Review: Toonami: The Forge Episode 6

OVERVIEW

TOM 6 and SARA defeat the alien leader and his fleet, allowing the TOM Juniors to escape on the Vindication to parts unknown. In order to make sure they weren’t captured, SARA and her onboard copy remove the ability to track them, meaning that they won’t be seeing the other TOMs anytime soon, if at all. But now she and TOM 6 have a brand new ship at their disposal, which means they have a show to do.

OUR TAKE

The Forge reaches its conclusion with what is likely the biggest shift to the status quo since the revival began. Not only have we lost the Vindication, the show’s trusty ship since the end of Intruder III back in 2016, but a whole space station to mess around with, on top of having the first new TOM redesign since 2013. And naturally all that new stuff leads to a new design for the show’s logo and such, which is pretty much obligatory at this point. Once again, we have entered a new era for the block as a whole and things are looking pretty sweet.

As for the episode itself, thank god we finally get something over three minutes this time. This means we get something that feels like a chapter on its own instead of what seemed like barely a scene to begin with, but that’s just the limitations of this sort of unique and novel format that these sorts of mini-series go for. It’s not like we could get a ten-minute chapter per week on the block’s likely still minimal budget. And keeping that in mind, it’s a wonder they’re still able to do these sorts of things at all.

I do wonder if we really needed to make the other TOMs disappear, though. I certainly didn’t expect one of them to take over, but I initially thought they’d be taking over for the Clydes now that they’ve been “killed off”. And it’s not like they would have to pay for extra voice actors since Steve Blum voices all of them (and I guess all the enemy goons are voiced by Beau Billingslea, so it seems that wasn’t because the TOMs were robots). I guess you could say that they wouldn’t be worth the budget to just have to mess around in the background, but even then, sending them off into eternal exile still feels like overkill. I do hope that we check in with them now and then, possibly in time for the next crossover or even Anniversary.

Either way, this has got to be the most ambitious Total Immersion Event that Toonami has done in a long time. The block continues to do quite a lot of amazing things powered by Jason Demarco’s creative drive and the apparently sustainable well of the viewership’s nostalgic love. The future currently looks bright for the better cartoon show. Though next time, let’s try getting a race of Wendee Lee robots! Or Melissa Fahn aliens! Make this Cowboy Bebop reunion complete!