FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF TOONAMI

Did Toonami fail? Or did the block live up to its stellar heritage? Old school vs new school, Cybertron Messiah offers up his initial impressions of Toonami for May 26, 2012.

 

Well, the first night of Toonami’s return was last night and Twitter and my facebook newsfeed were abuzz.  Well, kinda.

There were a lot of people talking about it, but it wasn’t trending in the top 10, or 20 anywhere last night, nor looking at any reports today. Deadman Wonderland and Casshern Sins were top trends last night, with FMA: Brotherhood and Cowboy Bebop trending as well.  There were a lot of comments on the Toonami site, but that was about it.  These are a few impressions I got.

Just like I said in my previous article, this had the feeling of a simple re-branding, same shit, but different brand.  Yeah, it nice seeing Tom, but just because it had Tom, doesn’t mean that it was Toonami.  There was a feel, a certain intangible aspect that made it special.  Yes, in my last article, I posted reasons for it to succeed, and for it to fail, but the overall aspect why it will succeed or fail is just that intangible.  Last night, Adult Swim whiffed.

While the Toonami rebrand was awful, earning the hashtag #ToonamiisNotBackBitches from me, they did premiere two new shows, Deadman Wonderland, and Casshern Sins. Here’s a bit of a recap for both shows.

  Deadman Wonderland is a show where a kid is framed for murdering his female friend.  Episode 1 has the trial, and shows what seems to be the main character, Ganta, bragging about the murder to what ends up being the warden of the “theme park like” Deadman Wonderland.  By the end of the episode, he is about to get the crap kicked out of him, he activates some whacked out power.

This show, so far anyway, seems pretty good.  Very violent, and bound to get even worse.  Best line of the show last night was “Holy crap!  How big are your Tits?” “I’m a G.”

Now, there’s Casshern Sins.  I didn’t understand it, much.  Mostly, because I didn’t understand what was going on.  If you are going to watch this show, track down the first series, and catch that.

The rest of the shows have been on for a while.  So, to be honest, I don’t really need to be putting anything new up about them.

For now, it seems that I was right.  Doing some trolling around the net, a lot of people watched Toonami.  What’s good is that a lot of people had the opposite feeling about it that I did.  Hopefully, with this sustained viewership, we can get Toonami back to the glory that it had around 2001-2002.

I think Deadman Wonderland can carry this; however, it really does need your help.  You guys need to obliterate every social network with Toonami associated hashtags and whatnot, so that it keeps trending.  Newsflash:  network execs do kinda pay attention.

Follow Cybertron Messiah on Twitter @primievalfatass.