An entire generation’s fondness for anime can be traced back to one programming block on Cartoon Network called Toonami. Toonami is a well of nostalgia for millennials whose introduction to anime included Dragon Ball Z, Gundam Wing, Sailor Moon and other classics.
Sailor Moon
I’d never really thought about what made Toonami so special until yesterday, when Kaptain Kristian posted a video about the history of broadcast anime, describing Toonami’s birth, death and resuscitation in the US.
In the video, he explains how Toonami in ’97 was “designed to bring an awareness and a respectability to an art form somewhat overlooked by American audiences,” citing its curation and TOM, Toonami’s robot host (who, I just learned, was originally voiced by Dragon Ball Z‘s Krillin!).
Check the video below:
Toonami’s respect for anime was always clear — on it, anime was never described as a “genre”. If a viewer wasn’t into Sailor Moon, Kaptain Kristian says, that wasn’t representative of the whole Toonami block. Also, Toonami showed anime like Gundam Wing that was long-form and serialised, so viewers could really engage with some nuanced story lines and characters.
After a four-year break, Toonami came back in 2012 and now airs Space Dandy, Attack on Titan and Kill la Kill. Toonami ran in Australia for five years from 2001 to 2006, but didn’t return with its American counterpart.
I feel lucky that my generation shared Toonami. It means that most people my age can get riled up over Dragon Ball Z, always a good starting point for people looking to dip their feet back into anime.
Comments
6 responses to “What Made Toonami So Good”
Slightly informative but this one is more entertaining – http://www.tjomega.org/2013/07/thank-you-tom-toonami-amv.html
I never saw toonami, I grew up watching anime on CheezTV
Same here. But my grandma did have Foxtel and me and the brothers stayed we watched that.
Clearly it was a modified version was we never got TOM.
Yes we did get Tom. Just not all the voiced segments.
Yeah this is definitely a US article, for Australia cheez tv was around long before toonami
We get toonami quite a while after dbz was already popular on Cheez tv. We did get some shows like Gundam and Inuyasha on it then most anime got moved to adult swim.