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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...

The following article was originally published as "Way Too Many Characters" on POST on December 12, 2022. -jh The following post is not a tweet. Yet. Words change meaning over time, and with the advent of the internet and the rise of social media, we have seen this happen rather quickly. There’s a generation that doesn’t immediately think of “a period of two weeks” when they hear the word “fortnight.” The word “woke” no longer means “not asleep” to a lot of people. It means either “being politically and socially aware, being alert and conscious to prejudice, discrimination, and systematic injustices in society, and the need to address them” or “EW! This thing has a woman, a minority, a progressive, an empathetic person, and/or a member of the LGBT in it or a part of it.” And a “tweet” used to mean “a small, sweet note made by a bird.” Short. Succinct. Sweet. That was the point of the small text messages by the users of the Twitter platform. Short, sweet, succinct messages. Or...

 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 ...

In 2022, I originally posted much of what I'm about say on POST, a platform that closed up earlier in 2024, but a lot of the sentiments still, sadly, sticks. At the time I'm rewriting this, we're entering the final hours of 2024, and by the time this article is queued up, the rest of the world is already pinky-toe-deep in 2025. A few thoughts of the year that was. A lot of it can sod off. Seriously, screw this year. It was awful. Just... awful. Granted, it wasn't the worst year of my life (2022 is definitely in the top two, and 2024 is, more or less in the top 10). 2024 was a year when a lot of things that could have gone wrong went wrong. A lot of people got put in positions they didn't deserve and ruined a lot of great things. Greedy companies continue to our lives in every part of society. Myopic, bigoted executives continue to get in way over their heads, and we all continue to get lost in their incompetence. Politicians continue to not give a damn about anythin...

NOTE: This article was originally published at POST under the title "Finding Logic in Illogical Vestments" on December 5, 2022.  Still, as the old adage goes, " Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose (The more things change, the more they remain the same)." -jh  I've been thinking about something about Warner Bros Discovery for a while, and while I've said I'm not going to talk about the inner workings of the company, it's a question that vexes me and must be asked about the future of the land of the Vestman when it comes to syndicating and distributing their programs. David Zaslav, the head of the company who will be referred to as the Vestman because he really likes his vests and gave them away as a parting gift to recently-fired WBD and CNN employees, has been on the record as saying that shows produced by Warner Bros Discovery don't necessarily have to air on WBD-owned outlets including HBO Max, TBS, TNT, and Cartoon Network. Consideri...

DISCLAIMER: The following is part three of a multipart alternate history series about the history of  Doctor Who  if it was an American-made production rather than a British production. It's purely speculative and a work of fiction, although some real-world elements were included and presented for realistic situations and scenarios. Neither this series nor its author are connected to nor reflect the views and opinions of BBC Studios (the owner of the  Doctor Who  franchise) or any entity or persons mentioned and does not mean to infringe on the copyrights and trademarks of those parties. - JH “There are fixed points throughout time where things must stay exactly the way they are. This is not one of them, this is an opportunity. Whatever happens here will create its own timeline, its own reality, a temporal tipping point. The future revolves around you, here, now, so do good!” - The Doctor While the original run of  Doctor Who  ended on ABC , Universal still...