Why Did Almost Every Battle Shonen on Cartoon Network Toonami Fail Except DBZ and Naruto?

[PicardMan]

As big as DBZ and Naruto were, it seems like they were the exceptions to the rule and their popularity didn't necessarily trickle down to the rest of the battle shonen genre. It's weird how a show like Yu Yu Hakusho has everything kids who liked DBZ would want, yet it was infamously deathslotted. Rurouni Kenshin's third season never aired, even if it was a crappy filler season. Rumors say that Cartoon Network was too afraid of controversy related the first filler arc being about an evil Christian or something. Zatch Bell, MAR, and many others got cancelled before all episodes could air or had a similar disaster befall them. Meanwhile, Adult Swim was doing gangbusters with Inuyasha, Trigun, and Fullmetal Alchemist. Even if kids liked DBZ or Naruto, Yu Yu Hakusho and Rurouni Kenshin were a lot more teen/college kid skewing and I think they would have resonated more with the crowd of Inuyasha and FMA fans. Still the "kiddy shonen" like Rave Master and Zatch Bell wouldn't have fit on Cartoon Network and I wonder why DBZ and Naruto's popularity didn't trickle down with kids. The 00s were the peak of the DBZ/Naruto only fandom of people who loved one or both of those titles and hated every other anime. Why were DBZ/Naruto only fans so prominent in the 00s and why didn't these fans branch out like the modern anime fan? It is interesting how most of the non DBZ/Naruto hits on Toonami that lasted their full runs without cancellation or deathslotting were not battle shonen, but other genres (Sailor Moon, Outlaw Star, Tenchi Muyo, Gundam Wing). On the other hand, it seems like genres other than battle shonen had more popularity and sci-fi and mecha were more popular in the early 00s than now. ASA aired lots more drama anime with devotionally passionate fanbases, even if action fans complained about it. It's just wild that battle shonen wasn't as absolutely dominant as it was in the latter half of the 2010s where everything with the Shonen Jump logo was guaranteed to be a major hit.

 

[Neo Ultra Mike]

It's weird how a show like Yu Yu Hakusho has everything kids who liked DBZ would want, yet it was infamously deathslotted.

Honestly I think YYH's failure ultimately on TV in the end came down more towards Funimation making the uncut DVDs far more appealing to watch the series then waiting for it to air on TV. Keep in mind YYH originally started on Adult Swim Action with only very minimal edits for it's first 21 episodes where it likely would have stayed if Funi hadn't realized that yeah YYH also had a lot of value to air for kids to attract an audience there thus deciding to have it go back to Toonami the next year to air edited takes on the first part of the series then showcase the dark tournament edited as the DVDs starting coming out of the show in edited and uneditted versions. Thing was the unedited DVDs not only sold so much better then editted they never even bother FINISHING the editted DVD run but they also came out a lot quicker then it aired on Toonami especially when Toonami started only going Saturday nights so it became a much better way to watch the show. Like me and my friends constantly swarmed around and just bought the new DVDs when they aired by the end of the Dark Tournament/into the Sensui and 3 kings arc and didn't really bother as much with it on TV because we had already seen it so why re watch it edited down? Guessing a lot of people felt the same way thus why it fizzled out.

Rurouni Kenshin's third season never aired, even if it was a crappy filler season. Rumors say that Cartoon Network was too afraid of controversy related the first filler arc being about an evil Christian or something.

Sans rumors about not wanting to air the filler season because of religious controversy or... because it was a bad filler season, I have a feeling that may also because after having dubbed the first two seasons they probably heard when talk of dubbing the third came out Toonami was moving to Saturday nights (as I assume shows were likely told about this in later 2003 as yeah it was a big move likely not just decided on the drop of the hat especially since it was dropped for Miguzi and that needed time obviously to get made) and figured RK wasn't one of those shows that would work well shown week to week. Like you do have to remember a lot of Toonami's appeal in it's first inception was that it was a WEEKLY block that showed like full chunks of seasons day after day which for shows like DBZ and Sailor Moon were a huge boon not having to worry about weekly cliffhangers but having the big block schedule to get a chunk of them and only have seasonal cliff hangers. Honestly that's a boon that especially benefited a lot of slower action heavy earlier shonen and I feel Kenshin was one of those that yeah if that was being cut down they may have figured it wasn't worth keeping around to finish out the run of that original series.

