Toonami is currently airing an hour of subtitled anime at the start of the block. Let that sink in a bit because it’s almost unbelievable. For years the Toonami crew shot down the notion that subbed anime was viable for Toonami, claiming it would kill the block’s ratings. They certainly have changed their tunes about it. I think it is great that Adult Swim is willing to experiment with subtitled programming during peak hours of their lineup, but there’s one thing that’s bothering me about how they’re going about it; they have decided to keep the dubs of original co-productions at arms length from the action programming block they were made for. It feels like they’re pulling the rug out from their audience that prefers dubs.
In the age of simuldubs, waiting for a dub isn’t nearly as inconvenient as it once was. Dubbing anime has never been faster nor more efficient. However, in recent years, audiences have become increasingly more willing to watch foreign media in the original language. After winning the Golden Globe for best foreign-language film for his 2019 film Parasite (no relation to the anime that ran on Toonami) director Bong Joon-ho famously threw down the gauntlet in his acceptance speech with these words: “once you overcome the 1-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films.” Parasite also won Best Picture in the 92nd Academy Awards among many other accolades. Depending on your geolocation in the US, your local theater might be screening one or more foreign films right now without an English dub and many anime films in particular do not receive dubs for wide theatrical distribution. The recent subtitled screenings of the film Look Back, based on the manga from the creator of Chainsaw Man, were packed houses. And it’s often the case, at least in my area, that the subtitled screenings of anime films will last longer in theaters due to demand. In contrast to that growing acceptance, Adult Swim remained reluctant to air subtitled programming for most of its existence but now they’re giving it an honest shot.
They started small with some shorts and an April Fools stunt where they broadcasted the first episode of their FLCL prequel, Masaki Yuasa’s film Mind Game, and several episodes of the usual lineup in Japanese. In the years that followed they co-produced even more anime shorts including Cosmo Samurai, a non-canon anime adventure for Toonami’s hosts TOM and Sara. I still wish they had dubbed Cosmo Samurai but it admittedly loses some of its flavor by being dubbed. Things started coming to a head earlier this year when they decided to broadcast the subtitled version of their co-production Ninja Kamui at the tail end of the Toonami block. It was a delightful surprise and it made sense to make use of the broadcast rights they had for the Japanese audio version and not leave it exclusive to Max. But even that couldn’t have prepared us for Adult Swim fully embracing subtitled anime and making it the entire first hour of Toonami.
Taking things even further, all four Japanese language episodes of Uzumaki will air back to back on the Saturday before Halloween. While thematically appropriate, it is a tall order to get an audience that prefers watching anime dubbed in English to tune in for two and a half hours of subbed anime on a night where they could go mingle at a Halloween party. They are airing a dub marathon on Halloween night, however, which makes plenty of sense. I just question if two marathons of any show in the same week is a good idea and I also question which night was a better choice for the subbed marathon. Perhaps airing the dub on Saturday and the sub on Thursday would have been more engaging for the viewers .
At face value it’s not that big of a deal. You might argue it isn’t since the dubs still air on Adult Swim. Besides the short wait, the cable audience isn’t forced to subscribe to Max to watch the dub, but we have to consider the more important reason for airing the dubs within Toonami: accessibility. Some viewers cannot keep up with reading subtitles, much less during a live broadcast when they cannot rewind if they missed something. For some it is not a matter of convenience or preference, it is the difference between being able to watch a show or not. Uzumaki in particular is more difficult to read due to the stylistic choice of using white text (with a drop shadow) on monochrome frames. Even some people who are fine with reading subtitles are having a bit of trouble with it. Why should differently abled viewers have to wait till Sunday morning, much less five days later to enjoy Uzumaki and miss out on the live viewing experience with the rest of the Toonami community? They shouldn’t..
Yet even for viewers who could watch the sub without issue there’s something about keeping the dubs off of Toonami that still feels like a betrayal. These viewers waited five years for Uzumaki, and despite the delays they still want to support the show on Toonami but the network has left them with no option to enjoy the dub during the block. Instead they have to watch it on Max the next morning or wait close to a week to watch it on Adult Swim. It’s frustrating when the solution was as simple as airing the dub later in the block on the same night. I realize they are probably doing that to draw attention to Max and to the Thursday airing but it’s doubtful the viewing numbers would have been so different if the dub of Uzumaki also aired after 2am on Saturdays.
I feel less strongly about the network’s decision to only run the Japanese language version of Rick and Morty: The Anime within Toonami but that was also questionable. Consider the venn diagram for those audiences: a Rick and Morty fan who also likes anime and is open to a dramatically different interpretation of the series but prefers watching subbed anime on a block built from an audience that generally prefers watching dubs. I genuinely think they should have broadcast the subbed version on Thursday and the dub on Toonami. However, I’ll yield that subbed anime is probably a harder sell to people watching Adult Swim who do not watch Toonami unless they are among the rare breed of Adult Swim viewers that ignore Toonami because it plays dubbed anime long after the Japanese simulcasts. I am surprised both subbed Rick and Morty: The Anime and Uzumaki have more or less kept up with the rest of Toonami’s programming. Uzumaki’s performance on Max has also been commendable. Only the suits at Warner Bros. Discovery decide the metrics for that, but keeping up with the other shows on Adult Swim and Max is proof enough that the choice had merit.
So how does Toonami proceed? There’s at least two more original co-productions that we know about: Rooster Fighter based on the manga of the same name and Shinichiro Watanabe’s Lazarus. How will the network go about broadcasting those when the time comes? Will Toonami only air the Japanese audio versions and not the English dubs? Will they even dub them? Is that the new normal? Will the Toonami audience accept that going forward and should they accept that? There’s no easy answers here. It’s a wonderful development that Toonami is willing to air subtitled anime and they should consider licensing some anime that didn’t get dubbed but continuing to bar their viewers from enjoying the dubs of their exclusive co-productions seems so backwards.
Perhaps a good alternative would be to create a small subbed anime block on Thursday or Friday for the purpose of appealing to viewers who do not prefer dubs. This is probably a tough sell but casual audiences are becoming more accepting of that 1-inch tall barrier. They could revive Adult Swim Action; they practically have done so with the current hour of anime dubs on Thursdays. All it is missing is the ASA style bumps but they even gave a nod to that in one of the Uzumaki promo spots. That would allow them to air the subbed anime with some fanfare without lumping all the subbed programming in with Toonami which built its house on dubbed anime. It makes more sense, at least on paper.
There are certainly viewers who would love to see Toonami air only subbed anime and it’s not a bad thing for Toonami to air more subtitled programming and broaden its approach to Japanese animation as a whole, but the network should really consider how best to present their viewers their original anime co-productions and not merely assume it’s fine to only broadcast the Japanese audio versions on Toonami because that’s where the anime usually goes. They might think that makes Toonami all the more unique, and debatably it does, but if that unique-ness comes at the cost of turning away long-time viewers who prefer or can only watch dubs that does not seem right. Toonami is an action block, not just an anime block. It’s too early to assume anything but it is not too early to tell Adult Swim and Warner Bros. Discovery how we feel about exclusive anime airing the dubs outside of Toonami. If you are also concerned about how Toonami originals will be broadcast in the future then I implore you to let Adult Swim know how you feel about it. They are still early on in this experiment, and they’re trying to figure out how best to serve their audience. They’re waiting to see how we respond.
Andrew “Sketch” Hingson is the C.O.O. at Toonamifaithful.com. Feel free to follow Sketch on all things Toonami, Adult Swim, and show predictions on Twitter @Sketch1984
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