GC was entertainingly bad and K was acceptably bad, but they both have amazing visuals and soundtrack. K just moreso.

What makes you say that? Has there been some sort of announcement?

Besides that, the guys that run [AS] have shown that they don't care an ass rat's when or even whether Toonami airs.

Toonami lost an hour at the end of January, so it was only going from 12 PM to 5:30 AM.

Then it lost two more hours the next week, so it's only going from 12 PM to 3:30 AM.

The direct reason for this as given by them is low ratings.




Furthermore, let's look at the shows in question that are on there.

Dragonball Z Kai - can't link you to this, but I can tell you where to legally watch dbz

Kill la Kill - streams everywhere

Naruto Shippuden - same

Inuyasha: the final act - can tell you where to watch elsewhere legally

Gurren Lagann, One Piece, Deadman Wonderland




Notice a pattern? Basically, they only have stupidly popular shows that I can go watch RIGHT NOW. Many other anime fans are in the same situation. I like TOM, but why would I stay up to 4 AM to watch him if the shows don't matter? Streaming is effectively killing toonami due to its really late time slot.

Streaming is killing television in general. Tivo/DVRs are killing television in general.

I did sit up and take notice last year when they got Attack on Titan (just after I had marathoned the show on Crunchyroll), and now again when I saw they were getting Kill La Kill. Partly because I never remember having access to such largely popular anime so soon after its first airing, but also because they are anime that I can watch without paying for it, with less commercials, and with both full opening/endings and with title cards, both of which are often cut in the Toonami airings. Basically Toonami is airing inferior versions of anime which I can watch with less commercial interruptions at my own leisure elsewhere.

YES.

They used to air things where I couldn't watch it without paying for the dvd. Even when netflix and hulu were things. Now....... no.

And yeah. Due to how many commercials (like 10 minutes) the US wants to put into things, some things get cut sometimes.

Umm, guys, streaming has been around almost forever.
My first two-cour anime was a stream of Azumanga Daioh like 10 years ago. There are, and always have been, tons of sites where you could watch anime that aired in Japan within hours of their airing (I started watching Naruto on the internet in 2003)

Stream isn't killing television, bad business decisions are killing television.
Anime are popular because people watched it through other means. What do you think to gain to do a rerun on television with commercials and sometimes without the post-ED scenes.
That works maybe a few weeks, but when the fans see their series don't get the 'Japanese' treatment, they stop watching.

I also sometimes see the dub/sub-argument, but personally I think that's just the purists. Though that may be that because of me being Dutch, I've been watching subbed stuff since pre-school. Us Dutch were not a fan of dubbing series, and like I said before, if we do dub a series, there are like only 4-5 people that think they know how to (but they really don't and are almost always gone within weeks).

------------

That reminds me...the first anime I remember back when there was no internet.
Samurai Pizza Cats (the hilarious American version). Admittedly, those were pretty good times even though I didn't know about all the other anime that existed. Perhaps it's just the rise of the internet that 'ruined' television. Now everyone can know what airs where and know about the originals.
To use Samurai Pizza Cats as an example:
I thought it was awesome how it broke the 4th wall all the time. It wasn't until years later that I learned that the original Japanese version is very different and that the original script translation was never used (or didn't exist), so the Americans only had images and they made a story around those images.

The main point of why toonami in general is dying is that, aside from maybe kai, all of the other things it chooses to run are immediately available on streaming. There aren't any new series that are not, because toonami has a dub-only policy.

That's indeed pretty much my point as well and the same thing happened back in the day when we did have a Dutch channel that aired some anime (Mushrambo, aforementioned Samurai Pizza Cats, and some others)

I lean more towards "access has grown over the years". I'm not saying streaming hasn't been around for years, but the amount of people with access to internet has gone up exponentially, and the average speed of the internet has gone up exponentially over the years. I, for instance, only had dial-up until... about 6 years ago?

And I know for a long time, legal or not, there have been many modes of viewing subbed anime, though it is my impression that legal access to dubbed anime has been growing over the years. I kind of flipped out when I found out Funimation offers free viewing of (some of) its dubbed titles.

Although I will still completely agree with you that the TV industry is making a lot of boneheaded decisions. For Toonami specifically, you hit the nail on the head re: their moves specifically. Their latest acquisitions are popular because they were available streaming for free simultaneously or very soon after their airing in Japan, and airing so late kind of works against gaining a new audience because most of their audience who would be interested in them probably already watched the show.