Zatch Bell, MAR, and many others got cancelled before all episodes could air or had a similar disaster befall them.

MAR and some other later series like Prince of Tennis were victims of Toonami trying to expand it's reach to digital streaming which yeah with kids in the late 2000s didn't really work thus why the only shows that really got any traction there were more shorter form ones not the majorly long ones. That also hurt Zatch Bell as well which got moved to Jetstream despite doing really well originally on Toonami. Like it even got dub only recap specials like Naruto because of how it was doing fairly well in the ratings before the move that killed momentum for it.

Which is really the thing: a lot of these other series either didn't come along at the right time to make the same sort of impact or were moved for one reason or another and as a result didn't get the momentum to continue on as they had previously. Heck even Naruto's infamous long filler season before Shippuden dipped enough that it was DISNEY of all places at first that got Shippuden for awhile before Toonami eventually got it back but yeah sometimes a show is at the wrong place and time that results in them not getting the huge push they needed. I mean One Piece due to 4Kids getting it and overly kiddifying it killed a lot of it's iniital appeal in the US where honestly it's only more recently it's been getting attention here in the states on anywhere near the level it has in Japan or around the world where it's recognized as the most popular shonen while here you wouldn't really know that if you even asked the average anime fan that.

 

[PicardMan]

I have noted that the more violent shonen were more popular in America and the tamer ones didn't really make much of a wave and it did seem like 2000s shonen like Zatch Bell and Rave Master was way tamer than modern shonen. Is it really a surprise that Attack on Titan, HunterXHunter, and JoJo revived shonen probably because of how much edgier they were? The very tame Kekkaishi on ASA was considered a literal joke that it seems like most older fans hated. I admit my love of Yu Yu Hakusho comes from the season sets, not the Toonami run. A delinquent like Yusuke not cussing up a storm isn't my Yusuke. Censorship really hurt shonen like Yu Yu Hakusho. You can argue about wrong place at the wrong time, but hindsight seems to suggest something was wrong with Cartoon Network Toonami as every battle except DBZ and Naruto were "at the wrong place at the wrong time." MAR and Zatch Bell being primarily on Jetstream when dial up was still dominant was a stupid idea. Maybe these shows wouldn't have gone into licensing limbo and still be streaming today and have affordable DVD box sets if Toonami didn't mismanage them. Nu Toonami seemed to be the point where the block seemed to get the fandom and be in tune with what it wanted.

 

[Darklordavaitor]

I recall Yu Yu Hakusho being a success, at least for a while, but it does seem to peak in the Dark Tournament in terms of popularity. Chapter Black is pretty bleak and considered (to some, not me) pretentious, which I can see turn off casual viewers, especially on a weekly basis. I recall Hunter X Hunter had a similar ratings drop during the Chimera Ant arc, which is its equivalent, but at least modern Toonami's climate allowed the show to finish.

And I personally think that the last season of Rurouni Kenshin just wasn't a priority, it's famously derided for a reason. Would have been nice if Trust & Betrayal could have had some kind of airing, though.

 

[PicardMan]

I recall Yu Yu Hakusho being a success, at least for a while, but it does seem to peak in the Dark Tournament in terms of popularity.

It did go from being the last Shonen Jump property to ever get a kids' meal toy to the deathslot, so I guess kids turned on the show in Chapter Black (as the deathslotting happened midway through that arc). The teen and adult audience still held that arc high. It seemed like Yu Yu Hakusho was the closest to being the big crossover hit that DBZ and Naruto was, but it couldn't quite clear the bar. Kids networks have stopped airing battle shonen for a reason and not even Dragonball Super is appetizing to kids' networks. Since the transition to marketing anime at the teen/adult audience, the market for battle shonen has been much healthier and stuff like the Yu Yu Hakusho deathslotting is a thing of the past.

