Your Leaders Have Abandoned You

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 felt too many older folks were watching it, added Goosebumps reruns in the middle of its ill-conceived mission to be Warner's Family Channel instead of Cartoon Network, killed off the block that replaced Toonami, and turned Toonami a two-hour weekly block before killing it. 

Then Adult Swim brought it back four years later and actually had a block of shows that felt mature, had full uninterrupted runs of some shows that didn't properly get that chance. 

Until they decided to just go back to basics and virtually recreate the old block as a weekly showcase of kid-friendly shows with a few mature-themed shows mixed in to add a bit of variety. I would say that's what the people wanted when the block relaunched in 2012 within Adult Swim.

But somehow, the people aren't there. In fact, in 2025, the folks who initially brought Toonami back have either left the block behind, found nice C-level positions within the corporation, or just disappeared completely online after once being so open with the fans for decades.

When your leaders abandoned you, you tend to wonder what exactly the future of the block you spent nearly 30 years watching is going to look like, especially in a shifting media landscape that has the future of the very network you're watching in doubt.  

Adult Swim management, as it is, has been problematic for decades. Even long before AT&T stepped in, so don't think that's just a thing that started with Discovery. I know how so many like to blame David Zaslav for everything under the sun that goes wrong with Cartoon Network/Adult Swim while the guy actually in charge of the unit, Michael Ouweleen, gets no blame at all and seemingly has taken the helm of a pair of brands that hasn't been truly relevant in the mainstream in the last ten years.  

Despite the changes in leadership and ownership, the company has NEVER given Toonami the proper resources and funds needed to acquire shows and invest in more in-house original programming made FOR Adult Swim (not shows abandoned by Cartoon Network) or even expand beyond a weekly slot.

One could easily blame the near-monopolization of the anime industry under Sony Pictures Television's Crunchyroll for that, and they're not completely blameless in this scenario. But when you notice how Adult Swim has completely squandered and wasted the block's encroachment into the late daytime/early evening slots of Cartoon Network over three years ago with a poorly marketed retro block (Checkered Past), a weekly daytime version of Toonami that was also poorly marketed and ultimately became yet another Dragon Ball Z rerun zone, and three fricking hours of King of the Hill every day of the week that legitimately just ended recently, you really have to wonder where their priorities really are and why they've wasted the three-hour expansion so dramatically.

Several months ago, I heard about AXS TV picking up an anime block that'll air on Thursday nights for an hour every week and encoring on Saturday nights in the timeslot against Toonami, and the Toonami faithful were initially afraid for some reason largely because they're airing reruns of one of the biggest anime properties in the world, My Hero Academia. 

That particular series had been a standard on Toonami, and some feel that AXS TV will likely be the cable home of the final season of MHA when it debuts in the US. They're also worried about the impact the block will have on Toonami, which has seemingly hit a roadblock when it comes to acquisitions and running on fumes. 

It was a block on a channel carried by very few operators and has very little viewers in the first place. The fact it ended without creating a blip on the public consciousness is proof that it was a flawed viewing experience.

Still, if a low-rated cable network with very little carriage like AXS TV (I'm sure a lot of people had to search for the channel on their cable and satellite systems) can pay big money for rerun rights to older shows while the larger higher-rated network with wider coverage won't, well then that's a problem.

For the larger network.

It makes the larger cable network look cheap and less desirable to other distributors.

Again, I was never worried about the ratings AXS TV got in comparison to Toonami because there's no way in hell that they'd even get close. 

I'm just saying that Aniplex, yet another Sony-owned anime producer/distributor, has options with networks that are willing to pay big money for shows in this climate. 

Adult Swim/Toonami needs to step up.

And by "step up," I don't mean add more vanity projects that only attracts the folks behind the scenes more than the rest of us.

Nobody wanted that sand worm live-action thing about a decade ago.

Nobody wanted more FLCL. Especially FLCL without the original creators involved. That's just scabby.

Nobody wanted a Rick and Morty anime. I don't even think the original creators wanted a full series.

The block's next big show is one about a giant fighting rooster while Adult Swim's Emmy-winning mature action franchise Primal will air its newest season on Sunday nights in a prime slot and not buried on Toonami after midnight on a Sunday morning 2:30 AM E/P slot.

Make the industry want to come to you, not vice-versa.

If you want people to see Toonami as a priority, then fucking treat it as one.

