The state of Toonami in 2024

This year marked 12 years of Toonami’s existence on Adult Swim, and 27 years of Toonami’s existence overall, which is crazy to think about. No television block, at least for animation, has lasted as long as Toonami has, and that is due to various aspects of the block itself, as well as the cult following (myself included) that continues to watch Toonami every week. That isn’t to say that there haven’t been some obstacles along the way, because there definitely have been. In this article, we’ll take a look at what has happened to Toonami over the past year (both good and bad), how the world around Toonami has changed, what opportunities the block missed, and what viewers can look forward to in the future, so let’s jump in!

(Full disclosure: I had meant for this article to be released on May 26, 2024, the 12-year anniversary of the revival of Toonami on Adult Swim, but life got in the way, so you’ll be seeing series that premiered since May 2023 in this piece. Plus, so much news that has happened since then directly or indirectly affects Toonami, so I’ve got to talk about it. Sorry about that. 😅)

The Good

There has been quite a lot of good stuff that has happened to Toonami over the past year. New shows, old shows returning, and a new weekday companion block have all made the Toonami experience better, so let’s get into these!

New Series

• Unicorn: Warriors Eternal
• My Adventures with Superman
• Lycoris Recoil
• Ninja Kamui (original series)
• Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead

Continuing and Returning Series

• FLCL (Grunge and Shoegaze)
• Dr. Stone (Season 3)
• Attack on Titan (The Final Chapters specials)
• Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba (Mugen Train, Entertainment District, and Swordsmith Village arcs)
• IGPX (Season 1, Remastered in high definition)
• Dragon Ball Z Kai
• Sailor Moon
• Naruto

Weekday Expansion

Toonami Rewind

Toonami surprised everyone in back in May, when it announced that it would be expanding into Friday afternoons with a new nostalgia-focused block called Toonami Rewind. Toonami Rewind is designed to recapture the days of Toonami on weekday afternoons during the block’s original run on Cartoon Network. The new block currently airs Sailor Moon (with the Viz dub airing on television for the first time ever), Dragon Ball Z Kai, and the original Naruto series (which, unfortunately, has already skipped some episodes at the time of this post). So far, with the music and bumps, Rewind does a decent job of accomplishing its goal, except for one thing that I’ll mention in the “Missed Opportunities” section of this article. I am excited about the future of Toonami Rewind! I just hope that the Toonami staff and the resources allocated to them aren’t spread thin between Rewind and the main block.

The Bad

Dry Spell

Toonami had a content drought late last year that started in late Summer and didn’t end until November, when the block finally aired the second half of Season 3 of Dr. Stone, as well as the long-awaited Mugen Train Arc of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba. It got so bad to the point that One Piece and Naruto: Shippuden each had two slots on the block at one point, with both shows combined taking up two-thirds of the block’s runtime. Yikes.

It’s no secret that Toonami has been struggling with acquiring new series for a couple of years now. Part of that is because of the limited budget that Adult Swim has allotted to Toonami ever since it was revived back in 2012. A much larger reason for Toonami’s struggles with content acquisition is the elephant in the room: Sony.

Sony, which owns both Crunchyroll and Aniplex, has been less willing to license series to Toonami in recent years, through raising licensing prices and a general unwillingness to license certain series for broadcast. This is a huge problem because of the overwhelming amount of market share that Sony commands in the American anime distribution market through its ownership of Crunchyroll and Aniplex. It’s gotten to the point where some anime fans consider Sony a monopoly in the space. Fortunately, Aniplex seems to have recently been loosening its iron grip on certain series, as Demon Slayer‘s Mugen Train and Entertainment District arcs aired on Toonami last November, after Aniplex lowered the licensing costs due to those arcs no longer being the latest season of the series at the time. Also, Lycoris Recoil, a series the block had never aired before, aired this past January. Still, the larger part of Sony’s anime empire, Crunchyroll, seems less willing to work with Toonami, which is a shame on two fronts. Funimation, the predecessor to current-day Crunchyroll, had a great working relationship with Toonami before the former two companies merged, and Crunchyroll itself was once a sister company to Adult Swim when AT&T owned both companies. Even today, Toonami still struggles to acquire new anime series that they have not broadcast previous iterations of, and Crunchyroll owns the license to a lion’s share of those, so their unwillingness to work with Toonami really hurts the block’s prospects for content acquisitions. I don’t work in television, so I’m not going to pretend that I know what the solution is, but I do hope that Toonami and Sony (mainly Crunchyroll) are able to come to agreeable terms to get some new anime series on the block.

