We owe everything to Toonami. While anime has spent decades reaching Western shores in irregular stages, and often with new titles, such as astroboy, speed runner and battle of the planets, which removed evidence of its Japanese origins: The explosion of anime in the late ’90s is found in two main entities: Pokémon and Toonami. We are here for the latest.
Toonami launched on March 17, 1997. In an era where streaming services implement inhuman algorithms to make clumsy guesses about what we’ll watch or hear next, Toonami was the first streaming programming block to curate for its audience. . Even now, Toonami’s particular passion for the brand’s careful packaging, which implies reverence and respect for the art that is broadcast on television, is absent from streamers who try to be everything to everyone.
Toonami was conceived by Turner-owned Cartoon Network as a means of showing cartoons to a larger audience. Its initial release consisted of reruns of ’80s hits like thundercats and voltron, but in 1999 Toonami restarted. It refined his identity, anchored everything around an ultra-cool mascot, TOM (voiced by voiceover legend Steve Blum) within an original sci-fi universe. Each promo for Toonami was composed with drum-and-bass-heavy hip-hop composed by Joe Boyd Vigil, which not only gave it a thoughtful identity that set Toonami apart from Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network, but also appealed to the many black and brown audiences who they tuned in
“We knew that Toonami and Dragon Ball Z in particular, over-indexed with kids, and even more so with minority audiences,” said Jason DeMarco, a former Toonami creative associate in a 2015 interview with Reverse. “We always used a lot of hip-hop, as well as drum and bass, so they weren’t just seeing a show that appealed to them [but we had] the music and the way it was presented appealed to them much more than other children’s networks.”
For Toonami, the brand was everything. Along with sly humor, “Pardon Our Dust” is the title of an iconic network promo that splices the carnage of Dragon Ball Z and gundam wing — Toonami eschewed the cutesy tones that pack other anime blocs on American television. It’s impossible to fathom how differently anime was understood by the mainstream 20 years ago, and it’s due to the influential role Toonami played in adjusting perceptions.
You can see it in contrasts – compare how Saban scored Dragon Ball Z for syndication versus how Toonami did it. Which one no Does it make you feel stupid to watch orange-clad karate masters shoot lasers? Toonami defined not only the atmosphere of anime in America for years to come, but also the subculture.
Most of Toonami’s content came through licensing deals, but the way they came through felt personal. Toonami had the voice of your friend’s cool older brother, someone passionate about showing you music and movies you’d never find on your own. As YouTube video essayist kaptainkristian put it in a 2017 article, “Toonami understood their audience. His goal was to talk directly to the children, instead of talking to them.”
Because Toonami had a responsibility to introduce anime to a wide audience, it did a lot to educate young viewers. Toonami was many people’s introduction to Hayao Miyazaki, programming themes around the various styles and genres of anime. in programming cowboy bebop beside sailor moonToonami revealed to its audience just how varied anime can be.
Miraculously, Toonami has not gone offline. It was canceled in 2008, but since its 2012 revival it has maintained its place on the airwaves even as anime has proliferated on streaming. And the humans behind Toonami are still there; the bloc has recently used its platform to express solidarity for black lives matter and #StopAsianHate. Many other brands have done the same, but Toonami has been very conscious of who their audience and their artists are in a way that many have not.
It is unknown what future awaits Toonami. As distribution and media access evolve, it’s far from a guarantee that Toonami will still be streaming in another 25 years. But surely we will continue to watch anime, and we will because Toonami showed us how to do it.