Toonami

[Avaitor]

Suggestion:

Why not air an hour of One Piece? There's more than enough episodes to do this with that they won't need to put the show on hiatus for a while, and this way it won't take nearly as long to air a fair share of the show. If it means cutting off a Cowboy Bebop repeat or something, go for it. I think the block can handle one less Bebop episode each week.

[Rynnec]

For all we know, we may actually get an hour of OP after all. I'd certaintly take the loss of one of Bebops slots if it meant going through OP faster.

See, I think this is why people want an expansion for the block. It'd be a lot easier to do stuff like that.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Well, things could be worse.

Spoiler

[close]

[LumRanmaYasha]

Suggestion:

Why not air an hour of One Piece? There's more than enough episodes to do this with that they won't need to put the show on hiatus for a while, and this way it won't take nearly as long to air a fair share of the show. If it means cutting off a Cowboy Bebop repeat or something, go for it. I think the block can handle one less Bebop episode each week.

It'd be an issue of how much it costs to air two episodes of week. The reason they don't have double Naruto or Bleach now is because it's too expensive for them to air two episodes a week of either of them. Double Cowboy Bebop and Inuyasha, for some reason or another, is less expensive for them, which is why Toonami has hour blocks of both shows. Besides, double One Piece would take up the entire 1am hour without expansion, and they still want to air shorter series, but it'd be stupid of them to do so any later than 2am. Despite how long One Piece is, one episode a week is probably what they are going to do with it until the block expands and/or the budget increases.

[Avaitor]

I think double OP is a possibility at this point since the budget has been increased, there are a buttload of more episodes of it than Shippuden-less Naruto, and they have a considerable amount of time more to play catch-up with than they do for Bleach, since they're starting so late in the show's run. And there is enough room to add more of the show in and still air other new series, if we drop an episode or two of their heavily repeated series, or if Toonami does get that expansion. Not to mention that the ratings have been shown to stay surprisingly consistent all night (GXP seems to be doing better at 3 am than it did at 12:30, for whatever reason), so adding in something new at 2 or later may not be that awful of an idea.

The only question is how much has their budget increased? Obviously Toonami can afford a bigger series like One Piece now, and we're getting a necessary rebrand, along with a high possibility of SARA returning. Is there enough left to air more than one episode of the show seems to be the next big question.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

While airing an hour of One Piece might be a possibility, I figure they might want to test the waters first and see what kinds of ratings single episodes of One Piece will get. As far as I know, One Piece has a strong cult following among North American fans on the Internet, but I'm not sure if that'll translate well enough into TV ratings. The thing is, there are still a lot of people who'd never even give One Piece a chance simply because they hate its art-style, and to be fair those who also hate shonen in general wouldn't find much in One Piece to convince them otherwise, but for those who enjoy stuff like Naruto and Bleach, I think they'd get plenty of mileage out of OP, since it really comes down to the same generic kind of stuff when you get down to it.

Talking about airing 1-hour blocks of a single show reminds me of how Toonami used to do that for DBZ....except that was on a DAILY basis with 2 episodes airing back-to-back every weekday from Monday to Friday. Man, those were the days.

[Lord Dalek]

Its not going to work because only fanboys like the show. The manga doesn't sell (only two volumes in the top 50 last year, and both scraping the bottom at that), the merchandise (when they were doing it) never sold, and it putting it on at 2 AM will not create some sort of magical awareness.

Time to face facts... this show failed.... twice, and there just isn't enough of an audience keeping it from failing a third time.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Probably, but I'd still rather watch this than any of the other shonen on the block right now....which isn't saying much, but still, its at least something that I can mildly enjoy.

Also, I thought it was getting the 1:00 AM time-slot.

[Lord Dalek]

Also, I thought it was getting the 1:00 AM time-slot.

Same difference.

[Avaitor]

Time to face facts... this show failed.... twice, and there just isn't enough of an audience keeping it from failing a third time.

And as hopeful as I've been trying to be, this is what I've thought the whole time. Pretty much anyone who would watch Toonami this late at night and would be interested in One Piece is already a fan, and probably has it on DVD. New fans will likely come, but I think the goofy look the show has just won't cut it for a lot of viewers.

OP might just not appeal to most Americans.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Well, when you think about it, that's probably why it was even affordable for Toonami in the first place. Clearly they don't have a budget for some of the more popular titles out there, so whether this show even has a chance of surviving on the block or not (and I admit its a pretty slim chance at that) really depends somewhat on how they advertise it (and I doubt they'll try to advertise it at all), and more-so on how much the fan-boys support it. To be fair, there are quite a lot more OP fanboys on the Internet than some of you guys might think, but that said, only a fraction of them would probably bother to catch the show on TV, anyways.

Either way, its not like there were too many other options for Toonami to choose from. Clearly they're trying their best to change things up, but obviously they don't have the budget to get much better shows that would have a better chance of becoming popular. In all fairness, though, having such a late time-slot kind of dooms the block, to begin with.

[Avaitor]

Well with Toonami having One Piece, this means that they have what, a decade's worth of material to show that could easily go to something else that's more worthy of a try for the block, with considerably less episodes. And even if the show isn't as big in the US as it is in Japan, I'd still think that it would be more expensive to air than most anime, considering that it is still fairly popular and that Toei is very picky.

It seems like a rather poor choice the more I think about it.

[Rynnec]

If I had to guess, I'd say they chose One Piece so they'd have a long-running shounen to fall-back on once Bleach ends sometime next year, and people have been demanding OP to return to Toonami ever since it came back, so they probably figured "why not" and gave OP a second chance.

I agree that there are much better choices than OP overall.

[Spark Of Spirit]

One Piece is never going to be a success here, but considering what they could be showing instead of it I'd just be grateful it's airing at all.

But it would benefit them to try to give this show a proper shot with the mainstream after a good time away from it so it might do a bit better than usual. But it obviously won't be a Bleach or Inuyasha-style success, but it's starting to become more and more obvious that there will never be another hit anime airing out of CN.

[Avaitor]

Well the anime industry has really turned to shit in the past few years, and I doubt too many titles will turn into hits over here. If a series didn't already have a strong fanbase to begin with, that more than likely won't change.

One Piece fairs better than most, but it's still the worst-performing of the big 3 stateside.