New Competition

Speaking of Sony, I guess we should probably talk about the Crunchyroll FAST channel. In October 2023, Crunchyroll launched a Free, Ad-supported, Streaming Television network on The Roku Channel and Amazon Freevee, and has since expanded to Pluto TV in February of 2024. I made an entire video on it, which you can watch above. Shameless plug, I know. Anyway, with this launch, Crunchyroll provided a new way to watch its (older and less popular) shows without having to pay a monthly subscription.

What does this have to do with Toonami, you might ask. Well, for starters, some of the shows that Crunchyroll has added to its channel have clearly been gunning for the Toonami crowd, such as Yu Yu Hakusho, Soul Eater, Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, Samurai 7, among others. On top of that, some of Crunchyroll’s scheduling choices, at least toward the channel’s launch, were also targeted towards Toonami viewers. For example, during the week of the channel’s launch, Psycho-Pass, an anime series that would fit very well on Toonami, aired on Saturday nights at midnight Eastern Time (if you were watching The Roku Channel’s feed), which put it in direct competition with Toonami for your attention. Combine that with Toonami’s aforementioned content dry spell, and you can see how viewers could’ve been pulled in Crunchyroll’s direction at the time, and I don’t think that was an accident. Finally, Crunchyroll’s launch of its own channel could be another reason for its recent unwillingness to license content to Toonami, which I mentioned earlier. Why license content to a competitor for broadcast when you can broadcast it yourself and keep most of the advertising money?

As I said in the video, Crunchyroll launching a FAST channel is objectively a good thing for the American anime fanbase, as it allows for a new way for people to engage with some of Crunchyroll’s huge library. For Toonami though, it’s a competitor vying for viewer attention, and it could be another reason for the largest anime distributor in the country to justify withholding its shows from being licensed for broadcast.

Missed Opportunities

Toonami definitely tries to deliver a great experience for its fans, and most times, the block achieves that goal. Sometimes, though, I can’t help but think about some of the opportunities that were missed along the way. Let’s go over the opportunities that Toonami has missed in the past year and change.

Mortal Kombat 1 cross-promotion

Mortal Kombat 1, developed by NetherRealm Studios and published by Warner Bros. Games, was one of the biggest games released in 2023. Warner Bros. Animation has also released new direct-to-video animated Mortal Kombat movies in recent years, which have never aired on television before. So, one would think that Toonami would take the opportunity to air at least one of those movies to help promote one of Warner’s biggest releases of 2023, right? Well, you’d be wrong if you thought that would happen, because it didn’t, and that’s a real shame. Apparently, the reasoning for that is that the Mortal Kombat movies are too gory to air on Adult Swim/Toonami, which I could understand, if blood and guts weren’t spilled a lot on Adult Swim’s original programming. I’m just saying, if I could see the insides of various humans and other species on Rick and Morty from week to week with no issue, then Adult Swim could’ve aired the Mortal Kombat movies, even if they were edited for content. I mean, they already did that with the various DC animated movies over the past few years, and those are tame in comparison to the Mortal Kombat animated movies. Airing one of the Mortal Kombat movies also would’ve softened the blow of Toonami’s content dry spell during that period of time, which really could’ve helped generate interest in the block, even if it was temporary.

