You never know. They may do something similar to Nickelodeon, where Nick basically admitted that many of the changes they've made in the last decade were idiotic and the brought back the 90's shows, rebooting many of them. They did this because their rating have plummeted since the 90's. It's probably the same with Cartoon Network, and I imagine there are many people over at CN thinking about bringing the late 90's back and rebooting the old shows, and bringing back Toonami.
That said, if Toonami does return, it will likely be in a very butchered, non-anime form. As people have said in this forum, there seems to be an agenda against anime among the heads of CN. People may say, anime isn't big anymore, nobody watches it in America, so why would they bring it back? Well, the reason nobody watches it anymore is because it's all gone online, because almost no television stations air it. There is also a huge lack of a Toonami in this age, something to recruit young people into the world of anime. Anime has the potential to bring huge ratings. There are tons of shows that could be the next Dragon Ball Z, it's just American TV doesn't give them the chance.
Before, the cycle seemed to be, people would discover anime through Toonami, watch it, move on to Adult Swim, watch that anime, and then move onto the internet once they exhausted all of the anime on Adult Swim. The obvious answer to this problem is to put *more* anime on, not *less*, as that would make it so people don't *need* to go on the internet to find more anime, they'll stay watching your network, and you'll get your ratings.
Another issue is the elitist attitude that many, myself included, have towards watching dubbed anime. It's awful, but I completely understand why it has to be what's aired. If Americans could find a way to hire competent voice actors, I imagine anime ratings would go through the roof.
I mean, just the most ridiculous thing to me is Cartoon Network passing on the rights for Dragon Ball Z Kai. I mean, that is just insane, isn't it? Dragon Ball Z was probably one of the most successful shows they ever aired, every single American knows about the show, and they passed on the rights for Kai? That makes no business sense whatsoever, and shows that hate is involved in these decisions, not just business. It's very clear to me that the man who took over in 2007, Stuart Snyder, is responsible for all of the anti-anime decisions of the past couple years made by the Cartoon Network.
I have plenty of sources for anime and I don't need the Cartoon Network or Toonami or Adult Swim, but it depresses me that there's nothing out there bringing in new anime fans in America. Soon the anime industry will fall back to being a Japan-only thing, and that's a depressing thought indeed. There was a time when anime was getting so big that we all thought that it we would be getting anime companies moving over here, directly creating Japanese-style animation for Americans, that we would be getting fair-price DVD releases and manga, that we would get multiple channels dedicated to anime, anime in prime-time lineups on normal channels like it is in Japan, and instead anime is dying in America.
It is both amusing and depressing to me that you can basically blame all of this on the ATHF marketing team.
/rantoff
.....Oh and Moltar >.>
.....
AdultSwim.com is part of Turner Entertainment Digital which is part of the Turner Sports & Entertainment Digital Network.