 

[JMTV]

That's a interesting question. I'm not into battle shonen all that much, I enjoy it, but wasn't into it, feel free to fill in for me. but if I can guess the reason why most battle shonen failed on CN Toonami was due to either the content that wasn't kid friendly has to be cut down or attracting the wrong demographic.

I mean, Yu Yu Hakasho was closet thing to rival Dragon Ball and Naruto in popularity if it was stayed on Adult Swim Action, but for some reason, it jumped over to Toonami.

 

[Conttactt]

I think YYH was more just network mismanagement that actual failure. Everything up till the last round of the Dark Tournament aired in after school hours for a long while cause it kept looping due to the dub going slow. I’m thinking they just didn’t want to edit it any further so they sent it away.

I believe Naruto was the first PG show to air on AS. It took off because it had a little edge to it, something lesser shows like Zatch Bell and MAR didn’t have. That’s also a big reason why One Piece failed in the west, the goofy low stakes adventure didn’t give western audiences what they were looking for.

I’d also consider average audience age. Those other shonen started coming in when people were aging out of Toonami and anime in general. It wasn’t as socially acceptable to like anime in the mid 00s as it is today.

 

[J'onn J'onzz]

Don’t forget YYH went into reruns about a month from ending chapter black. Ratings quickly declined as they went all the way back to episode one, and the early episodes had already aired a lot. It totally killed momentum. Part of the initial hype by Samples of the move to Saturdays was year round premieres all night long, but that was not as practical as they hoped.

Funi often took a very long time to edit YYH episodes for TV. The uncut dub was filled with cursing, and that was always cut. Things got even worse with censorship in the city era, because they started editing out references to death as well. Ludicrous when the show is about a character who died in the first episode. They had a hard time editing violent scenes like when Kuwabara “dies” in the Dark Tournament. Kenshin also ran into this problem. Look up old edit lists. The way they had to edit the end of Kyoto was incoherent, and even on SVES at 11:30 pm they ended up making over 60 edits to the final battle.

Here are some edit lists, of Yusuke vs Chu where they had to make around 50 edits per episode and Kenshin’s final battle with Shishio.

The Edit List - Yu Yu Hakusho 30 & 31

30. Dragon of the Darkness Flame 1. In Recap – Scene where Roto cuts the face of the submissive Kurama in a spray of blood changed to the scene where Kurama...

www.animenewsnetwork.com

The Edit List - Rurouni Kenshin 60

Rurouni Kenshin 60: The Man Who is Chosen for Victory 1) Blood digitally removed from Kenshin's body as he collapses after attacking Shishio. 2) Not an...

www.animenewsnetwork.com

 

[Space Cadet]

Honestly I think YYH's failure ultimately on TV in the end came down more towards Funimation making the uncut DVDs far more appealing to watch the series then waiting for it to air on TV. Keep in mind YYH originally started on Adult Swim Action with only very minimal edits for it's first 21 episodes where it likely would have stayed if Funi hadn't realized that yeah YYH also had a lot of value to air for kids to attract an audience there thus deciding to have it go back to Toonami the next year to air edited takes on the first part of the series then showcase the dark tournament edited as the DVDs starting coming out of the show in edited and uneditted versions. Thing was the unedited DVDs not only sold so much better then editted they never even bother FINISHING the editted DVD run but they also came out a lot quicker then it aired on Toonami especially when Toonami started only going Saturday nights so it became a much better way to watch the show. Like me and my friends constantly swarmed around and just bought the new DVDs when they aired by the end of the Dark Tournament/into the Sensui and 3 kings arc and didn't really bother as much with it on TV because we had already seen it so why re watch it edited down? Guessing a lot of people felt the same way thus why it fizzled out.




Sans rumors about not wanting to air the filler season because of religious controversy or... because it was a bad filler season, I have a feeling that may also because after having dubbed the first two seasons they probably heard when talk of dubbing the third came out Toonami was moving to Saturday nights (as I assume shows were likely told about this in later 2003 as yeah it was a big move likely not just decided on the drop of the hat especially since it was dropped for Miguzi and that needed time obviously to get made) and figured RK wasn't one of those shows that would work well shown week to week. Like you do have to remember a lot of Toonami's appeal in it's first inception was that it was a WEEKLY block that showed like full chunks of seasons day after day which for shows like DBZ and Sailor Moon were a huge boon not having to worry about weekly cliffhangers but having the big block schedule to get a chunk of them and only have seasonal cliff hangers. Honestly that's a boon that especially benefited a lot of slower action heavy earlier shonen and I feel Kenshin was one of those that yeah if that was being cut down they may have figured it wasn't worth keeping around to finish out the run of that original series.