Batman Day

Every year of the early 2020s, Toonami aired movies celebrating Batman in the Fall of that year, whether it was during an event, like DC FanDome, Batman Day, or for Halloween. That changed in 2023, after the dust had settled from the merger of WarnerMedia and Discovery the year prior, resulting in a shift in priorities for the combined company. As someone who was starting to get used to the Better Cartoon Show annually celebrating the Dark Knight, I was met with disappointment when there wasn’t any Batman animated movie that was announced to air in Fall 2023, and it’s looking like the same will happen this year as well. It was nice to see the Batman (and other DC) animated movies on Toonami for a few years, as those provided a break from the norm, and gave shows room to breathe. It’s ironic that the one year (2023) so far of the 2020s that Toonami didn’t celebrate Batman Day was the year the block could’ve benefitted from it the most, due to the dry spell going on at the time. Hopefully, the Batman Day celebrations come back to Toonami, because they were a breath of fresh air for a block that could definitely use that at times.

Scavengers Reign

Before I start this section, I should clarify that this is no fault of the Toonami staff or Adult Swim. However, I feel like I would be doing you, and this article, a disservice if I didn’t mention Scavengers Reign, so let’s talk about it. Scavengers Reign is an animated sci-fi drama series that debuted in October 2023 on Max and has been highly regarded by a lot of casual viewers, including myself, as one of the greatest animated series of the 2020s. Toonami fans, however, know that Scavengers Reign has origins on the block, as the original Scavengers short debuted on Toonami in 2017. In May 2024, two things happened. First, Max cancelled Scavengers Reign. Then, seemingly out of the blue, Netflix picked up additional streaming rights to the series, with the option to pick it up for a second season if the first one performs well on the platform. Because of the latter, Toonami co-creator Jason DeMarco says that the option to air Scavengers Reign on Toonami is no longer available, and that super sucks, because I would’ve loved to see the show air on the block, as such an occasion would’ve been a homecoming of sorts. Anyway, please go watch Scavengers Reign on Netflix, so that this amazing series can get the second season it deserves and so that the opportunity to see the series on Toonami being taken from viewers won’t have been in vain.

Toonami Rewind pipe dreams

The announcement of Toonami Rewind garnered a lot of positive attention from fans, both casual and hardcore alike. The new companion block also brought back the 2004 packaging, marking the first time ever that the packaging has been used outside of Saturday nights since it debuted two decades ago. Was that decision the right move, though? To some, the answer is yes, since the 2004 look is iconic in its own right. After all, there’s a reason it was brought back when Toonami was revived in 2012 on Adult Swim. To others (myself included), however, the answer is no, and that’s because, as I mentioned earlier, that the 2004 look is mostly associated with Saturday nights. I feel as if a better move would’ve been to use a classic Toonami packaging that was associated with weekdays. The most obvious example would be the Pipes look from the early 2000s, which Adult Swim already has remastered HD assets of, thanks to the four-week 20th anniversary celebration of the main block in 2017. While it is disappointing that Toonami didn’t use the Pipes for the launch of Rewind, the block has an awesome community of people who have given us a glimpse of what Toonami Rewind would’ve looked like with that packaging, including YouTube creators such as SlimD716, as well as fan sites like Toonami Squad. Is this me nitpicking? Yeah, it is, but I think that using the Pipes look for the launch of Toonami Rewind would’ve gone much farther towards the goal of recapturing that feeling of watching Toonami on weekdays during the original Cartoon Network run, and I hope that the staff considers a rebrand to that look in the future.

The Future

Overall, I would say that Toonami’s future prospects look good, if the Toonami staff and Adult Swim play their cards right. With new original series, as well as new and returning acquisitions from various companies, there should be a healthy string of releases to hold us into the 2024-2025 season and beyond. With that being said, let’s get into the new and (potentially) returning series, as well as what I would want to see from the Better Cartoon Show to truly make it…better.