And for god's sake, read the bloody room and start picking up things that are meant for older audiences and not just the standby Shonen Jump offspring that gets buried after 2 AM when most rational folks are asleep rather than a proper daytime slot.

I am so sick of seeing shows aimed towards younger audiences buried on a late-night block aimed towards adults. I feel something like One Piece or Dragon Ball Super would have gotten gangbuster views weekdays at 7 PM than they get on Sunday mornings at 2 AM E/P. 

I'm still pissed about how Toonami treated Invincible Fight Girl, a series that, by all counts should have been on Cartoon Network proper and had at least a 20-episode order for S1. Not even putting reruns on after the short-lived Toonami Rewind block was a terrible move. I guarantee it would have gotten more eyeballs on it if it had that higher profile encore slot.

Toonami didn't "save" Invincible Fight Girl. Adult Swim stole it from Cartoon Network and buried it at midnight on the weekend with no daytime re-airings. 

And I'll be damned if a trio of DC shows recently announced last spring suffer the same treatment, though I doubt they'll even actually air on Adult Swim or even Cartoon Network at this point. 

I still feel that if Toonami wasn't just so anime-focused, they could really get into more western-made productions and evolve the block for the future, especially when the anime industry remains largely under Sony's control in the West.

Don't get me wrong. Anime definitely has a place on Toonami and should absolutely be a home for it. I feel that anime should be in a lot of places, including premium cable outlets as well and that Toonami should be THE home of anime on linear television. That said, it should a major showcase of the best of the best and not just a second or even third-run outlet for recent anime titles.

I know shows like Lazarus, Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War, Dragon Ball Daima, and Dandadan all premiered on Toonami in 2025, but the latter three were secondary premieres that were original broadcast on streaming platforms. While getting them to air linearly is nice, the fact they were considered secondary, even tertiary premieres rather than primary ones show how insignificant the Toonami brand has become in recent years. 

Lazarus, the lone original series, came and went, and Toonami will likely never make another season of the sci-fi adventure series. But Common Side Effects, a dramatic series that echoes a lot of MAHA-like conspiratorial tropes, came in the block and is getting another season with Ouweleen almost gloating that viewers helped it out while mocking Invincible Fight Girl's fans in the process. Meanwhile, 2024's Ninja Kamui has at least two seasons in the works, but there's no real time frame about when they would actually come or even IF they'll come at this rate.

That fighting chicken anime I mentioned earlier, Rooster Fighter, is going to be one of the biggest projects of Toonami in 2026 while other mainstream projects find homes across streaming platforms, even ones produced by sibling company Warner Bros Japan (many of which, most notably newer seasons of JoJo's Bizarre Adventures, have found homes at Netflix in recent years), has shown how insignificant Toonami has become, at least with anime-loving fans, and there's indication that is going to change anytime soon. .

So, yeah, I'm going to say something from my chest, and if people want to unfollow me from social media because of it, fine with me:

 I lost my faith in Toonami a long time ago.

I'm still trying to figure out when I lost my faith in a block that claimed to be "a better cartoon show" but doesn't deserve that moniker whatsoever. 

Maybe my lost faith began in the past year when I stopped watching it and realizing I wasn't missing much every week. I follow a lot of folks who still do live recaps for some reason. Maybe it's a force of habit from the Twitter days. Maybe it's them trying to hold on to that youthful love that had been fading with time. 

Maybe it was when the block largely became a hub for the same old repeats that had been a part of the block 20 years ago with the old guard mostly showing off their favorites and ONLY their favorites. 

I really want to be wrong. I really want to know where Toonami, let alone Cartoon Network will fit in whenever this whole split and acquisition drama is finally figured out. 

Yeah, I have to bring that chaos into this conversation because many people who watch Toonami are legitimately concerned about the ownership of Cartoon Network/Adult Swim in the near future, whether it'll be spun off completely from Warner Bros Discovery as part of Discovery Global or, heaven forbid, it becomes absorbed by Paramount Skydance who'll probably assimilate it into the same unit that ruins, um, runs MTV or Comedy Central if they don't shut it down outright. 

Whoever will own Cartoon Network/Adult Swim when it's all said and done will need to figure out what the hell Toonami will look like in the years ahead, if it even has years left in it. 

I want whoever will own the network reexamine what Toonami is supposed to be, understand where it needs to be, and willing to actually invest in it and expand it beyond its limited space, preferably in spaces where audiences are and not just confined to a late-night slot on a Sunday morning. 

I think I just want leadership to show up and actually, you know, lead.