San Diego Comic Con has come and gone and we have an announcement for the new show!
Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure…
At this point I’m only hearing the Announcer from Killer Instinct yelling “Lockout!” as you hit light breaker when you mean to hit medium.
Aside all the excitement and joy that this highly requested very few people seem to realize this one critical fact:
We OFFICIALLY have only one slot left for new anime and the entirely of 2016 and this time next year is now locked out.
Now take that into consideration and expand on that ladies and gentleman. We haven’t heard any announcement about Dragon Ball Z: Kai’s Buu Saga or Dragon Ball Super (though one would assume we are going to air those, Buu Saga at least anyways) and it’s basically confirmed that JoJo will replace One-Punch Man in October. No official announcement was made on the date but given One-Punch is going to end on October 8th (12 episodes accounting for one marathon on Labor Day) JoJo will start on Oct 15th.
Now here’s the BIG question:
Where’s that leave room for Samurai Jack? Because at this point the 7 show schedule when JoJo starts is sure to include the following:
- Dragon Ball Z: Kai
- JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure
- Hunter x Hunter
- Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans (Ends roughly about mid-December; 3 probable marathons delaying it)
- Naruto: Shippuden
- One Piece
- Reruns?
Where does our beloved samurai go? Given the announcement at SDCC, it seems that Jack is now being pushed to “Early 2017” which I would guess would be about January to start right when Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans would finish up its first season. Notwithstanding these are a few possibilities that could happen in order of likelihood.
The first option is that nothing changes and we get no new slots. The second is we could lose reruns due to the needed space. The third is we could get 3am back but expansions seems unlikely at this point. They could move the block back to the original 12-3:30 but that wouldn’t net any extra slots. The fourth is we actually lose DBZ Kai due to not getting the Buu Saga or Super. Which is ridiculous and more unlikely. Fifth is we lose Naruto or One Piece (which I advocated for when the JoJo dub was announced,) again very unlikely as they wouldn’t want to remove them. The remaining option is we get the 11pm time slot, which, frankly is even more ludicrous then losing Naruto or One Piece.
Now I could go into all of those but that would make this a VERY long post so I’m going to bore you with all those (unless there enough demand for those) so I’m only going into the first and second position.
Nothing Changes
Assuming nothing changes, the earliest Jack would air is after Gundam, which is late December or early January (This is because Christmas and New Year’s Eve fall on a Saturday). I honestly wouldn’t see this happening as most rumors have pegged Jack for airing in October to go with Rick and Morty’s new season but that’s all still up in that air at this point so let’s go with that.
Jack being 10 episodes long and the chance for a Christmas marathon would peg the end of the samurai’s journey about early-mid March, 4th or 11th about. Once that show ends you have basically March – October for a new show(s) about 7 months or 26-28 episodes. That’s one new show or two, assuming they get two 13 eps (or less) shows. Why you ask? FLCL is slated for late 2017 or Q4 17’ so anything past about Oct 17’ is locked out and no other show would be ending at that time and the rerun slot would probably go to One-Punch Man.
Remember that show you desperately wanted on Toonami? It just got a LOT harder for it to air now. By leaps and bounds.
Reruns Lost
Presuming we lose the 2:30 reruns, you’d likely see HxH, Naruto and One Piece drop back even further (probably pissing several fanbases off in the process.) but it would open up one slot for potential shows. Given that Jack will air “Early 2017” it means that it wouldn’t end until about mid-late March, guessing the 11th or 18th depending on marathons and the like. However, they could open up the rerun slot once Iron-Blooded Orphans ends at the beginning of the year to make room for newer material. That would open up a potential slot to 1-2 anime to air on the block. The maximum would be four but I doubt they’d do four 13 ep series in that new spot. Going from the above, you’d have 2-3 new shows in 2017.
Given the above option, it’s still hard as the list is probably INSANELY long at this point. Though the potential for an extra free slot is tempting to hope for. The reason I would favor the no changes over the loss of reruns is because it’s highly likely they’ll want to rerun One-Punch Man. I mean, notwithstanding horrible luck, it’ll probably equal DBZ Kai on a regular basis and hold great A18-49 ratings through it’s premiere and probably capable of pulling people that late to boost the backend of the block during a second run, but that’s just a guess.
So you’d have to wonder, given all the requests for new anime, why would they choose to lock the block like this? Simple really from a business perspective, it’s the ultimate end goal for a network. Minimal input required for the maximum amount of profit. In some peoples’ eyes, this is just fine. To me, this amounts to pure laziness. But it works…sadly it works. They have no real reason to do anything anymore, no one is complaining and are, in fact, praising this kind of behavior since this is all “demanded” content. I’ll admit I’m in the minority, hell the SUPER minority as I’ve never wanted this in the first place. I’ve been warning people since One Piece got announced that this is a horrible direction the block is going towards as it’ll create a situation where newer (or any) anime will never get on or at least take several years to even be considered depending on the what’s currently on. Which I’ll see as the next big issue the block:
“Can we get X on the block?”
“Sorry, there’s no room currently. The waiting list is about 2 years.”
And if they can’t get the content they want why stay to support the block? What’s keeping them watching? Not much really beyond due diligence to the block itself not the shows (I’m at this point baring OPM.) Now the biggest point I’ll see people making is “It’s an action block!” to which I say:
- I hate that statement a lot.
- Doesn’t mean much when you have multiple kinds of “action” (even the oxy-moronic genre “Action Comedy”) but choose not to air it or do so rarely. (Seriously look at the block and tell me what shows aren’t the exact same at this point.)
- Variety, even in action, helps more than stability. Give people new shows and promote them? They’ll come to watch and stay. Keep the same stuff and promote stuff once per year? You’ll see more people leave as they will seek out new experience (presuming they even have access to them) and if the block is wanting money then they need eyes. You don’t get eyes with stability but it helps to keep them. People are becoming quick devourers of content; they don’t like waiting anymore but that goes into the “Is Toonami relevant?” discussion.
The other reason would be Jack and FLCL as those probably crushed any budget they had left. I mean, even getting JoJo probably screwed them over something fierce and JoJo had to be in the works for months as well. At least that makes more logical sense but even then they could have gotten older shows that have been requested to save money and saved JoJo for later, possibly after Kai. I don’t think many folks would have had a problem with JoJo headlining the block. Hell most probably would want that at this point but DBZ is DBZ. It never ends…even when it should.
Now all of this is pure speculation based in a lot of thought and rage. How that works is beyond me but it’s funny how no one seems to realize the options and shows Toonami has is dropping like a rock. To the point where it’ll be fun to see how they’ll answer acquisitions Qs without “We have no room.”
So while you enjoy the moment now, take the time to consider the long term ramifications of this announcement. You can hope, but realize that there is not much space left for that other show you wanted and what happens then?
You can hit me up on Twitter at @AmbientVirus cause I figure this will cause some trouble :P.