“I shouldn’t be surprised. This is how you’ve been from the beginning. You can’t help but save those who need rescuing, even if they aren’t asking you for any help. And at times like that, there isn’t an obstacle hard enough to stop you. That’s right, young Midoriya. That’s the kind of hero you’ve always been.”

–          All Might, My Hero Academia (Ep. 25)

The Toonami Trending Rundown for February 16-17, 2019. It was a night of evolutionary moments as Deku and Bakugo have to put their differences aside in an attempt to beat All Might, while Kirito reawakens in the Underworld and meets Eugeo, and Gon takes Neferpitou to try and revive Kite, among other great moments.

On Twitter, every show from #MegaloBox to #Shippuden on the schedule would successfully trend in the US. Character trends were also spotted for Bakugo (as he is forced to work with Deku to try and take down All Might), Koichi (as he tries to fend off Kira with his evolved stand), and Pitou (as Gon takes Neferpitou to Kite’s body in an attempt to revive him, but finds out it wasn’t possible). On Tumblr, only #Toonami would trend. The full list including statistics and tweet counts from the twitter app and Amr Rahmy’s analytics app can be seen below.

This Week, TOM and SARA were advertising Anthem, the upcoming Video Game from Bioware which will be released this Friday, February 22 on all major gaming platforms except the Switch.

2019 will mark the 30th anniversary of Dragon Ball Z, and Funimation and Toei plan on commemorating the Dragon Ball franchise’s continued success in a big way including a new special anniversary home video release set, new merchandising, another planned booth at Comic-Con, and another balloon flying at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade. Toonami will be involved as well as according to licenseglobal.com: “Between March and April, Turner’s Adult Swim and Toei will help celebrate the “Dragon Ball Z” anniversary via an announcement and a promotional giveaway for fans.”

In Attack on Titan news, the second half of Season 3 is scheduled to premiere on Japanese shores on April 28. We haven’t gotten word from Funimation or Toonami regarding the simuldub as of now, but we’ll keep you posted. And for those who would like to re-watch some Attack on Titan, Toonami plans on having an encore run of all 3 seasons starting from the very first episode as soon as this encore run of season 3 is completed.

Update 2/19: Adult Swim officials have confirmed with Toonami Squad that they will only be rerunning Season 1 as of now. Whether they will air seasons 2 and 3 again is still to be determined. (Thanks @JMB_70056 for the tip).

FLCL fans have been wondering what’s been going on with the constant delays to the official release of the Japanese subtitled version in US shores as of late. Jason DeMarco responded in a tweet saying: “We’re working on it. The sub version will be available SOMEWHERE this year, for sure. Home Video is more up in the air. Due to agreements with Toho we had to wait on the subbed version, and now it’s been caught up in legal details. It’s coming.”

Also in an ask.fm post on Saturday, Jason DeMarco clarified a few things regarding some of their operations going forward:

  • Due to lack of manpower, Toonami has decided to limit the amount of show topicals for the foreseeable future to just Dragon Ball Super (which itself is having issues getting released as Funimation has been sending them the newest episode in short notice due to various issues) and the most recent acquisition(s) to a certain undisclosed point.
  • The Toonami stream, where fans have seen marathons of previously aired shows and formally the block in general, has been shut down due to cost issues and lack of interest. Toonami PreFlight will still air on Fridays as scheduled and fans can still catch up on their favorite shows streaming on-demand.
  • Jason has confirmed that Toonami has stopped posting content on their tumblr page indefinitely due to some of Tumblr’s more recent controversial decisions that they felt it wasn’t worth it to maintain anymore. For those who do want to keep sending Jason and the crew show requests, there’s still commenting and messaging their Facebook page as well as just giving Jason and Gill a holler on their Twitter or ask.fm pages. Of course, it’s always wise to be respectful to get your point across, as spam and general salt and toxicity will only just get you ignored and possibly muted, and/or blocked.

Not much else to say other than we’ll see you again next week for another round of the better cartoon show. Later.

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 [#10]
  • #MegaloBox [#10]
  • #JoJosBizarreAdventure [#9]
  • Koichi (From JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure) [#20]
  • #BlackClover [#10]
  • #HunterXHunter [#3]
  • Pitou (From Hunter x Hunter) [#14]
  • #Shippuden [#7]

Tweet Counts:

  • #Toonami [4,357 tweets]
  • #DragonBallSuper [4,009 tweets]
  • #Boruto [5,694 tweets]
  • naruto and sasuke [1,687 tweets]
  • #MyHeroAcademia [5,353 tweets]
  • Bakugo (From My Hero Academia) [9,616 tweets]
  • #MegaloBox [1,274 tweets]
  • #JoJosBizarreAdventure [3,079 tweets]
  • Koichi (From JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure) [3,041 tweets]
  • #BlackClover [1,547 tweets]
  • #HunterXHunter [2,828 tweets]

Amr Rahmy Counts:

  • #DragonBallSuper [#7 with 2,545 tweets]
  • #Boruto [#10 with 2,704 tweets]
  • #MyHeroAcademia [#6 with 3,075 tweets]
  • #SwordArtOnline [#10 with 1,399 tweets]
  • #MegaloBox [#19 with 682 tweets]
  • #JoJosBizarreAdventure [#10 with 1,723 tweets]
  • #BlackClover [#17 with 849 tweets]

Tumblr Trends:

  • #Toonami

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

Only Toonami on [adult swim] on Cartoon Network.