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

[aegisrawks]

Rave Master definitely beats 4kids One Piece on the Awful dub opening department. There is just no comparison.

 

[PicardMan]

Have you actually seen Gash Bell, I picked a random episode, ok not really random some episode I really liked back then, but that show is FULL OF BLOOD. And not just blood, but naked bodies, a song about fondling breasts, and uncut punches to the face male to female. And its not like the girl is a badass and can take it, its Brago punching poor Sherry in the middle of a mental breakdown.

Well, the uncut dub has never been legally released in the US so the Toonami cut was all we got to see. Viz never released it uncut on DVD either. Nor did they release it uncut on streaming before they took it down from Crunchyroll. Sounds like Zatch Bell did get the 4kids treatment. Don't know why we never got legal subs ever. Even freaking Sonic X got its uncut sub released eventually. Viz really dropped the ball for their 00s edited dub only releases.

 

[Grenzer]

Realistically, most long-running shonen anime from the 1990's and early 2000's were bound to have trouble airing on American TV. First, you have the issue that they were long. Most American cartoons from that era were lucky to make it to 65 episodes. The shows that have been mentioned on this thread all had at least 100 episodes of content and were often much longer. Even given dubbing anime was somewhat cheaper than producing domestic cartoons from scratch, these were risky acquisitions for most TV networks. It's not shocking to me that one of the most successful minor shonen anime to make it to American TV in the 90's was Ronin Warriors, which at 39 episodes was easier to package in one go for TV distribution. Now this was not a big issue for Cartoon Network, which was more welcoming of longer series due to being able to fill out its schedule, but at the end of the day I don't think it ever licensed more than 52 episodes of a particular show at a time. Tenchi Muyo! was an exception but it was notably not a shonen and was a complete license of all the tv episodes produced at that time. Simply put, Cartoon Network was not going to shell out large amounts of cash to acquire full runs of shows that had only a fraction of the popularity of Dragon Ball Z and Naruto even in Japan. Same issue with VHS/DVD releases at a time where even getting four episodes in one volume was considered a great value. How many kids were going to convince their parents to shell out another $30 for Zatch Bell Vol. 42?

Only the most elite franchises like Dragon Ball Z and Naruto were able to break through due to their exceptionally high profile status even before before being licensed for American television. It was that momentum that carried them forward even during that initial awkward period of being introduced to the general market. Heck the road was not even that clear for Dragon Ball, CN really saved that franchise from becoming a semi-obscure also ran in syndication. Really Zatch Bell, MÄR, and Rave Master were B-tier franchises at best with questionable ability to connect with American audiences of the time. Zatch also suffered from the whole concept of literal demon children being forced to fight each other, and had a fair amount of adult humor thrown in there that was awkward to write around. Prince of Tennis was an A-Tier sports anime franchise, a genre that had never really been able to successfully penetrate American TV markets at that point. Tennis also has a sort of elitist perception that might have hindered its acceptance. It's not surprising that the franchise has gained a second wind in the modern streaming era and even received a new dub in the process.

Rurouni Kenshin was far superior to the other series among this group, but I feel it aired about two or three years later than it should of. It would have been a big deal back in 2000 with Gundam Wing and Tenchi, but in 2003 the market was already shifting. It was also the most adult of these shows and very violent; among the hardest shows to sell on a children's programming block. Yu Yu Hakusho was less adult but even more violent. One Piece was a case of massive mismanagement by 4Kids crippling the franchise's reception in the US. I'm not sure how big it would have become in the US if handled better from the start, but for whatever reason One Piece was a hard sell to American audiences two decades ago. I remember the reception to the Funimation dub's first broadcast and it was mixed. People who had only watched the 4Kids version were put off by the new voices and shocked by the original soundtrack. It was not hailed as a masterpiece, and the franchise's growing acceptance in the 2020's can only be likened to Dragon Ball getting its due more than a decade after it first aired on Japanese television.

If we step outside of the bubble of anime fandom, the failure of most of the shows mentioned above is easier to understand. In retrospect I feel there was only room for one or two franchises to make it. Anime fans and Japanese animation production companies had the feeling that if only the content was put out there that American children would uncritically accept it and recreate the dynamics of the Japanese market, but there was still a very large cultural and institutional gap that would take many years to fill before you could even begin to see common ground. I go back to this often but will say that no matter what issues you find in the current anime industry and acquiring physical media, we fans have never had it so good in terms of accessing old and new content and need to keep that in mind when we turn our eyes to years past. What seems odd to us today was just common sense back in 2005.

