DIY VIRAL
The author Chris Snelgrove
| Published
“When did you first get into anime?” is the kind of question meant mostly for middle-aged nerds. Anyone younger than that grew up in a culture completely saturated with Japanese animation and Western cartoons that clearly represent their Eastern cousins. For many 80s kids (myself included), the answer to that question was Toonami, Cartoon Network's flagship programming block that introduced countless youngsters to legendary anime creations such as Dragon Ball Z and Sailor Moon. This year, the network revived some of its original programming with a special Friday block called Toonami Rewind, but its recent cancellation has sent shockwaves through the nostalgic nerd community.
Toonami Rewind is dying
The original Toonami died in 2008 and was resurrected (with an April Fool's prank) in 2012 and continues to air programs every Saturday night. The idea behind Toonami Rewind was to essentially double that programming block each week, with Saturday night focusing on newer shows and Friday being devoted to a returning block consisting of Dragon Ball Z Kai, Sailor Moonand Naruto. Programming block intros and interludes still featured modern-day Toonami Tom and Sarah as hosts, and short block intros often referred to nostalgic memories such as coming home from school and putting off homework to watch killer cartoons.
It's fair to say that Toonami Rewind, like regular Toonami, had always had a very specific audience in mind… not only did the audience have to have cable TV (increasingly rare in the age of cord-cutting), but they would. watching hours of commercial-laden programs is preferable to simply listening to your favorite shows streaming. The network clearly decided there weren't enough people, so Toonami Rewind is being replaced by more Checkered Past (with the original Cartoon Network). However, for this nostalgic fan, the death of Toonami Rewind is like an old friend dying for the second time.
That's not to say that this block was perfect. From the beginning, I was disappointed that Toonami Rewind didn't use new voice dubs compared to the older Tom and Sarah animations. I would have loved to hear more of the sweet music from that era of Toonami commercials, and it's a little sad that I've had to watch archive videos. YouTube for my fix instead of relying on Cartoon Network itself. However, this programming block brought back many fond memories of falling in love anime for the first time, and it also served as a way to introduce younger otaku to these core series.
Toonami Rewind was good and had the potential to be great, and I was just waiting for Cartoon Network to invest more in this nostalgic block. But it remained static from the start, never really breaking away from a small handful of lead-ins and the same relative stable of shows. Forget watching the block cover late favorite shows like Gundam Wing. Judging by its selection of shows, Toonami Rewind remained forever stuck in the 90s.
For this reason, I'm saddened to see the death of Toonami Rewind, but I'm not that surprised. This block seems to have lacked solid network support from the get-go, and it's a small wonder it took off in the first place. All things considered, I'm just thankful that the main block of Toonami lives on (need to fix both Invincible Fighting girl and Mashle: Magic and Muscle), despite the fact that Rewind aired its last show on December 27.
Unfortunately, Toonami Rewind died with more of a whimper than a bang, and only a few of us witnessed the silent death of anime's biggest celebration. Younger fans may not remember or even care, but we almost certainly won't have a plethora of Dragon Ball Z spinoffs and games (too bad for anyone else Sparkling Zero?) if the original Toonami hadn't turned it into a worldwide sensation. Toonami Rewind was an imperfect but perfectly charming celebration of the good old days, and if anyone needs me, I'll be trying to convince David Zaslav to collect the Dragon Balls and wish it to life.
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DIY VIRAL
