Season Review: Toonami: The Forge

Toonami caps off another year on the air with their seventh (technically eighth) Total Immersion Event and one that dives deeper into its backstory than previous events. Going back as far as 1999, these events have been one of Toonami’s most distinct features, giving the characters of TOM and SARA more character development and design changes than one would expect for characters who we see brief glimpses of between episodes of anime each Saturday. In fact, it’s actually managed to imbue the two of them with so much life and personality that it likely has been a major factor in the block’s endurance and longevity, especially since it was revived in 2012.

While the plot of these stories has never been especially complex, this one finally gives us a look into TOM’s possible creation as he and SARA encounter aliens in command of The Forge, a factory where his current model of TOM body has been made. There, he meets a small army of other robots like him treated like slaves, and so incites a revolution to get them to escape, but loses his current body in the process, gaining a new one for the first time in over six years. The other TOMs, now with sentience and independence, escape to parts unknown and he and SARA take over the Forge, having a whole new place within which to host their show.

The idea of using one of these plots to make TOM get a new body isn’t the newest one, having been used most notably in their very first TIE, “The Intruder”, which ended the Sonny Strait-voiced TOM 1 era and brought on the Steve Blum-voiced TOM 2 era. Since then, TOM getting a new body has become a milestone moment for the block, even if we haven’t gotten an in-universe reason for it happening for over a decade and we’re now on our sixth TOM. And luckily they made sure to make this one count, giving the characters far more to chew on in terms of ideas of comradery and revolution, even if the personalities and sometimes performances of TOM and SARA do feel flat at times.

Toonami has somehow managed to survive the 1990’s, the 2000’s, and now the 2010’s. As the block enters the 2020’s, it’s future looks quite uncertain as the fate of broadcast television continues to narrow. But specials like The Intruder and now The Forge show that Toonami isn’t going down without a fight, thriving on the group of loyal and passionate fans that have stuck with them every Saturday since they came back. I’m not sure when we’ll get another TIE or if we’ll make it to the next TOM, but as a fan of Toonami since it came on in 1997, I can’t wait to see what they do next.