Adult Swim’s “Toonami Rewind” is having its first marathon on December 6, 2024. Dragon Ball Z Kai, the re-edit of Toonami’s classic Dragon Ball Z, is getting a marathon for the first week of December. Toonami’s Saturday block has traditionally aired movies and marathons throughout December, as low ratings while people travel for the holidays prohibit the airing of new episodes. However, usually Toonami marathons have aired the most recent handful of episodes from the current run. Toonami Rewind on the other hand is airing Dragon Ball Z episodes continuing the current Friday night run of episodes.
5:00 PM Dragon Ball Z Kai – “Goku’s Comeback! Call for Porunga!”
5:30 PM Dragon Ball Z Kai – “Frieza Closes In! Mighty Porunga, Grant Our Wish!”
6:00 PM Dragon Ball Z Kai – “A Nightmare Transformation! Frieza’s Power Level: One Million?!”
6:30 PM Dragon Ball Z Kai – “Frieza Bares His Fangs! Gohan’s Overwhelming Attack!”
Dragon Ball Z Kai is a revamp of the original Dragon Ball Z, with much of the anime original content cut in order to more closely resemble the original manga. It also features remastered video which reduces violence and nudity and recolors Vegeta’s red hair to be black in his first appearance, in order to match his appearance in later episodes. A new soundtrack by Keiji Yamamoto, a composer who had worked on Dragon Ball video game scores, was discovered to be plagiarized near the end of the series’ run in Japan. Later releases of Kai use the original Z soundtrack by Shunsuke Kikuchi.
After several years of Kai airing on Nicktoons and the CW’s Saturday morning blocks with additional censorship, Toonami first aired Kai in 2014, but Adult Swim allowed the rights to lapse for several years (from 2020 to 2024 after completing its second run in prime time outside Toonami). Dragon Ball Z Kai returned to Toonami on February 24, 2024. A few months later, Toonami Rewind debuted on May 31, 2024. The first lineup of Rewind featured two episodes of Dragon Ball Z Kai and one episode each of Naruto and Sailor Moon. On July 19, 2024, the new lineup reduced Dragon Ball Z Kai to one airing and doubled up Sailor Moon instead. Airings on Rewind have recently passed up the Saturday night airings, due to the many preemptions and marathons on Saturday night’s “Toonami” causing Kai to frequently be skipped.
Sailor Moon is set to end its first season on November 29, but rather than continuing into season two, they have the previous episode airing as a rerun before the season finale. With season two of Sailor Moon likely on hold until early next year, more marathons are likely to occur throughout December. It remains to be seen whether Naruto or Sailor Moon will also receive marathons. While Naruto received countless marathons on Cartoon Network’s version of Toonami, the Adult Swim era of Toonami has given Naruto and its sequel Naruto Shippuden ZERO marathons. There are enough episodes of the battle with Frieza that Toonami Rewind could air five consecutive blocks of Dragon Ball Z marathons to finish out the Frieza saga quickly, but we’ll see if that’s what Adult Swim truly intends to do in the weeks ahead.
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