Thoughtnami™

 A question was recently asked from one of my oldest and dearest buds over on my BlueSky account: i know you answer this every year or so, but what's your dream Toonami lineup, given an infinite acquisition budget Definitely something I haven't been thinking about in a long time, especially after, well, I kind of lost faith in the block .  Also, I know how unrealistic all of this could be.  But here's the thing. If you apply real-world logic to a concept like this, you will be baffled. If anybody has any qualms with what I thought of or if anything I put here causes a visceral reaction like "This doesn't make sense" or "Why didn't you do X instead of Z?" or "Why did you do this like this instead of like this," make your own suggestions on your own space. Cool? Savvy? We green?  Excellent. I'll continue. It's been a while since I've done something like this. Been through some things lately. Here's how I'd take on the ...

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...

It's mid-December when I decided to finally complete this piece I've been holding back on since the spring.  On the day that I started writing this piece, it was March 17, 2025. Twenty-eight years ago on that date... dang near 29 years now, Toonami premiered on Cartoon Network on that date in 1997.  I'm sure there are folks who read these words who weren't even born in 1997, so they really don't understand the impact that day may have had on my generation, particularly the second-half Gen Xers who saw action shows they grew up watching becoming the foundation of the block that once called itself "the better cartoon show."  Not just the anime, mind you, we had many of those a few years earlier, albeit in very early timeslots.  Toonami was once an oasis every weekday afternoon. Then, Cartoon Network felt too many older folks were watching it, so they replaced it was a more kid-friendly variant and moved the block to Saturday nights.  Then, Cartoon Network ...

You probably should have saw this coming, and if you haven't, you really haven't been paying attention to Adult Swim. Checkered Past will no longer be a part of Adult Swim's weekday afternoon. The block, which was the catalyst for Adult Swim's expansion beyond primetime and into weekdays, was a daily showcase of some of Cartoon Network's most iconic originals like Dexter's Laboratory, Ed, Edd 'n Eddy, Courage the Cowardly Dog, Cow & Chicken, I Am Weasel, Grim & Evil, The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, Evil Con Carne, What A Cartoon!/Cartoon Cartoons Show, and Cartoon Planet.  Its final broadcast aired moments ago at the time of this posting (June 27, 2025). What's replacing Checkered Past shouldn't be of any surprise to anybody. It's King of the Hill .  It's ALWAYS King of the Hill , the safest, most banal choice to open Adult Swim, and now, it'll be the opening series on weekdays and weekends at 5 PM E/P starting on Jun...

Do you watch Cartoon Network? I have to ask this question because I get the feeling a lot of folks who claim to be fans of the channel really don't. The ones who have been so vocal about the latest news , especially in regard to the library and studio (who kind of missed the news that both were folded into Warner Bros Animation back in 2023 as well as literally anything regarding the network itself since then ) and the latest from Comcast saying they're dropping Cartoon Network from Xfinity's Core linear package and putting it in the More Sports and Entertainment package for an additional $10 a month where it'll be included with fellow WBD network TCM and NBA TV as well as NFL Network, NFL Red Zone, Big 10 Network, CBS Sports, and Military History Channel starting on August 12. Oh, and DirecTV dropped Cartoon Network from its entertainment-only package but kept Adult Swim there (they literally air nothing in that channel space from 5 PM to 6 AM E/P every day now).  They...

After the company re-rebranded its premium streaming service to HBO Max , which nearly everybody under the sun never stopped referring to it, you have to ask yourself one question: What's really going on at Warner Bros Discovery? WBD seems to be embracing the scripted and sports sides of the company more these days, and you can tell that the Discovery brands are feeling more like an afterthought. Oh, don't look at me like that, cartoon fan.  Consider the following: There's a refocused emphasis on scripted programming at Warner Bros Television . Not that WBTV had any problems when it comes to scripted programming, the studio continues to have hits across many platforms, including Netflix, Apple TV+, and at least one series on every major US broadcast network. Ever since Discovery acolyte Katherine Finch resigned at the end of 2024, Channing Dungey, the head of Warner Bros Television, took the helm of the US Networks group, which seems to begin bearing fruit for the scripted ...

Back in May, Adult Swim surprisingly returned the Toonami block to Friday afternoons/early-evenings with Toonami Rewind. It was a block dominated by Dragon Ball Z Kai (which was already on the Saturday block) and original Naruto but also marked the return of Sailor Moon to linear television for the first time in decades with the premiere of the Viz dubbed episodes, and fans were totally normal about the block's return and had no complaints about the lineup whatsoever. Of course, I'm lying. This IS Toonami, after all, and when it comes to that block, there will ALWAYS be complaints about it. It's been a tradition since 1997.  As I've mentioned back in May, Toonami Rewind was always an experimental block, so when it ended at the end of 2024 (which was literally a week ago by the time this article is published), there was little fanfare, and the world moved on. But in the grand tradition of the block, we, as fans, have to ask an age-old question.   Was Toonami Rewind a...

 It's 2025. Okay.  Look, 2024 has worn me out mentally, as I'm sure it has a lot of folks geopolitically, but you won't hear me talk about that on this site, mostly because I value my sanity. Instead, I talk about the media I enjoy, which has eroded my optimistic attitude bit by bit in the 25+ years I've been analyzing and covering it professionally. There has been a lot of progress made in that time, but over the past five years, there's been a major regression that has all but destroyed the landscape of the media industry as a whole.  Cable is all but a thing of the past. It's just so damned homogenized with very limited variety as the cable networks are trying to find audiences in a world dominated by streaming platforms (many of which are owned by the same companies that own the cable channels putting those companies in a real Ouroboros predicament). Vulture capitalists are ripping apart legacies that have been around longer than the CEOs of those companies ...

The vacant shell of a building of a network that barely exists. I no longer have Cartoon Network.  For the first time since May 1995, I no longer have access to Cartoon Network. I don't think I'll ever get it back, and quite frankly, I don't think I need it, and they're really not giving any reason to want to resubscribe to the channel any time soon. And for the first time since I heard about the channel's creation back in 1991, I'm fine not having it. I never thought I'd be in a position where I no longer feel the need to watch Cartoon Network let alone support the channel because, for all intents and purposes, Cartoon Network is dead, and Adult Swim killed it. Not David Zaslav because, let's be honest, he's not thinking of what happens to Cartoon Network. Despite what so many people think, I doubt his final thoughts before he goes to bed is "How can I screw over Cartoon Network viewers and fans in the morning?" Way too many animation fans...