Is there a reason why a lot of Toonami shows that air on Saturday nights back in 2004-2007 weren’t treated well?

[Santana434]

Okay ladies and gentlemen, I know toonami has been cancelled on CN many years ago, and right now toonami is on adult swim(which is still strong going strong). But anyways, is there a reason why alot of shows that aired on toonami during 2004-2007 are treated poorly by the network like Gundam Seed, Rave Master, YYH, etc, hell even Megas XLR which was the most praised by critics and fans got screwed over and sadly never got a physical release at all. IGPX at least did gain more appreciation in recent years it seems especially since it got a blu ray recently. So tell me, why toonami shows got treated poorly that period. I mean it’s a stigma rather saying it’s the decline era for toonami or it’s the last decent era for toonami. It seems like Naruto was the only one that kept it alive back then, since it’s the most popular.

 

[J'onn J'onzz]

A lot of these shows didn’t fit the kiddy image CN was trying to project at the time. They wouldn’t air something like Gundam Seed on Miguzi, which was intended to be a safer block than Toonami. When it left Toonami it only aired in the 1 am and 5 am hours. on Saturday morning. Shows that only aired late on Friday and Saturday nights were never going to be able to reach many kids. Especially if they are shows which are slow or dialogue heavy.

Over time CN gave up on older skewing shows airing on Toonami and made them air more toyetic shows like Bakugan and Ben 10 during the last years of the block on CN. Shows that were tame enough that CN felt they could air outside of the block like Teen Titans, Yugioh GX, Pokemon Chronicles, etc tended to get airtime on Miguzi, Saturday mornings, etc and often multiple timeslots on Toonami.

 

[Conttactt]

Know how people often say Naruto killed Toonami? This is the reason. Naruto did amazing for the block. Rather than capitalize on that and pull up other shows with it, they opted to just focus on Naruto. So Toonami basically became Naruto and bonus shows. As people began to tire of Naruto, the block offered nothing else, so people just gave up and dropped the block.

It certainly did not help that around this time period is the same time that the higher ups had a new vision for the network, and that vision did not include Toonami. So having the block coast mostly on Naruto and the occasional pickup (often toyetic so either an absolute bargain or maybe even a cut on sales) was perfectly fine by them. Made it easier to pull the plug after winding things down.

I will say this though, YYH had a brief period of good treatment. I remember watching it after school, up till the final round of the dark tournament when the dubbed stopped. It wasn’t till the later arcs that they death slotted it