“Let me guess, you’re gonna say “Did you planned this too, JoJo?” Why are you even asking? I set the trap and you walked right into it. All of this went down like clockwork. (I just got lucky, but thinking I outsmarted him will drive Kars nuts.)”

–          Joseph Joestar, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure (Ep. 26)

The Toonami Trending Rundown for April 15-16, 2017. It was a big milestone night as Toonami’s 20th anniversary celebrations come to its conclusion. We reach the midway point of Samurai Jack, while we also commemorate a full year of Hunter x Hunter airing on Toonami as Kurapika has his memorable battle against Uvogin, and Dragon Ball Super completes the Battle of Gods saga. And of course, we end off JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure’s Battle Tendency story arc, and thus season 1 as well, with a bang.

On Twitter, every show successfully trended during their respective East Coast airings, as well as Samurai Jack and Dragon Ball Super during their respective West Coast airings. In addition, JoJo’s, Samurai Jack, and Dragon Ball Super would also trend on tumblr.

Samurai Jack’s buzz also produced a character trend with the Scotsman as he recruits an army together to attack Aku’s palace. Unfortunately things didn’t go as planned as Aku easily steamrolls the army and blows the Scotsman to bones, though with some Celtic magic, he returns as a Force Ghost now hoping to regroup and find Jack before doing it all over again.

This week also marks the conclusion of the 5 part mini-series Sand Whale and Me. Whether you thought it was either a fun short or it just gave you an excuse to have an extra 5 minute bathroom and/or snack break, this one was rather interesting experiment from Adult Swim and Production IG to say the least. Of course, Adult Swim does like having experimental programming every now and then, so it should be interesting what else they might have in mind down the line. If you want to re-watch Sand Whale and Me from the beginning, click here to check it out on Adult Swim’s site.

As the 20th anniversary celebrations come to a close, we look forward to what the future brings, including the return of the Titans. Toonami also showcased the promo for the broadcast dub of the new season of Attack on Titan, which the buzz of its return would make #AttackOnTitanSeason2 trend on Twitter and #AttackOnTitan trend on tumblr partly as a result. You can check it out below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSjtiuwBF7Q

Also occurring this Saturday, Sword Art Online will be returning to the movies, as the dub for Ordinal Scale will be showcased in select theaters. If you’re planning on going, we hope you enjoy this one.

Ever since its original debut in Shonen Jump in 1987, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure has grown to become a best selling manga series, spanning 8 story arcs and over 118 volumes and counting. (To put in perspective, Naruto ended at 72 volumes while One Piece is at 84 and counting.) Despite its popularity, it wasn’t until fairly recently that the manga would be exported to western shores, and while JoJo’s has had a few OVAs and movies in the 90’s and 2000’s, the franchise never got its big break in the anime scene until this very anime was released in Japan in 2012.

Despite the show’s boom in popularity following the anime’s release, and despite the high demand from JoJo fans to eventually see this in the better cartoon show, it would take 4 more years for its break on Toonami to materialize. For one, it took until Fall 2015 for a dub to be produced by Warner Bros. And despite being in the same parent company as Cartoon Network and Turner Broadcasting, Warner was not willing to partner up with Toonami to air JoJo’s unless they were willing to pay a fortune for broadcast rights.

It seemed that JoJo’s was doomed to never make it to Toonami at one point. But JoJo fans would never give up, and as we’ve seen time and again, nothing is impossible for the better cartoon show. Due to various reasons, Warner would eventually transfer the dubbing and US distribution rights to Viz Media, whom have much better relations with Toonami, and during Comic-Con 2016, we finally got the announcement that JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure would finally make it to the better cartoon show, which began airing on October 15th.

9 episodes of Jonathan trying to stop Dio from world domination followed by 17 episodes of Joseph, Caesar, and Lisa Lisa stopping the Pillar Men, and this season of JoJo’s is now in the books. During the show’s run, the hashtag #JoJosBizarreAdventure successfully trended in the US during all 25 weeks of its run, including during the Christmas 2016 marathon as well as this week’s doubleheader finale. In 7 of those occasions, the show also trended worldwide. JoJo’s buzz also produced a character trend in Lisa Lisa as her character was being introduced.

So now the wait begins for part 3, Stardust Crusaders, which is presently being dubbed by Viz Media. We’re presently not sure when this dub will be ready or when and if Toonami will be renewing the series, but with a good ratings performance for Season 1, demand from the fans for more JoJo’s, and Jason and the crew liking the series, the odds look pretty good that Stardust Crusaders will eventually make it to Toonami airwaves at some point. At this point, it’s up to Toonami, Viz, and the Japanese distributors to get the deal done. Hopefully the wait will be a lot shorter than the one for season 1 this time around.

With Stardust Cusaders up next, Diamond is Unbreakable down the line, in addition to at least 5 more story arcs still to be animated, JoJo’s looks to be a show we’ll be enjoying for perhaps years to come. Whatever the Joestar family has for us next, I’m sure it’ll be a fun ride.

Tune in next week as Attack on Titan returns to Toonami with the long awaited English broadcast dub premiere of Season 2 at 12:30am Eastern, while Samurai Jack shows off its second half, and Dragon Ball Super begins the Resurrection F saga (although do keep in mind that Super tends to have a “breather episode” or two in between arcs before getting to the real biz), among other great moments. And of course, Tokyo Ghoul will continue airing on its regular scheduled time at 1am.

Until next week, enjoy the playoffs and stay gold as always.

Legend: The shows listed are ordered based on their appearance on the schedule. Show trends are listed in bold. The number next to the listed trend represents the highest it trended on the list (not counting the promoted trend), judging only by the images placed in the rundown. For the Twitter tweet counts, the listed number of tweets are also sorely based on the highest number shown based on the images on the rundown.

United States Trends:

  • Toonami/#Toonami [#4]
  • #AttackOnTitanSeason2 [#7]
  • #SamuraiJack (Also during the West Coast airing) [#6]
  • The Scotsman (From Samurai Jack) [#7]
  • #DragonBallSuper (Also during the primetime presentation and the West Coast airing) [#3]
  • #SandWhaleAndMe [#7]
  • #DBZKai [#6]
  • #JoJosBizarreAdventure [#4]
  • #HunterXHunter [#5]
  • #GundamUnicorn [#5]
  • #Shippuden [#7]
  • #GhostInTheShell [#4]

Tweet Counts:

  • Toonami [9,357 tweets]
  • #Toonami [5,115 tweets]
  • #SamuraiJack [7,128 tweets]
  • #DragonBallSuper [3,570 tweets]
  • #DBZKai [1,566 tweets]
  • #JoJosBizarreAdventure [5,561 tweets]
  • #HunterXHunter [2,779 tweets]

Tumblr Trends:

  • #attack on titan
  • #samurai jack
  • #dragon ball super
  • #jojos bizarre adventure

Notes and Other Statistics:

Special thanks to @JMB_70056, @myanimewaifu, and others I forgot to mention for spotting some of the trends on this list.

Only Toonami on [adult swim] on Cartoon Network.