God I hope all that was understandable. I kind of lost track of my punctuation and I don't know if I have any run-on sentences anymore.

Oh no. That makes total sense.

I used to stay up all night to watch toonami. As in, the full 6 hours.

Do you know why I stopped? Because watching toonami convinced me to sign up for streaming and then I realized that instead of staying up to 6 AM sunday morning I could stay up to midnight all week and watch MORE anime.

Who here, realistically, wants to only watch one episode per week of any show when you know more are out? Especially if its something like Bleach, where the first 5 minutes are a repeatish "recap" if watched on toonami. The only reason I still payed attention at all was The Big O, and they just lost the rights to that or are choosing not to air it. .


Even with their current model, there are a lot of things you can't stream (like the last two episodes of Hellsing Ultimate) that people will tune in to watch. Even dubbed years after release. But dragonball z? Kill la kill? *facepalms* NARUTO SHIPPUDEN? This is the stuff the internet streaming services are made of.

I found that on, like, youtube. If you want to watch something, you can just google it and get countless streaming website that there is no legitimate chance that you will get punished for. News to me, but I can apparently watch it at amazon as well.

I don't really get this whole 'watching tv' thing, but I imagine if I did, I would probably want to watch something new.
Are toonami doing their own subs? They could always go for shows like Jinsei, Nanatsu no Taisai and Amagi Brilliant Park, that as far as I understood, didn't get picked up by Crunchyroll or whatsitsname (or Horriblesubs would have covered them).
Or they could do subs like Commie sometimes does and try to just deliver a better/different experience. (Although I doubt that would have any legitimate impact.)

Extreme example and technically not what I mean:


If they want to do dubs, then I'm not really sure, since they so commonly lag behind outside of exceptions like Space Dandy. And, well, streaming sites got those covered.

While I don't normally watch more than one episode a day of whatever it is I'm watching, but yeah, I've gotten frustrated with the once-a-week model of episode releases -- it's why I tend toward finished series anymore; I figure if a thing is good, it will stay good (it's worked wonderfully for me so far).

If they got a hold of difficult-to-find anime, or hell even more anime movies, then I'd probably watch. Right now all I care to watch is One Piece, and that's just because I don't want to go watch the entirety of the show, so I'm okay watching somewhere in the middle of the story. Going over what I remember their schedule being, I hated Attack on Titan and I'd already marathoned it months ago, I'd finally broken through the sunk cost fallacy I had going with Bleach, DBZ is a show I grew up on and don't really care to re-watch as Kai, Naruto Shippuden is just bad and I stopped watching back when the original Naruto dub airing ended years ago, Gurren Lagann is good, but I watched it years ago when it aired on SciFi (before it became SyFy), Inuyasha I liked years ago but I watched one episode of The Final Act and realized it's not worth it, Deadman Wonderland aired years ago and was a letdown, GitS and Cowboy Bebop are better than anything else in the list, but I grew up with them, so I rarely watch them even when given the option.

Jegus, but Trigun was brutal to me. I cried multiple times over the final few episodes. And I never expected what it managed to make me feel in the last episode.

You should watch Trigun Badlands Rumble.

I have already decided that the next time I sit down to watch a movie, it's going to be Watership Down, because I should probably watch that at least once; but yeah, I fully intend to watch Badlands Rumble at some point in the near future.

I didn't particularly like what happened with the killer priest/the second to last bad dude as far as the anime was concerned.
Haven't read the manga as a whole.

Why, exactly? It didn't seem fair? He didn't get as flashy an exit as the rest of the gang? Or are you talking about Wolfwood?

Wolfwood being the killer priest. Feel like there could have been more for him.

The other guy basically could kill them all if he wanted... But doesn't, and for what? So Knives could prove a point?

Preeeeeeeety much. I was surprised when the last episode got me to actually feel for Knives' point of view.

I realized at some point in the middle of the story, though, that I was giving Trigun a free pass on it's more stupid points because A) of just how optimistic the show is despite being so dark; and B) most of the show, especially the early episodes, seem to me to be much more of a character study than anything else.

Guys.
I just hit my Angel Beats grind.
Comfort me.