MAR and some other later series like Prince of Tennis were victims of Toonami trying to expand it's reach to digital streaming which yeah with kids in the late 2000s didn't really work thus why the only shows that really got any traction there were more shorter form ones not the majorly long ones. That also hurt Zatch Bell as well which got moved to Jetstream despite doing really well originally on Toonami. Like it even got dub only recap specials like Naruto because of how it was doing fairly well in the ratings before the move that killed momentum for it.

Which is really the thing: a lot of these other series either didn't come along at the right time to make the same sort of impact or were moved for one reason or another and as a result didn't get the momentum to continue on as they had previously. Heck even Naruto's infamous long filler season before Shippuden dipped enough that it was DISNEY of all places at first that got Shippuden for awhile before Toonami eventually got it back but yeah sometimes a show is at the wrong place and time that results in them not getting the huge push they needed. I mean One Piece due to 4Kids getting it and overly kiddifying it killed a lot of it's iniital appeal in the US where honestly it's only more recently it's been getting attention here in the states on anywhere near the level it has in Japan or around the world where it's recognized as the most popular shonen while here you wouldn't really know that if you even asked the average anime fan that.

Interestingly with One Piece, when the 4Kids reruns started initially airing on Toonami, the show did well enough on the block that CN wanted to order more episodes and then Funimation swept in to license the episodes that 4Kids didn't dub. I remember at the time, people were thinking this was going to be another show that Toonami saved like Sailor Moon and DBZ. Even comparisons were made to DBZ on how we were getting a dub with new voices, just like how it went from Ocean Studios to Texas( but with a more accurate dub). Things were looking up for the show in America but of course, we know what happened. Toonami got cancelled and then One Piece was never picked up by another network during the gap between the cancellation and AS Toonami, so any chance of a rebound for the show in America stalled. And like you said, the only reason the show is starting to pick back up in America is because of the Netflix live-action show being well received.



Going back to OP's original question, there's some shows that through sheer luck, end up not only becoming popular but have such wide appeal that they cross generations and enter the cultural zeitgeist. Both shows have crossed that. Even people who never watched either show or aren't fans know of those shows.

 

[J'onn J'onzz]

It is interesting to note that while the 4Kids dub aired over a hundred episodes on Toonami, the Funi dub only aired about a quarter of that many. It was cancelled about six months before the block was. I don’t know what exactly was the reason. We can assume declining ratings played a role, but it also seemed like CN wanted to move Toonami away from being the battle Shonen block at that point. They began airing a lot more CN originals after that point, like Ben 10 Alien Force and even Samurai Jack reruns. At first they seemed to want to use Toonami to promote their Saturday morning anime like Bakugan, but there was some internal pushback from Demarco and Akins and Bakugan only aired one episode. Demarco has denied it ever aired at all.

 

[Conttactt]

It is interesting to note that while the 4Kids dub aired over a hundred episodes on Toonami, the Funi dub only aired about a quarter of that many. It was cancelled about six months before the block was. I don’t know what exactly was the reason. We can assume declining ratings played a role, but it also seemed like CN wanted to move Toonami away from being the battle Shonen block at that point. They began airing a lot more CN originals after that point, like Ben 10 Alien Force and even Samurai Jack reruns. At first they seemed to want to use Toonami to promote their Saturday morning anime like Bakugan, but there was some internal pushback from Demarco and Akins and Bakugan only aired one episode. Demarco has denied it ever aired at all.

That was a big hurdle old Toonami had to deal with. Whatever had toys on the shelf needed to be promoted, even if its show wasn’t very good or didn’t fit the Toonami theme.

You don’t really see that many toy advert shows anymore. I think the only one on cable anymore is Yugioh Sevens and Go Rush which is a bit ironic since the Rush style cards aren’t even sold in the west and likely never will be.