New Original Series

• Rick and Morty: The Anime (August 17, 2024, subtitled)

• Uzumaki (September 28, 2024, subtitled)

• Rooster Fighter (TBD)

• Lazarus (2025)

• Get Jiro! (maybe, TBD)

• Invincible Fight Girl (maybe, Fall 2024)

Returning acquisitions

• My Hero Academia (Season 7, likely)

What I would like to see

New non-Japanese Toonami Original series

For better or worse, Toonami, over the years, has been synonymous with Japanese anime, which makes a lot of sense. After all, anime series like Dragon Ball Z, Yu Yu Hakusho, Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, Sailor Moon, Naruto, and others have been made into household names in the United States because of their original broadcasts on Toonami in the 1990s and 2000s. However, a lot of people tend to overlook the non-Japanese programming that has aired on the block over the years as well. Justice League Unlimited aired its premiere run in its entirety on Toonami, and shows like Teen Titans (2003) and Beware the Batman aired the majority of their premiere runs on Toonami, with My Adventures with Superman soon to follow in the footsteps of the latter two. That’s just me scratching the surface of the non-Japanese cartoons that have aired on Toonami over the 27 years of its existence. After late 2014, there was a long stretch of time where Toonami was all-anime. I love anime as much as the next person, but I’ve always thought that Toonami was at its best when there’s a healthy mix of anime and non-Japanese action cartoons. Thankfully, things have gotten better on this front in recent years, with Gen:LOCK (Season 1) in 2019, and Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal and Unicorn: Warriors Eternal, in 2020 and 2023, respectively, airing on the block. My Adventures with Superman finally got to air premieres inside of Toonami with Season 2, after the odd choice of Thursday night premieres for Season 1, with TOM even acknowledging that on the night of Season 2’s premiere. Nice! So, what’s the problem? Well, Unicorn and Superman were originally developed with Cartoon Network proper in mind and were moved to Adult Swim at the last minute. This made those shows feel like they didn’t fit Adult Swim, and to a lesser degree, the current iteration of Toonami. Since Toonami (and Adult Swim in general) is pursuing original action programming, I would like to see non-Japanese action cartoons made from the ground up with Adult Swim (and, by extension, Toonami) in mind. A move like that would solidify Toonami’s place as a home for action cartoons, regardless of country of origin, because again, that’s when the Better Cartoon Show is at its best.

More programming acquisitions from non-Sony companies

As I mentioned before, Sony, through Crunchyroll and Aniplex combined, has the lion’s share of the anime distribution market in the United States (and other parts of the world), and their reluctance to work with Toonami on licensing certain shows for broadcast has definitely hurt the block’s prospects. There’s no getting around that. Unless…

You see, there’s a promising trend that has been going on in the anime distribution scene recently that has me excited, not just for Toonami, but for the anime market as a whole. The trend I’m talking about is Japanese rights holders distributing anime directly to various platforms simultaneously, cutting out the American distributor that otherwise serves as the middleman (usually, that role is played by Crunchyroll). There are a few recent notable examples of this. For example, Mainichi Broadcasting System (MBS, for short) is distributing Dan Da Dan directly to multiple platforms here in the United States, including Crunchyroll, Netflix, and Hulu, with GKids handling home video and theatrical distribution. This means that Dan Da Dan has no platform exclusivity and Toonami can theoretically license it directly from MBS in the future if agreeable terms between the two are reached. Another example is Toho International directly distributing the My Hero Academia: You’re Next film in theaters here in North America in October, cutting out Crunchyroll (who holds the license to the TV series) completely from the distribution process. While this scenario doesn’t necessarily benefit Toonami nowadays, since they don’t seem to air movies that aren’t owned by Warner Bros. Discovery anymore, if the new My Hero Academia film is a success for Toho, it could lead to that company distributing more anime films, and possibly anime series, directly in North America, the latter of which could provide another distributor for Toonami to work with in the future for acquisitions. There are other examples of Japanese anime distributors releasing anime here in the United States directly that I couldn’t mention because this article is long enough already. The bottom line is that there is no reason that one conglomerate should command more than 80% of the anime distribution market, and I am glad that certain Japanese distributors are taking matters into their own hands. I hope Toonami can take advantage of that.

