Toonami’s short lived experiment in a Friday night nostalgia block has come to a close. Schedules for January 3, 2025 show that Checkered Past will be returning to Fridays for the 5 PM hour, with King of the Hill gaining the 6 PM hour. In the lead up to the return of Family Guy in a massive three day marathon, Adult Swim will be doubling down on Fox comedies. Other Fox show could have had reduced slots due to three Family Guy episodes airing per night. Instead, King of the Hill has gained an extra hour every weeknight. While Checkered Past is suffering a one hour cut Monday-Thursday, it is at least gaining Friday. Toonami Rewind is being eliminated entirely.
Toonami Rewind was one of many experiments with Friday nights throughout 2024. While it began with rotating marathons of Checkered Past’s main four programs, on January 12, Friday Checkered Past became a marathon block for Cow and Chicken and I Am Weasel. On March 8, Ed, Edd, n Eddy also joined Cow and Chicken for the second hour. This didn’t last long, as Samurai Jack and Dexter’s Lab took over Fridays beginning May 10. The Tartakovsky hour only lasted a few weeks, with its final airing being on the 30th, the day before Toonami Rewind premiered. Samurai Jack has not returned to either Checkered Past or Toonami Rewind since.
Toonami Rewind began airing on May 31, from 5-7 PM. Unfortunately it had a rocky rollout with the promos failing to elucidate when the block would be airing. One gave the wrong start date of May 30.
Another promo had muted audio when it was supposed to announce the 5 pm timeslot. This was only the beginning of the disappointments. Many fans were hoping for an authentic Toonami flashback experience, but instead they discovered that Rewind does things little differently than Saturday Toonami. The versions of Dragon Ball Z and Sailor Moon aired on Rewind are not the ones they grew up on. Instead they air the modern redub of Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball Z Kai. The Dic and Cloverway dubs of Sailor Moon are now infamous for their censorship, but they have large nostalgia based fanbases. Many groaned at the double Dragon Ball Z Kai slots. Kai has aired almost continually in the US for nearly 15 years. In that time, the original Dragon Ball Z, which many prefer due to the voices and music, has not aired at all outside of the April Fools return of Toonami. Perhaps most problematic, Kai had already recently aired on Saturday night Toonami, and the bumpers were reused from Saturday airings with only the fonts modified to resemble TOM3’s. Only in the Rewind’s final weeks did Kai finally pull ahead of Saturday, due to Saturday’s marathons preempting Kai.
On July 19, we started to see signs that the dissatisfaction with Rewind was carrying over into the ratings. Dragon Ball Z Kai had lost its double episodes, in favor of Sailor Moon. Thanks to being doubled up, Sailor Moon managed to make it to the end of season one just before December.
The same day, Naruto unexpectedly skipped over a dozen episodes to get to the Chunin Exams. Unfortunately, this probably only confused and alienated viewers. They had only just begun airing the Zabuza arc and suddenly it was just done, with no on air explanation. The skipped episodes were eventually added to Adult Swim On Demand. Worse, the Zabuza arc was just getting into the heat of the action, and the Chunin Exam required months of setup. They only managed to air the first match of the Chunin Exams Tournament in November.
With Rewind never charting in the ratings, and Checkered Past seldom doing so, the writing seemed to be on the wall for these blocks. Checkered Past has become monotonous with few new bumpers and only one hour a week dedicated to new shows like What a Cartoon and Cartoon Planet. Given the choice between the two blocks, it would have been better for Rewind survive and go to a five night a week schedule, even if only an hour a day. Since Kai already has an hour on Saturdays, Naruto and Sailor Moon could stay. Naruto’s slow pacing would be alleviated by a full weekday Toonami treatment. Now that we have finally reached the tournament, the pacing will improve and hopefully ratings as well. Sailor Moon has been an unexpected treat. It has been so long since Toonami aired it that it draws far more posts in the forums than my Naruto and Dragon Ball Z Kai talkbacks. Unlike many modern redubs, the new dub is actually quite well done, and many viewers were enjoying hearing it for the first time.
Now the only chance we have of seeing Naruto and Sailor Moon on Toonami again is if the latter half of the Saturday block is turned into Rewind 2.0. January 4 is expected to be a marathon of Invincible Fight Girl, but on January 11, we may see Naruto and/or Sailor Moon returning to Toonami in place of one of DBZ Kai’s slots or Rick and Morty the Anime. The only problem is this would leave them without a slot for rerunning expensive recent licenses like Demon Slayer. This could be solved by taking 3:30 from Venture Bros and expanding Toonami back to 4 hours.
Only time will tell what happens with Rewind’s three shows, but we can look back on the block’s seven month run and say it was a brief and noble experiment. Toonami fans had been wanting to see it back on weekday afternoons for 20 years, and even longer to see an uncut Sailor Moon. Rewind had half a year to introduce Toonami to people who may not have seen it before due to the late hours of the main block. While it may not pull the same ratings as King of the Hill, it did last longer than Adult Swim’s previous attempts at Friday night programming. Toonami has been split between airing nostalgic shows and the newest hits. What direction will Saturday night go?
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The post Editorial: Toonami Rewind’s End – A Year Of Adult Swim Struggling On Fridays, What Went Wrong? appeared first on Anime Superhero News.
