For starters, I’d like to begin this post with a big thank you for Howie was allowing me to write this blog post out to his readers today. Howie, like myself, is a fan of this era of animation; what I'm about to talk about, an era which has since left the minds of the modern-day viewer and has escaped onto the Internet and other places to reside on.
Let’s just start off with a background on what Toonami was exactly:
In 1997 Toonami was crafted as the primary action block of the Time Warner cable channel Cartoon Network. The popular production studio William Street (the then Ghost Planet Industries) headed up this block. Originally the show was hosted by the space ghost Villan turned host Moltar. Later on as at the show continued, the block was hosted by TOM, a Robot who held the show on the spaceship Absolution. It's interesting to note here that the voice of TOM is none other than Steve Blum, whose voice acting career has given life to many beloved characters such as Spike Speigel from Cowboy Bebop, Tank Dempsey of the Call of Duty franchise, and many other roles.
One of the things that made the block a success was its lineup of shows that aired from 1997 all the way to its ending broadcast in 2008. It was here that most fans recall was the home of the legendary anime Dragon Ball Z, along with its earlier days, the show hosted shows such as ThunderCats, Voltron, The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest, the Super Friends, Sailor Moon, Ronin Warriors, and Gundam Wing. And it gets better, these were shows that were aired between 1997 in the year 2000. From here on Toonami would be and widely considered as an anime block that periodically posted American-based animation.
One of the unique features of Toonami was not purely in its line up, but also in its especially crafted total immersion events. These were aired during the blocks most popular series, and were effective at a production standpoint.
At one point the Toonami block had what was called the midnight run. This was a period that ran from 1999 to 2003 and ran daily at 12 AM. It consisted of classic anime and also aired music videos from groups like Gorillaz, and Daft Punk.
On March 18, 2006 in honor of the blocks ninth anniversary, Toonami began airing a month of Miyazaki, a four-week celebration of the works of acclaimed animator and director Hayao Miyazaki.
All of these features were implemented over the course of Toonami’s lifespan. In fact one has to question... is there a block on any other channel which has really shown this amount of dedication to a specific genre of televised programing up? It's hard to say seeing how most of Toonami was directed towards young children and adolescents. It seems that at least nowadays if you put flashy animation, explosions, and add in basic dialogue into any show you can perchance receive average ratings. But what was it that made Toonami standout in the line up that we see nowadays on channels such as Disney, Nickelodeon, MTV, and the Cartoon Network of today.
Audience
Knowing your audience can make or break anything on TV. Channels like lifetime or Spike TV have a very select audience that tunes into their channels. Naturally, these channels offer their lineups to reflect the current ratings and demands that their audience wishes to receive. So what exactly was Toonami's audience? Being the primary action block of midafternoon to late-night television on cartoon network Toonami was obviously directed toward young male viewers who are interested in action-based programming and also catered to acknowledging household names, from anime, to superheroes, Toonami hosted them all. Parent company William Street also used this approach when creating adult swim. The mood, tone, and timing of adult swim depicts that most of the lineup is intended for mature audiences.
So how is Toonami compared to other channels lineup? Well let's take a look at what Disney has to offer today toward a similar age group:
Disney Channel Shows
If your initial guesses were correct then it’s safe to assume that the outreach that Disney has had on you, then todays culture has obviously affected you. The lineups are, in a way, the complete opposite of Toonami, where live action and preteen focused shows dominate the entire channels time for 24 hours straight.
I know I'm picking on Disney; but in a way Disney deserves this criticism. Toonami was valued because it was a select block that aired on certain times and had a limited time to address an audience, reel them into a program, and keep them entertained in the time allotted. Whereas Disney has an entire channel devoted to marketing, advertising, and overall making sure that children were constantly fed the programming that they wanted. Now, if you asked me if I'd rather have Toonami have its own separate channel work and watch all the assorted shows 24/7 without any questions asked, I'd jump on it. But soon I would quickly realize that there are not enough shows out there to truly satisfy the entire audience of Toonami and give it justice for a whole running channel. If this were to happen it would ultimately become an anime based channel without any necessarily endearing qualities to it. But the strength to Toonami is that it was simply a time block, a gateway to other forms of animation outside the realm of cartoons, and another form of action outside of live-action.
In fact most of my nostalgia is the fact that this was the perfect time for kids like me during its run from 1998 to 2004. The block was expertly timed so that kids coming back home from school and be able to watch some of the shows. Since Toonami is a visual Experience, and for those of you who did not experience this growing up, I’d like take time to show a clip of the opening intro for Toonami back in 2002.
First off, if you want to talk about the tone that Toonami sets, it's very high tech and futuristic and looks very appealing in general. In a way, Toonami adds to the great cultural debate of what the future will look like. While it does not go as far a Space Odyssey 2001 or the Jetsons, it takes on the characteristics of making everything sleek, functional, and appealing in design. The ship itself, the Absolution, is very alien in nature on the outside. However once you step inside it in and see elevators and large walkways, you get a very similar Star Trek/BSG tone. And Finally, the most iconic visual of this thing is the robot host lounging in this high tech chair, doing god know what, while you sit back and enjoy the show.
While I am biased in presenting you all today with this, I feel a great deal of sorrow in how this block, along with the shows it brought along, have all faded in favor of other live action and animated programs. It is very hard to see a channel growing up with continue want without a mainstay in and what many consider an endearing part of the late 90's.
As a wrap up...
I’m not lobbying for Toonami’s return (how I wish), but rather a soft spoken reminder to unearth treasure that most of us held dear during these childish times in our lives.
To end this all off, I give you Peter Cullen in Advanced Robotics
It's Optimus Prime. Talking about Robots. Taking over the World. BAD ASS.
end
Editor's Notes
Thanks for that post Alex! I personally enjoyed editing and reading it. Even though I only half edited and spent most of my time formatting for html (I'm getting better at it [slowly]).
By the way guys, in case you couldn't tell by the first paragraph, this wasn't written by me.
ALSO, sorry I've been in such a shit mood and thus not posting ANYTHING. I'll post the Poetry Monday I missed as a Friday of the Poem tomorrow alright?
No hard feelings? Okay? Okay. :D
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