There’s also the fact that there are other North American anime distributors that Toonami could be working with, rather than waiting for Sony to license certain series to them. One of the biggest ones that comes to mind is Viz Media, which Toonami is currently working with to air certain series on both Toonami, such as Naruto: Shippuden and Zom 100, the latter of which recently ended its first season’s run on Toonami. There’s also the original Naruto series and Sailor Moon, which both air on Toonami Rewind, and the upcoming Rooster Fighter anime series, which Toonami is also producing. Another distributor that Toonami could work with more often is Sentai Filmworks, which has the rights to certain series that could work well on Toonami, such as Ushio and Tora and Dororo (2019), as well as series that already aired on Adult Swim Action that could be introduced to a new generation, such as Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit. Then there are the smaller distributors, such as Discotek Media, which has a lot of retro anime series that could work well on either the main Toonami block or Rewind. This is an area that I hope Toonami can explore more, so that it can reduce its dependency on Sony and have a steady flow of programming throughout the years.

Overall, I think Toonami should really look outside of Sony-owned companies for acquisitions more than they currently do, because I’m sure that there are other companies that want to license programming to the block for broadcast. Shows from other distributors willing to cut Toonami a deal can be highlights of their own or serve as appetizers to hold viewers over until the next big series comes to the block.

The return of movies

Movies have been a great way for Toonami to space out its releases over the years or cover weekends when people would do anything other than watch TV, such as holiday weekends. Sometimes, movies even tie into other events going on in the larger Warner company (more on that later). The point here is that movies have sometimes offered variety in the Toonami lineup that wouldn’t otherwise be there. We haven’t gotten any movies lately, so at times, even when certain series on the lineup rotate out, the block can still feel a little bit stale. I believe that putting movies back on Toonami would be a great way to give shows more room to breathe, rather than showing a marathon of a series that dedicated viewers have already seen before. There are plenty of DC animated movies that haven’t aired on the block yet, as well as the aforementioned Mortal Kombat animated movies, and better yet, an even greater number of anime movies not owned by Warner Bros. Discovery that haven’t aired on the block yet. I hope that Toonami can go back to airing the one-off movies, but I do understand that it might not be economically feasible to do that.

More Warner synergy

Maybe this one might be just a *me* thing, but in 2020, when Toonami started airing DC animated movies for the first time since 2008 (among other initiatives at WarnerMedia at the time), a part of me had a glimmer of hope, not just for Toonami, but for the larger Warner corporation, because it seemed like the different parts of Warner were starting to figure out how to act as one, and I was benefitting from it. Then, the Discovery merger happened, and there has been a lot of regression on that front since then. There hasn’t been a DC animated movie on Toonami since February 2023. None of the Mortal Kombat animated movies have aired on Toonami at all, as I mentioned earlier. I guess the point that I’m trying to make here is that Warner has a lot of IP and a lot of opportunities for Toonami to leverage those IP to either make or air cool action cartoons. To Warner Brothers’ credit, there is at least one upcoming series that could possibly come to (or even premiere inside of) Toonami, and that is Get Jiro!, based on the Vertigo comic of the same name. Personally, I would love to see animated series based on some popular Warner Bros. IP show up on Toonami, either as original series, or as second-run television premieres from a streaming service such as Max. It would be great to see an animated series based on The Matrix, Mad Max, or other Warner franchises air on Toonami, but that’s probably wishful thinking on my part. I hope that Get Jiro! does well, so that Warner can see the potential in how Toonami can help the company in the years to come.

Rebrands, rebrands, rebrands!