 

[J'onn J'onzz]

That was a big hurdle old Toonami had to deal with. Whatever had toys on the shelf needed to be promoted, even if its show wasn’t very good or didn’t fit the Toonami theme.

You don’t really see that many toy advert shows anymore. I think the only one on cable anymore is Yugioh Sevens and Go Rush which is a bit ironic since the Rush style cards aren’t even sold in the west and likely never will be.

They still air Bakugan and Beyblade on Disney XD next to the Yugioh Sevens too. Those are the only anime still on cable/satellite aimed at kids anymore. I doubt they do particularly well because they air only early on weekend mornings. It’s possible the toy and card companies could even be paying Disney to air those shows as promotion for their products. I remember there were rumors that was how Duel Masters stuck around on Saturday nights at 7 pm on CN for so long.

Although I have no idea why they continue to dub the Yugioh anime either. Most Yugioh fans hate the Rush anime, and there are no cards to buy outside of Japan. Maybe they think it helps Duel Links.

 

[PicardMan]

Kids' TV's total abandonment of battle shonen is pretty interesting. Nicktoons practically turned into the Dragonball Z Kai channel in the early 2010s but once they finished a rerun of GT, they dropped the franchise quickly. Dragonball Super was created specifically to appease Western kids' channels by taking out almost all the blood that ironically made it a hit with the kids. Despite the franchise being inexorably linked with Cartoon Network in the 00s, Cartoon Network noped on Super. Dragonball Daima is probably getting on Adult Swim despite looking kiddier than Super. Don't know why Cartoon Network and Nicktoons turned on the Dragonball franchise.

 

[Light Lucario]

It is interesting to note that while the 4Kids dub aired over a hundred episodes on Toonami, the Funi dub only aired about a quarter of that many. It was cancelled about six months before the block was. I don’t know what exactly was the reason. We can assume declining ratings played a role, but it also seemed like CN wanted to move Toonami away from being the battle Shonen block at that point. They began airing a lot more CN originals after that point, like Ben 10 Alien Force and even Samurai Jack reruns. At first they seemed to want to use Toonami to promote their Saturday morning anime like Bakugan, but there was some internal pushback from Demarco and Akins and Bakugan only aired one episode. Demarco has denied it ever aired at all.

I think the reason given why they initially dropped Funimation's One Piece on Toonami before was that Cartoon Network was expecting higher ratings from the new dub. I don't recall if the ratings were bad, but giving it only a few months with little to no promotion would have affected how well it did. I'm sure that Toonami airing more Cartoon Network original series was a factor too.

That was a big hurdle old Toonami had to deal with. Whatever had toys on the shelf needed to be promoted, even if its show wasn’t very good or didn’t fit the Toonami theme.

You don’t really see that many toy advert shows anymore. I think the only one on cable anymore is Yugioh Sevens and Go Rush which is a bit ironic since the Rush style cards aren’t even sold in the west and likely never will be.

Aside from Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh!, there aren't a lot of toyetic anime series out there these days in general. Go Rush hasn't been dubbed yet, but I believe that Konami Cross Media is working on it. Sevens is still airing reruns on Disney XD. It's still so weird that they haven't released Rush cards after dubbing Sevens and releasing a Sevens Switch game.

They still air Bakugan and Beyblade on Disney XD next to the Yugioh Sevens too. Those are the only anime still on cable/satellite aimed at kids anymore. I doubt they do particularly well because they air only early on weekend mornings. It’s possible the toy and card companies could even be paying Disney to air those shows as promotion for their products. I remember there were rumors that was how Duel Masters stuck around on Saturday nights at 7 pm on CN for so long.

Although I have no idea why they continue to dub the Yugioh anime either. Most Yugioh fans hate the Rush anime, and there are no cards to buy outside of Japan. Maybe they think it helps Duel Links.

