Post by Sketch on Aug 2, 2010 4:41:12 GMT -5
I was checking Toon Zone for Otakon News when I stumbled upon yet another thread asking if Cartoon Network should make another anime block. I'm working on a more detailed editorial on the topic for The Scratch Pad but for now these are my thoughts on The Cartoon Network and their lack of non-toyetic anime outside of Adult Swim.
Cartoon Network used to play a lot of Japanese cartoons. A lot more than they do now even between CN's time and Adult Swim's time any given day except maybe Saturday. CN handles the toyetic stuff such as Pokemon, Beyblade and Bakugan which they partially own and Adult Swim gets the rest including the shounen that may have aired on Toonami if it was still around.
Cartoon Network was the center of the anime boom in the early 2000s because of Toonami which began as an action block and always existed as an action block but also served the purpose of being CN's "anime block" many times throughout its' existence. CN was the home of Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball, Gundam, Zoids, Yu Yu Hakusho, One Piece, Naruto, and many other rather successful Japanese cartoon franchises because of Toonami and later Adult Swim when the network saw value in those programs. They got nearly all the great shows available from Japan from around 1999 until 2007 other than a few that were snatched up by their competitors and continue to get some of the more high profile ones because of Adult Swim in paritcular. They found several hidden gems while being the home of the Shonen Jump catelog and they co-produced the second season of The Big O with Sunrise as well as IGPX with Production IG and PowerPuff Girls Z with Toei.
However in 2009 the party was over for non-toyetic anime that were not on Adult Swim when Naruto quietly left the airwaves after the cancellation of Toonami in Fall of 2008. Disney XD snatched up Naruto Shipudden and not long after that Nicktoons Network landed Dragon Ball Z Kai. Both of which would have been shoe-ins and the masses were left looking very confused. Honestly I think CN should have picked up both because they are proven hits but now there's nothing they can do about that other than acquire the rights to the only other anime that could bring them the same audience, ie. One Piece and I hope they do realize their mistake of tossing One Piece out in 2007 but I honestly do not expect they will.
Fringe-otaku and so-called "Toonami fans" clamour for Cartoon Network to bring back Toonami or start a new anime block. I'm all for Cartoon Network making a new action block but an anime block that plays anime for the sake of playing anime is pointless and here is why. Cartoon Network and it's competitors have sapped the market of the shows worth watching. The remaining "Toonami" anime are decent at best and the good edgier ones are probably better off on Adult Swim. The two shows I feel that fit that niche of being an edgier Japanese cartoon that's still marketed to children are SGT Frog and One Piece and I'm sure FUNimation would be more than happy to have them on television. There are some others but hardly enough to justify making an anime block. They could have a block with Pokemon, Bakugan, Beyblade and other toyetic anime right now if they wanted to but I personally wouldn't care to watch it because of those I only moderately enjoy Pokemon.
Furthermore, CN has been treating their action acquisitions like second-rate garbage for quite a while now. Why would anyone want them to get a good Japanese cartoon when they'd probably toss it to 6AM? That's really not going to help get those shows any more fans than they already have. CN isn't likely to pick up more than a few at a time as well so going from having just toyetic Japanese cartoons to having enough PG level ones to make a block is really unlikely for budget purposes alone. CN is currently using their budget to produce and acquire some great home-grown action and making good use of Warner Bros. Animation again which is yielding two or three new series based on DC comics franchises and a long awaited revival of ThunderCats which will actually be animated in Japan. Why on earth would they need to fill their schedule with more Japanese cartoons? The answer is, they don't need to.
It's the "all or nothing" mentality that is the problem here. There certainly should be Japanese cartoons on The Cartoon Network. They have often done well there and there's a market for them but the market is much smaller than it once was and they really can only justify having a few given what's left to be tapped without picking up more mediocre acquisitions. They have places to air anime. That's never changed. I'm much more interested in seeing an afternoon action block be built than for said block to be compose entirely of anime and not neccessarily action anime. It does not matter where the shows come from. What matters is if they're worth showing or not.
Anime have many more venues now. Legal streaming is on the rise. Syfy, Disney XD, Nicktoons Network and other less available channels are dabbling in anime. There's anime available on-demand on digital cable and satalite and there's even the FUNimation Channel which airs nothing but Japanese cartoons. We can probably thank Toonami for much of that. After several years 4Kids is back to thinking Japan is the place to find their next big hit and they're revamping their Saturday morning block to be anime themed. The content is out there, it's just not all in the same place anymore.
If The Cartoon Network should do anything in particular with anime I think its more so in Adult Swim's court now that they are gaining the 9PM hour in 2011. 9PM-11PM any given night of the week is an excellent time to be airing the best action cartoons coming out of Japan without the need to edit for children's network / block standards. More people should be prodding Adult Swim to use the front-end of Adult Swim for more anime on weekdays. It's an excellent use of that time given that Adult Swim cannot play their heavy hitters in those hours due to content and other restrictions due to FOX not wanting their shows competiting with eachother on different networks. Their hands are pretty tied as to what they can run in the 9PM hour in particular. So why not highly successful shows such as Bleach and Inuyasha? They might stand a chance of not getting destroyed by network prime time while I'm more than certain King of the Hill reruns would.
There are however those shows better suited for Adult Swim and they deserve a place on the network and that could be any number of places without resorting to making an all anime block again.
Cartoon Network needs an action block, not just an anime block.
An action block airing on weekday afternoons before prime time that could very well air many Japanese cartoons if they are worth airing along with other action acquisitions that deserve some love such as Metajets and Batman and of course reruns or even premieres of their original action series. That's what Toonami was actually about, not just airing Japanese cartoons for the sake of airing them and that's exactly what people are either forgetting or choosing to ignore and I'm fed up with it.
