I've been doing this. I've come to the point that I shouldn't get easily annoyed or angered by the media I consume, the folks who guide it, and the outlets they air on. That said, I can be frustrated with them, but I don't get angry about that sort of thing anymore.  

I guess that's what you call growing up or something like that.

I think you need to know where I'm going with this. I'm not a thin-skinned guy. When I'm wrong, I'll admit it. My opinions are malleable and always evolving. 

I also don't have blind faith in anything, especially when it comes to the things I love and the media I consume. 

Anybody who has known me for a while knows that I am the biggest Warner Bros fan on the planet. I've been a fan since I was a little kid watching Looney Tunes every afternoon in syndication on WYAH in my part of the world and on Superstation WTBS. I didn't even know Warner Bros owned DC when I was watching reruns of Superfriends, Wonder Woman, and Batman in the 1980s until I noticed the WB shield inside of the comics and thought "Huh, DC's a Warner Communications company? Cool!" I did know that WB made the Superman movies and a lot of other cool things too. Throughout the following decades, WB started collecting other brands I liked when I was younger like Lorimar-Telepictures (they made Fun House, Perfect Strangers, and that awesome ThunderCats cartoon, among other things), HBO (a household staple since my grandparents literally got a cable subscription a week after I was born), the Turner networks including TBS, TNT, TCM, and Cartoon Network, Hanna-Barbera, the best stuff from MGM and the AAP library, New Line, Castle Rock, and the Discovery & Scripps cable channels (what can I say? Food Network really helped me become a better cook). Warner Bros was the company I grew up loving and supporting for decades, and I still love and support them. 

That said, anybody who knows me will say I am Warner Bros' harshest critic. I will tell them they're full of crap when they are. Over the decades, I've called out the company, the units, and the executives over some of the boneheaded and moronic decisions they've made.  I never knock the creators because they have to deal with these same folks as well and are often as frustrated and angry as I am. 

I literally had a category around these parts called "Poorly Run Company" where I just went into Warner Bros throughout all of its incarnations.  In fact, my constant criticisms of Warner Bros was the main reason I created Thoughtnami in the first place. 

I know I've told this story many times, but I started this place because I didn't want my gracious hosts at Toon Zone (now Anime Superhero) in trouble with Warner Bros for the words I said against the company. I've been overly critical about them, especially after certain events and mergers that put in boneheaded leadership in key positions, and I didn't want the site to catch hell for anything I put out. 

They didn't deserve to get hurt because of the things I said.

But that's the kind of fan I am.

And yes, despite criticizing them (the last half of 2025 was REALLY "fun"), I'm still a fan of Warner Bros.

I have to celebrate them when they do something worth celebrating, and I will lambast the hell out of them when they do something utterly and moronically stupid. To do otherwise would be completely dishonest on my part as well as to you, the reader.

I think that's the problem with "fandoms" these days. They have such blind devotion to brands and feel they could do no wrong. They are more than willing to jump in front of a brand every time there's the smallest bit of criticism that flies its way. I'm not even talking about petty hate, but actual legitimate questions and criticisms about those brands. 

These fans are weird and almost cultlike in tone, and having such a blind faith towards anything seems a bit weird to me. Again, I used to be like that for some things, but as I've mentioned earlier, my opinions are malleable and have changed as time progressed. I think that's one of the reasons I see some of the older posts I made on TXB and cringe a little for being so blind with such a sycophantic fervor and utter devotion to Toonami, even when at times, I could see the brand faltering and becoming stagnant. 

Yes, I'm still a fan of the Toonami brand. I know the importance of the brand as well as its pop cultural impact not only on cable television but in major industries, especially how it helped cultivate the anime industry in the United States and ultimately in other parts of the world, and I still feel there's a lot of potential for the Toonami brand outside of the block's very limited weekly linear timeslot.

But I've never said Toonami was a perfect block. It's never been perfect. not even at its peak period on Cartoon Network. I've been critical about the block ever since July 10, 1998, the day I launched TXB. I've been critical about the way the block sees Western animation, its disrespect toward certain shows (they really did The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest dirty), and why they rarely acquired and invested in more domestic programming, something I feel they should do more of since one company has largely monopolized the anime industry on a global scale outside of Japan. I even think some Western creators' qualms with the Toonami brand when it comes to those domestically-produced shows are very valid and justified. 

You can love Toonami and still be critical about the direction it's going. You can support the block and express frustrations about it constantly regressing and not really living up to its "better cartoon show" moniker.

You can even celebrate that Toonami is "still standing" while openly questioning what kind of foundation it's standing on and how they're going to build people's fading faith in what they can do, especially in a changing media landscape where the question of who'll own the network is a very legitimate one to ask in regard to the brand's future.

None of these are contradictory unless you just blindly follow whatever they do and feel they are infallible. 

But in the end, being blind doesn't help you at all. Stop supporting mediocrity. Expect better from these folks.