I'm not sure about paying Disney to air those shows. Disney XD is a premium cable channel, so fewer households would have it, especially when more people are relying on streaming. I'm not sure if it would be an effective way to promote their products. I must be really good at avoiding the online community, but I didn't think that the Rush anime were that hated. I knew that they weren't particularly popular, but I didn't think that they were hated by most fans. I kind of just assumed people didn't care about them. Dubbing the series withou releasing the cards is baffling to me. My guess is that Konami Cross Media still wanted to provide some attention to the franchise with their dubs, but it is still weird to promote cards that aren't available in the U.S.

I'm not too familiar with YYH's history, but shows like Zatch Bell and especially Rave Master had pretty terrible dubs. Rave Master was practically a 4Kids dub and while tha wouldn't necessarily be a huge issue for kids, I think that style of dubbig was becoming more and more outdated in the 2000's. Zatch Bell does have a bit of a following though.

 

[PicardMan]

I'm not too familiar with YYH's history, but shows like Zatch Bell and especially Rave Master had pretty terrible dubs. Rave Master was practically a 4Kids dub and while tha wouldn't necessarily be a huge issue for kids, I think that style of dubbig was becoming more and more outdated in the 2000's. Zatch Bell does have a bit of a following though.

Those series never got uncut dubs or legal subs. Edited only DVD releases weren't a bright idea, but it was still a common practice for some reason. Recording extra lines for an uncut dub would have been too expensive, but just providing legal subs would have helped. I think Viz said that not only did the Toonami airings flop, but also the edited dub only DVDs. They never made season sets for the Saturday era flops and the single volumes stopped after a certain number of episodes (12 for Rave Master I think). These shows' edited dubs appeared on legal streaming, but the subs didn't get any legal streaming release and now the edited dub episodes that weren't released on DVD are lost media now that the edited dubs of Rave Master and Zatch Bell were taken off of Crunchyroll a few years ago.

 

[J'onn J'onzz]

The way they dubbed it at the time made sense for the 6-11 demo CN wanted in the city era, but now Rave Master probably would be marketable uncut… Hiro Mashima is still a very hardworking mangaka. He’s currently doing a biweekly Fairy Tail sequel, the weekly Edens Zero, and the monthly Dead Rock. His prolific work has built up a big fanbase. Though at this point, it would be better to just do a full remake of Rave Master. Most manga chapters were never adapted by the original anime, which just suddenly ends on a cliffhanger introducing a new villain group.

Maybe it was an exaggeration to say the Rush Yugioh anime are hated by most Yugioh fans. It’s hard to know if it is a vocal minority or actual majority. But there was a lot of backlash to the changes to the card game format, the new art style, shorter arcs, the focus on juvenile humor, etc. Many people who play the card game may not even know Sevens exists, or has a dub.

 

[PicardMan]

The way they dubbed it at the time made sense for the 6-11 demo CN wanted in the city era, but now Rave Master probably would be marketable uncut… Hiro Mashima is still a very hardworking mangaka. He’s currently doing a biweekly Fairy Tail sequel, the weekly Edens Zero, and the monthly Dead Rock. His prolific work has built up a big fanbase. Though at this point, it would be better to just do a full remake of Rave Master.

Considering Fairy Tail's massive popularity, it does feel like Rave Master was massively mismanaged and except for those edited 12 episodes, the show is lost media now because of it. I remember teenage me thinking the Rave Master manga was cooler than the anime because the manga translations had cussing in them. Rave Master could have also have had a redemption tour when it reran on Syfy, but that flopped too. Speaking of mismanagement, somehow Edens Zero got dropped by Nextflix and season 2 got dumped sub only on Crunchyroll. That show got done dirty. Fairy Tail seems to be the only Mashima work that hasn't been treated like garbage by its licensors.

 

[Nobodyman]

I think another big part of DBZ's and Naruto's appeal is that they're both essentially set in fantasy worlds, DBZ being sort of a pseudo-futuristic alternate Earth, and Naruto being a pseudo-historical alternate. In short, they're worlds that audiences can pretty much take on their own terms.

Where other shows may have struggled was, while most of them certainly do have obvious fantasy elements, they may have been a little too similar to the real world. Basically, many of them our world plus fantasy element, as opposed to a fantasy world built from the ground up. And that's not to say that's a bad thing by any means, but for American kids it may have been a little harder to digest.