 

[PicardMan]

If we step outside of the bubble of anime fandom, the failure of most of the shows mentioned above is easier to understand. In retrospect I feel there was only room for one or two franchises to make it. Anime fans and Japanese animation production companies had the feeling that if only the content was put out there that American children would uncritically accept it and recreate the dynamics of the Japanese market, but there was still a very large cultural and institutional gap that would take many years to fill before you could even begin to see common ground.

ASA had more than two shows be successful. FMA, Trigun, Inuyasha, Bleach, and Death Note all managed to run in their entirety without getting the death slot. Marketing shonen to teens/adults seemed to make the them way more popular in the 2010s than the previous decade. If Black Clover and MHA aired heavily censored on Cartoon Network in 2005, they probably would have been cancelled quick and fallen into obscurity. Nu Toonami switching gears from ASA's main focus on slow drama anime to shonen was what revived interest in the block.

Zatch also suffered from the whole concept of literal demon children being forced to fight each other, and had a fair amount of adult humor thrown in there that was awkward to write around.

That was another major obstacle anime faced in having content that parents deemed Satanic. Could never watch Yu Yu Hakusho openly (or Digimon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Cardcaptors, Shaman King, or whatever my parents called "Satanic"). It is obvious why Zatch Bell went with using the term mamodo instead of demon, but maybe Yu Yu Hakusho could have gone with yokai or another term to avoid religious controversy (as the live action adaptation did). Surprised how Demon Slayer hasn't gotten the Satanic label as it has sympathetic demon characters. Although, viewers know that the demons in the show are not Judeo-Christian demons (as most anime "demons" aren't).

 

[Grenzer]

ASA had more than two shows be successful. FMA, Trigun, Inuyasha, Bleach, and Death Note all managed to run in their entirety without getting the death slot. Marketing shonen to teens/adults seemed to make the them way more popular in the 2010s than the previous decade. If Black Clover and MHA aired heavily censored on Cartoon Network in 2005, they probably would have been cancelled quick and fallen into obscurity. Nu Toonami switching gears from ASA's main focus on slow drama anime to shonen was what revived interest in the block.

FMA was a shonen but almost marketed as a seinen in America. The 2003 series was in general a lot darker in tone than the manga and Brotherhood and really tapped into something raw in the American anime scene of the time. It was also 51 episodes, so it was nearly the perfect length for an Adult Swim Action broadcast slot.

Trigun was not a battle shonen, so I will skip over it despite being one of my favorite shows of all time. Death Note was short and very atypical for a Shonen Jump property, so it was never competing with Naruto for a place in the market. Inuyasha is very interesting because it is no doubt a battle shonen and a long runner, but it was created by an author known more for her work in comedy and romance and not perceived as a shonen by much of its audience. It was the type of show that girls who had been introduced to anime by Sailor Moon could watch and feel more mature for it. Being more episodic also helped since someone could leap into the show at episode 50 and not feel nearly out of the loop as other franchises.

That leaves us with Bleach, and it seems to be the only long-running series that broke the curse and received a full run. A few things to keep in mind. Airing on Adult Swim did Bleach a lot of favors since it did not have to directly compete with Naruto or any of the other shows we mentioned for the attention of kids. It came out right around the time Dragon Ball's presence on TV was fading (which would not change until 2010 when Kai aired on Nicktoons) so a spot opened up. It was also the last of the really big shonen anime of that era to be licensed, so it had a lot of attention directed to it for that reason alone.

I don't think any of the examples above really disprove what was previously mentioned. None of these shows were marketed towards kids.

 

[PicardMan]

I don't think any of the examples above really disprove what was previously mentioned. None of these shows were marketed towards kids.

That was my point, a heavily edited Bleach on Cartoon Network Toonami probably would have been a miserable flop. Battle shonen became much bigger in the 2010s as soon as the anime licensing companies started marketing them exclusively to teens and adults. Okay, tame shonen like Kekkaishi and especially Toriko flopped hard with adults, but it seems like Toriko was the last of its kind in terms of being a tame bloodless shonen. As soon as edgy shonen titles like HunterXHunter, Jojo, and Attack on Titan entered the market, battle shonen seemed to do much better than the previous decade.