Toonami

[Dr. Insomniac]

I figure they'll just double down. Make a lackluster Smiling Friends Anime. A 2-episode Hellstar Remina show that takes years to produce. Disgusting CGI sequels to whatever franchises they could buy from Gainax's corpse.

[Avaitor]

Count on more FLCL sequels.

[Dr. Insomniac]

They really blew the budget on the first episode, huh? Toonami fans are learning the hard way why we haven't gotten a good Junji Ito anime yet.

[Daxdiv]

That was just painful to watch. What happened to the money, DeMarco?

[Daikun]

Episode 2 was done by a different studio.
Although that raises a question... WHY NOT STICK WITH THE SAME STUDIO?!?

EDIT: Found this on Discord. Oof.

[Dr. Insomniac]

So in a show called "Uzumaki", a studio with the same name as Sasuke's dad got replaced by a studio called "Akatsuki". Looking forward to Studio Obito next week.

It also occurred to me yesterday that this show is adapting 650 pages of manga into 4 episodes of show. Even if you reason that a 45-minute TV runtime means it's more like a runtime of 5 or 6 episodes (although, this week's episode was only a few minutes longer at most and this is likely just AS padding out ad space), that's still a lot of material to truncate and adapt. Compare that to the Frieren anime adapting one and a half volumes by episode 6, or Chainsaw Man adapting 2 volumes and a couple chapters by that point, while this is adapting 3 volumes. And the pacing this week was ass, so what are we really doing here?

Fully expecting Lazarus to be another flop even with Watanabe's input. As well as that Rooster Fighter thing.

[Daxdiv]

Apparently, he knew the animation quality took a nose dive and decided to air it anyway. I love how people are roasting the man for putting out an inferior product. Like, I have not seen a single compliment regarding episode 2 after how everyone praised episode 1 to the high heavens.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Maybe he should've actually looked at the shows he was producing instead of wasting his time namesearching himself just to start squabbles on Twitter and Bluesky. Dude was more than happy to pat himself on the back a month ago and play the role of the veteran TV executive, but once everyone sees the emperor has no clothes, he plays victim and goes "No, somebody else screwed it up! I can't name who, but trust me on this!"

[Daikun]

Invincible Fight Girl premieres November 2 at midnight.

Well, now we have something to wash out the disappointing taste of Uzumaki.

[Daxdiv]

I'll be honest, this series does look a bit promising. I was wondering when we were gonna get a non-Japanese production. Though, I'm curious to see if this is gonna be like how MAWS or UWE was where this was meant for Cartoon Network before getting shunted to adult swim or this was made with adult swim/Toonami demographic in mind.

[Daikun]

I'll be honest, this series does look a bit promising. I was wondering when we were gonna get a non-Japanese production. Though, I'm curious to see if this is gonna be like how MAWS or UWE was where this was meant for Cartoon Network before getting shunted to adult swim or this was made with adult swim/Toonami demographic in mind.

It was meant for CN. The network apparently gets cold feet now whenever anything resembling adrenaline tries to get on their schedule.

[Rynnec]

That's why I find it hard to be excited about this coming to Toonami. I'm sure the show itself will be good, but it just feels like AS tripling down on Toonami just being a block that airs kids shows at times their intended target demographic would be asleep.

[Dr. Insomniac]

I've been wondering lately thanks to the Uzumaki controversy, and his name's also on a couple other stinkers this year in the form of the Suicide Squad Isekai and the Rick and Morty anime, has DeMarco produced anything good? I hear that the Shenmue anime wasn't that bad and FLCL Alternative was all right, but I didn't really gel with either.

Was it really just season 2 of Big O? And even then, a show that's "What if the Serial Experiments Lain writer wrote BTAS with giant robots?" is one of those pitches that's impossible to fuck up barring freak accidents. So it's not right to credit him for even that. Where does it leave him? Just having IGPX as a notch on his belt?

[Avaitor]

I enjoyed Ninja Kamui. I know not everyone vibed with the ending, but I didn't mind it that much.

Uzumaki however has been a gigantic bad look. And it's not like it's worth it financially, the first episode was beaten by a repeat of the Rick and Morty anime in the ratings, confirming my belief that Ito fans and Toonami fans aren't very compatible. We waited more than five years... for this?

[Dr. Insomniac]

Yeah, I never saw the monetary reason to make Uzumaki. Years of production time surely destroyed the budget, 4 episodes means it's unfit for rerun value, Ito's had a infamously poor track record for adaptations of his work, and even if it was all gonna work, I felt it was going to be in spite of Toonami than because of it, meaning any success wouldn't have dripped into the brand itself. And as we've seen, there isn't much of an artistic reason either, so what was the point?

It wouldn't have mattered as much if DeMarco wasn't so annoying about it on social media, so eager to treat the show like it was his golden goose and attempting to use it as clout to talk down to other creators (Seriously, what did Greta Gerwig do to him to piss him off so much?), only to dodge the blame and pretend it was someone else's fault once the criticism starting flowing in. Yeah, I'm sure he released it out of respect for the hard work of everyone involved when he accidentally revealed he doesn't even know who animates his shows back in August. I predict he'll continue his spin-doctoring charade once that ashcan copy LOTR movie comes out. Because while I did admittedly like the animation in the trailer, it's also yet another post-2003 LOTR project that tries to stretch a couple sentences from Tolkien's appendices into a whole story regardless if they should. And if even Jackson couldn't accomplish it with The Hobbit movies, then why should anyone have hope for this?