Toonami has had many iconic branding packages over the years, including the Pipes from the early 2000s, the 2004/2012 branding, which is currently being used again on Toonami Rewind, and others. Though most Toonami branding packages have stuck around for about a year or so, at least in the Adult Swim era, they are now starting to stick around for around 2 years or longer nowadays. Since the current branding for the main Toonami block has stuck around since 2022 and is still going strong, I’m guessing that Toonami will get a facelift sometime in 2025, perhaps alongside the launch of one of its original series, and I’m excited to see what that would look like. I would also like to see Toonami Rewind with the Pipes look from the early 2000s, as I explained earlier.

Dedicated streaming presence

The entertainment industry is changing (stop me if you’ve heard this before), and as much as I love watching live TV, the majority of viewers nowadays (at least here in the United States) prefer watching their favorite shows via streaming services. While it seems that the streaming service bubble has burst, at least on the paid side of the fence, the free streaming service market is still ripe for growth, and I think Toonami can take advantage of both markets to grow its brand in the cultural zeitgeist. I’ll explain.

First, let’s start with the paid streaming services, particularly Max. I like the Adult Swim section of Max, but all of the Toonami Originals are also lumped together with the regular Adult Swim shows, which makes sense at the moment, as there aren’t a lot of Toonami Originals (that Warner hasn’t written off for taxes) on the service at this point. In the future, though, I would like to see Toonami get its own dedicated hub on Max worldwide as a catch-all brand for the Warner-owned action cartoons and anime on the service, whether they come from Adult Swim, Cartoon Network, DC, or other parts of WBD. Something like that would make a generation of people who have grown up with streaming services their entire lives familiar with Toonami, and would go a long way towards making Toonami a household name for a new generation.

Next, and more interestingly, let’s talk about free streaming services. WBD has talked about launching its own first-party free streaming service in recent years, especially after the infamous content purges from the service we now know as Max of Summer 2022. If such a service were to actually release, I really think that Toonami should eventually build a presence on it, if not at launch, as that would be the easiest, cheapest, and most accessible way for viewers to engage with Toonami as a brand. My ideal Toonami FAST channel would consist of select action cartoons from across the Warner Bros. Discovery catalog, like the older DC cartoons, the older action-oriented Cartoon Network and Adult Swim Originals, and other first-party action cartoons, as well as custom bumps and promos for the channel and select classic Toonami bumps and interstitials (which a lot of people seek out anyway, if YouTube is any indication). With a Toonami-branded FAST channel, U.S. viewers could get the 24/7 Toonami channel we never had up to this point. That’s something that I hope the Toonami staff, Adult Swim, and Warner Bros. Discovery are looking into spearheading, especially if/when the WBD first-party FAST service eventually launches.

All in all, I think Toonami should have a dedicated place in the streaming market, because being tied to cable, as much as I like live TV, feels like it’s holding Toonami back. It wouldn’t shock me if the majority of the viewership of the recent Toonami Originals came from Max, rather than the cable block itself. Also, people love free streaming services, as evidenced by the recent successes of Tubi, Pluto TV, and Freevee. The way Toonami is designed, from the shows themselves to the packaging around them, puts it in a unique position to take advantage of both markets to grow its presence and make itself a part of the anime and action cartoon zeitgeist again.

Conclusion

Overall, Toonami has had a pretty good year and change so far. Sure, there was a dry spell for a while, and there were some missed opportunities along the way, but Toonami is still going strong and has a bright future ahead of it, with new and returning shows, new potential distribution partners, and new opportunities that I haven’t even thought of yet. It’s a good time to be a Toonami Faithful right now!

Anyway, what are your thoughts about the state of Toonami in 2024? Is there something they did in the past year that you liked? Is there something you didn’t like? What are your thoughts about the future of the Better Cartoon Show? Sound off in the comments or across the social web! Don’t forget to follow me and Cels & Circuits on social media for more updates! Until then, I’m Chibueze, signing off.

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