10) Tenchi Muyo!
To this day I cannot fathom what they were thinking when they added Tenchi Muyo! the quintessential harem anime, to a cartoon block intended for children. Several content edits were necessary to get it on the air and the Toonami crew had to painstakingly paint swim-suits over all of the naked girls. It was a bold decision to go after Tenchi given all the effort that was involved in being able to air it but it paid off and set the stage for future acquisitions that would stretch the boundaries for what was acceptable to air on a children’s block. Despite having two additional series in the franchise air on Toonami and getting plenty of air time between them all, Toonami never did air something quite like Tenchi again. At least not until the Adult Swim era.
09) The Big O
In 2001, Toonami had struck gold with Japanese animation and were looking for other shows that could keep up the momentum. Among those series was The Big O, a humble super robot show from Sunrise with a decidedly western aesthetic. The series did surprisingly well but was only 13 episodes and lacked an ending. During its run on Toonami, Turner saw potential in the series and co-produced a second season that would eventually premiere on Adult Swim. Big O’s success lead to future co-productions and its impressive performance on Toonami’s Midnight Run assuredly helped pave the way for action programming to be part of Adult Swim.
08) Space Dandy
In the early 2000s Toonami was the primary destination for anime exposure. Other blocks existed but none had the visibility or popularity of Toonami. With the rise of streaming and simulcasts, some argued that Toonami post-revival, lacked much of the relevance to the industry it once had. Now it is much more likely for anime fans to have watched shows before they could even air on Toonami. Not one to rest on their laurels, the Toonami crew got their hands on a simulcast of their own to kick off 2014. Shinichiro Watanabe’s Space Dandy became Toonami’s first simuldub. Toonami got the televised world premiere even before Japan.
The addition of Dandy gained Toonami a year-long hold of an earlier time slot and was a major step toward giving Toonami exclusive content but Dandy’s impact on the industry as a whole is much more significant than that. Dandy’s success was all FUNimation needed to embark on their current simuldub strategy. Now they’re simuldubbing more than a dozen series every season and show no sign of stopping. Toonami finally tasted the fruits of Space Dandy’s labor with the introduction of FUNimation’s Dimension W in 2016 which aired less than two months behind the Japanese broadcast. That’s a dandy thing indeed.
07) IGPX: Immortal Grand Prix
Toonami was riding high in the early-2000s and proving its worth to Cartoon Network time and time again. Faith in the block was great enough to co-produce an original series specifically for Toonami. The network had already co-produced The Big O and co-funded Ghost in the Shell: The Stand Alone Complex. They developed strong relationships with Bandai and Production I.G. making their continued partnership a no-brainer.
After considering a few concepts from I.G. the Immortal Grand Prix mini-series was created. Then the concept went back to the drawing board and was tweaked until it became the racing series we know today. Unfortunately, IGPX flopped in 2006 and was not even allowed to finish its run on Toonami until seven years later. IGPX getting kicked to the curb likely was the beginning of the end for the Toonami intended for young viewers and that is another reason Toonami’s first original series holds significance.
06) Samurai Jack
Up until just recently, Samurai Jack was more of an auxiliary player for Toonami. Cartoon Network only reran the Emmy Award winning series on Toonami and only on occasion. Toonami did premiere the final four episodes in 2004 but Jack did not get to spend any long stretch of time on Toonami until 2014 when the series joined Toonami to fill one of the many reruns slots in the six and a half hour incarnation of the block. Jack resided there until Toonami was shortened by three hours. Since Toonami was down to just one rerun slot it did not look like the wandering samurai out of time would ever return to the block.
However, in December of 2015 an unbelievable announcement was made. Adult Swim and Genndy Tartakovsky were reviving Samurai Jack for a fifth and final season. Mere days before Toonami’s 20th anniversary, Jack came back. It may be a premature to say Jack’s return could dramatically change Toonami going forward but it is at least the first of a few original productions made for Adult Swim’s Toonami and has granted the block the earliest time slot it has had since September 2008.