YYH has super-powered teens and demons running around, which is all well and good, but it's also set in contemporary Japan (for a good portion of it at least) with characters frequently dressed in their school uniforms and occasionally dealing with real-world problems, which some American kids may find dull and not relatable.

Rurouni Kenshin is very much a historical Japan setting, which, again, may have been confusing or off-putting to a lot of American viewers, however good the characters or action may have been.

Zatch Bell was also set in contemporary Japan, but I think it had the additional problem of being goofy and weird and had an art style most kids wouldn't gravitate. I mean, the main character was a talking puppet kid thing with Jimmy Neutron's voice, so I'm not sure how many kids are gonna jump on that.

One Piece, putting aside all the 4kids nonsense, does have the advantage of being in a total fantasy world just like DBZ and Naruto, but again I think a lot of potential viewers are put off by the cartoony art style. I know this because that was one of my biggest barriers to getting into the show way back when, and now it's one of my favorite stories ever. For better or for worse, I think DBZ trained American audiences to expect a certain edge and serious to their battle shonen, which, yeah, in terms of art style at least, One Piece frequently does not have that.

For the record, I'm really not sure how popular One Piece is in the States right now. It seems like it's increased in popularity, but in terms of ratings and performance it always seem to just do reasonably well. But then we have stuff like this happening just this past week.


If One Piece isn't a cultural phenomenon (in the US at least), someone is desperately trying to make it one.

 

[Light Lucario]

The way they dubbed it at the time made sense for the 6-11 demo CN wanted in the city era, but now Rave Master probably would be marketable uncut… Hiro Mashima is still a very hardworking mangaka. He’s currently doing a biweekly Fairy Tail sequel, the weekly Edens Zero, and the monthly Dead Rock. His prolific work has built up a big fanbase. Though at this point, it would be better to just do a full remake of Rave Master. Most manga chapters were never adapted by the original anime, which just suddenly ends on a cliffhanger introducing a new villain group.

It might have made sense for the demographic, but it didn't seem to work out in the long run. I am surprised that Fairy Tail's popularity didn't result in a Rave Master remake. I know that there was a crossover OVA or something years ago, but Fairy Tail was pretty popular back in the day, so I'm surprised that didn't lead to something more with Mashima's earlier work.

Maybe it was an exaggeration to say the Rush Yugioh anime are hated by most Yugioh fans. It’s hard to know if it is a vocal minority or actual majority. But there was a lot of backlash to the changes to the card game format, the new art style, shorter arcs, the focus on juvenile humor, etc. Many people who play the card game may not even know Sevens exists, or has a dub.

I remember a lot of backlash to the art style when Sevens was initially revealed. It took me a long time to get used to it, but it seemed a lot less when Go Rush was announced. I wouldn't be surprised if people didn't care for the shorter arcs or the humor since those have been some of my major issues with the Rush Duel series too. I don't really interact with the online community, so I don't see much backlash to the current series now. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people who play the game never heard of Sevens or its dub. KCM really does not promote it particularly well and taking so long to get a Sevens dub off the ground certainly doesn't help either.

 

[PicardMan]

As much of a rap One Piece had in the 00s, it did have a rabid and obsessed fanbase and it avoided the fate of becoming lost media like Zatch Bell, Rave Master, MAR and all those other shows that are no longer legally available in the US. It probably helped that the uncut version was actually edgy. I think Rave Master, Zatch Bell, etc. had very little blood even in their uncut form. That is one notable difference between the 90s shonen that aired on Toonami in the 00s (Yu Yu Hakusho, Rurouni Kenshin, DBZ) and the 00s shonen like the aformentioned shows that became lost media. 00s shonen might have been tamer than 90s shonen in an attempt to make them easier to export to American kids, but it seems like that was a miscalculation. Whether it was kids, teens, or adults, the edgy titles like Yu Yu Hakusho and Rurouni Kenshin had the rabid cult fanbase while the tamer titles have now faded into obscurity. Shonen had a huge comeback in the 2010s when it got edgier again (with the exception of Toriko. Fairy Tail was pretty edgy in terms of fanservice despite being tame in terms of violence). I think 00s shonen being so tame was what led to the slump.