“Master [Saitama]’s battles in wisdom show me the true path. He is a symbol of strength, of what I strive to be. I will get there too…someday.”

–          Genos, One-Punch Man (Season 02, Episode 12)

The Toonami Trending Rundown for Jan. 11-12, 2020. It was a night of season finales and milestones as One-Punch Man’s second season came to a close, Food Wars completing The First Plate (with more to follow), and Black Clover commemorating its 100th episode.

Among some of the notable moments from the night, One-Punch Man saw Garou’s senseis assist Genos against Garou’s hero-destroying crusade. While the three brought Garou to his knees, the League of Monsters swooped in to take him away even though Garou wasn’t interested in joining them. The three then had to deal with a centipede monster who was going to unleash destruction on the nearby city in retaliation, but fortunately, King and Saitama swooped in to take care of the rest. Demon Slayer meanwhile, saw Tanjiro running into Zenitsu, and had to stop him from aggressively trying to coerce a woman into marrying him. The two then were called up to investigate a nearby haunted mansion, where two siblings witnessed their older brother get attacked and killed by a demon. As Tanjiro and Zenitsu tried to go after and slay the demon, they would receive some help by another demon slayer with a boar head mask. And Black Clover saw Yuno get turned into an elf, but he somehow manages to prevent himself from getting possessed due to his determination to become the Wizard King and defends Asta and Mimosa from the other elves’ attacks. Licht was not amused at this revelation as he engaged in a battle against Asta and Yuno.

On Twitter, #Toonami would successfully trend in the United States alongside every premiere show except for My Hero Academia and Dr. Stone. Meanwhile, on Tumblr, #Toonami would trend alongside #BNHA and #JJBA. The full list, including statistics and tweet counts from the Twitter app and Amr Rahmy’s Fan Screening analytics app, can be seen below.

This week, Toonami showcased the trailer for the upcoming mid-season premiere of Sword Art Online, titled Alicization: War of Underworld. You can check it out below.

Aniplex also released their own trailer and revealed some of the new and returning cast for the mid-season premiere, which you can see below.

  • Kazuto “Kirito” Kirigaya – Bryce Papenbrook
  • Alice – Kayli Mills
  • Asuna Yuuki – Cherami Leigh
  • Bercouli – Imari Williams
  • Fanatio – Laila Berzins
  • Deusolbert – Armen Taylor
  • Subtilizer/Gabriel – Greg Chun
  • Iskahn – Khoi Dao
  • Dee Eye Ell – Kari Wahlgren
  • Lilpilin – Aleks Le

Alex von David will return as the English Voice Director and ADR Script Writer.

https://twitter.com/SwordArtUSA/status/1217537118500728832

ToonamiFaithful.com released the eighth video of our 13-part series of interviews from Anime Expo 2019 this week. In this installment, I got to talk with Michelle Marie regarding voicing Fizel in Sword Art Online as her first-ever on-camera interview as a voice actress. You can check it out below.

Funimation last Friday announced that the upcoming My Hero Academia film, titled Heroes Rising, will be hitting theaters for a limited run beginning on Feb. 26. The list of participating theaters and tickets available for preorder will be released later this month.

On Tuesday, Funimation and Toei released Volume 10 of the Dragon Ball Super Blu-ray and DVD boxsets. Containing Episodes 118-131, the set can be picked up at Funimation’s website as well as other major anime-selling retailers. The Blu-Ray has an MSRP of $44.98 (or $33.74 on Funimation’s website) while the DVD retails for $39.98 ($29.99 on Funimation’s website).

After a three-year hiatus which featured a change from Madhouse to JC Staff, along with a shift from director Shingo Natsume to Chikara Sakurai, One-Punch Man finally returned for its highly anticipated second season. Airing on TV Tokyo in Japan and streaming on Hulu from April 9 – July 2, 2019, and later dubbed on Toonami from Oct. 12, 2019 – Jan. 11, 2020.

However, while many fans saw the first season as their anime of the year in 2016, the excitement for the second season hasn’t been as strong. A big reason for this cited by critics was the change in art-style (due to the aforementioned change in production teams) becoming too jarring for fans. Not to mention the production issues the show faced which lead to a three-year delay. Plus, Saitama having a lesser role this season as the story focused more on giving time to other heroes and villains probably didn’t help matters.

Nonetheless, it was great to see Saitama and the gang doing what they do best once again after far too long. There hasn’t been heard any word regarding a third season, but with the manga’s popularity continuing strong after 21 volumes, I feel like it’s more of a matter of not if, but when we will see the next season. Hopefully, it won’t take three or more years to come to fruition next time.

During the run of the second season, the hashtag #OnePunchMan trended in the U.S. during 10 out of 12 weeks of its premiere run as well as the marathon during Christmas week on Dec. 21. The full statistics of its overall Toonami run so far can be seen in this image below.

Tune in next week as Sword Art Online returns for the mid-season premiere of Project Alicization and Food Wars begins The Second Plate, among other great moments. Until next week, congratulations to LSU for winning the National Championship, 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 [#5]
  • #OnePunchMan [#15]
  • #FireForce [#13]
  • #FoodWars [#11]
  • #DemonSlayer [#25]
  • #BlackClover [#14]
  • #JoJosBizarreAdventure [Trended with #Toonami]
  • #Shippuden [#11]

Tweet Counts:

  • #Toonami [8,811 tweets]
  • #DrStone [2,946 tweets]
  • #OnePunchMan [3,146 tweets]
  • #FireForce [3,315 tweets]
  • #FoodWars [2,666 tweets]
  • #DemonSlayer [10.1k tweets]
  • #BlackClover [2,886 tweets]
  • #JoJosBizarreAdventure [3,655 tweets]

Fan Screening Counts:

  • #MyHeroAcademia [#3 with 5,006 tweets]
  • #DrStone [#13 with 1,686 tweets]
  • #OnePunchMan [#19 with 1,700 tweets]
  • #FireForce [#16 with 1,860 tweets]
  • #FoodWars [#17 with 1,767 tweets]
  • #DemonSlayer [#8 with 3,851 tweets]
  • #KimetsuNoYaiba [#11 with 2,439 tweets]
  • #BlackClover [#18 with 1,746 tweets]
  • #JoJosBizarreAdventure [#23 with 1,492 tweets]

Tumblr Trends:

  • #Toonami
  • #BNHA
  • #JJBA

Notes and Other Statistics:

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

Wanna go home? Only Toonami on [adult swim] on Cartoon Network.