If anyone wants to link to this post on Toon Zone in that thread, by all means. I contemplated "coming out of retirement" but have decided something this arbitrary and stupid isn't worth bothering coming back to discuss.
Cartoon Network used to play a lot of Japanese cartoons. A lot more than they do now even between CN's time and Adult Swim's time any given day except maybe Saturday. CN handles the toyetic stuff such as Pokemon, Beyblade and Bakugan which they partially own and Adult Swim gets the rest including the shounen that may have aired on Toonami if it was still around.
Cartoon Network was the center of the anime boom in the early 2000s because of Toonami which began as an action block and always existed as an action block but also served the purpose of being CN's "anime block" many times throughout its' existence. CN was the home of Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball, Gundam, Zoids, Yu Yu Hakusho, One Piece, Naruto, and many other rather successful Japanese cartoon franchises because of Toonami and later Adult Swim when the network saw value in those programs. They got nearly all the great shows available from Japan from around 1999 until 2007 other than a few that were snatched up by their competitors and continue to get some of the more high profile ones because of Adult Swim in paritcular. They found several hidden gems while being the home of the Shonen Jump catelog and they co-produced the second season of The Big O with Sunrise as well as IGPX with Production IG and PowerPuff Girls Z with Toei.
However in 2009 the party was over for non-toyetic anime that were not on Adult Swim when Naruto quietly left the airwaves after the cancellation of Toonami in Fall of 2008. Disney XD snatched up Naruto Shipudden and not long after that Nicktoons Network landed Dragon Ball Z Kai. Both of which would have been shoe-ins and the masses were left looking very confused. Honestly I think CN should have picked up both because they are proven hits but now there's nothing they can do about that other than acquire the rights to the only other anime that could bring them the same audience, ie. One Piece and I hope they do realize their mistake of tossing One Piece out in 2007 but I honestly do not expect they will.
Fringe-otaku and so-called "Toonami fans" clamour for Cartoon Network to bring back Toonami or start a new anime block. I'm all for Cartoon Network making a new action block but an anime block that plays anime for the sake of playing anime is pointless and here is why. Cartoon Network and it's competitors have sapped the market of the shows worth watching. The remaining "Toonami" anime are decent at best and the good edgier ones are probably better off on Adult Swim. The two shows I feel that fit that niche of being an edgier Japanese cartoon that's still marketed to children are SGT Frog and One Piece and I'm sure FUNimation would be more than happy to have them on television. There are some others but hardly enough to justify making an anime block. They could have a block with Pokemon, Bakugan, Beyblade and other toyetic anime right now if they wanted to but I personally wouldn't care to watch it because of those I only moderately enjoy Pokemon.
Furthermore, CN has been treating their action acquisitions like second-rate garbage for quite a while now. Why would anyone want them to get a good Japanese cartoon when they'd probably toss it to 6AM? That's really not going to help get those shows any more fans than they already have. CN isn't likely to pick up more than a few at a time as well so going from having just toyetic Japanese cartoons to having enough PG level ones to make a block is really unlikely for budget purposes alone. CN is currently using their budget to produce and acquire some great home-grown action and making good use of Warner Bros. Animation again which is yielding two or three new series based on DC comics franchises and a long awaited revival of ThunderCats which will actually be animated in Japan. Why on earth would they need to fill their schedule with more Japanese cartoons? The answer is, they don't need to.
It's the "all or nothing" mentality that is the problem here. There certainly should be Japanese cartoons on The Cartoon Network. They have often done well there and there's a market for them but the market is much smaller than it once was and they really can only justify having a few given what's left to be tapped without picking up more mediocre acquisitions. They have places to air anime. That's never changed. I'm much more interested in seeing an afternoon action block be built than for said block to be compose entirely of anime and not neccessarily action anime. It does not matter where the shows come from. What matters is if they're worth showing or not.
Anime have many more venues now. Legal streaming is on the rise. Syfy, Disney XD, Nicktoons Network and other less available channels are dabbling in anime. There's anime available on-demand on digital cable and satalite and there's even the FUNimation Channel which airs nothing but Japanese cartoons. We can probably thank Toonami for much of that. After several years 4Kids is back to thinking Japan is the place to find their next big hit and they're revamping their Saturday morning block to be anime themed. The content is out there, it's just not all in the same place anymore.
If The Cartoon Network should do anything in particular with anime I think its more so in Adult Swim's court now that they are gaining the 9PM hour in 2011. 9PM-11PM any given night of the week is an excellent time to be airing the best action cartoons coming out of Japan without the need to edit for children's network / block standards. More people should be prodding Adult Swim to use the front-end of Adult Swim for more anime on weekdays. It's an excellent use of that time given that Adult Swim cannot play their heavy hitters in those hours due to content and other restrictions due to FOX not wanting their shows competiting with eachother on different networks. Their hands are pretty tied as to what they can run in the 9PM hour in particular. So why not highly successful shows such as Bleach and Inuyasha? They might stand a chance of not getting destroyed by network prime time while I'm more than certain King of the Hill reruns would.
There are however those shows better suited for Adult Swim and they deserve a place on the network and that could be any number of places without resorting to making an all anime block again.
Cartoon Network needs an action block, not just an anime block.
An action block airing on weekday afternoons before prime time that could very well air many Japanese cartoons if they are worth airing along with other action acquisitions that deserve some love such as Metajets and Batman and of course reruns or even premieres of their original action series. That's what Toonami was actually about, not just airing Japanese cartoons for the sake of airing them and that's exactly what people are either forgetting or choosing to ignore and I'm fed up with it.
If anyone wants to link to this post on Toon Zone in that thread, by all means. I contemplated "coming out of retirement" but have decided something this arbitrary and stupid isn't worth bothering coming back to discuss.
