We buried it all today.
Click to viewIn 1997, Power Zone was dropped for a new block of similar interest called Toonami, taking from the word (Tsunami, or tidal wave) It would carry many of the same shows Power zone showed, but in addition would add popular dubbed anime to attract kids and teenagers to the television. Unlike any other program block of it's time, Toonami came with a robot mascot named TOM who was more popular then the former Moltar, which carried the role of opening and closing toonami as a proper host and talking during commercial breaks. In later years, TOM got his own series of mini movies depicting his role in space conquest and personal stories. But aside from being a unique host with an attitude, many of his shorts included clips from the program block talking about all sorts of topics, such as Heroism, villians, women, and ideas in fiction.
Backed up by teen idols, up and coming athletes and stars, there was also a unique soundtrack to toonami that had never approached television. The audience grew around the new shows and TOM's role as host, giving television a whole new definition.
Over the years, TOM was sacked for later models of the same being and voice, better robotic frames that agreed with the Toonami ideal of better, efficient, evolution. It dug out the old cartoon way of stale stories, repeating themes, and the "Everything's fine at the end of 20 minutes" ideal. The continuing saga from toonami did little to kill it's viewers imagination, but in fact, encourage it.
Some of Toonami's programming became evident to be less then child appropriate as the years went on and required to be filtered. Because of this, Toonami was bumped off of Weekday nights and moved to Saturday's instead. On this same ideal, an even bigger programming block was formed under toonami's wing. In the early 2000's, a new block called "Adult swim" came to fruition, using the same stylistic music and television combination with dark anime shows that began late at night. Rather then keeping with a figure like TOM however, Adult swim had no host, but stylistic text with plain black and white font between "bumps" that did everything from announcing the schedule to answering viewer mail.
Adultswim's less strict censoring allowed for the program block to expand away from anime to draw in an adult crowd less interested in anime, but american comedy. Thus, Home movies, Aqua Teen Hungerforce, Space Ghost: Coast to Coast, and Sealab 2021 became popular shorts only shown on Adult Swim, pushing Anime to later in the night.
Toonami's horizons were dimmer with the announcement of yet another program block called Miguzi. A block for american action shows with a strong Anime undertone, such as Teen Titans, Totally Spies, and Code Lyoko. It ran many shows and lineups of anime specials such as IGPX (Immortal Grand Prix) and Giant Robot Week, and month of Miyazaki.
As Toonami's audience aged, and new viewers took the scene, More and more shows were bumped to the lineup such as Megas XLR, Samurai Jack, and Justice League, and in later years, gave way to Naruto, One Piece, and Pokemon Diamond and Pearl.
The most recent TOM has taken a strong turn from the original TOM that showed in 2000. Originally voiced by Sonny Strait, the voice is now voiced by Steve Blum and the trademark visor and design have been traded for other characters and a new look and face to stay in tune with newer viewers.
The evolutionary 4th look of Toonami also brought in a broader eye toward popular culture and reviews. Toonami regularly has game reviews out for gamers, including previews and tips for anyone interested. Similar to Adultswim's friday fix lineup, Toonami also launched Toonami jetstream for viewers to stream toonami shows online at their leisure. Toonami Jetstream also included many shows no longer airing on the latest Toonami lineups.
Despite original fan's varying attitudes about the course of the programming, Toonami revolutionized how cartoon's were presented. It was one of the first programming blocks with a large variety of anime shows, and many other channel's have caught onto the trend, such as WB and the Scifi channel.
But after 11 years on Cartoon Network, Toonami is to be canceled, September 20th 2008. It's shows are expected to be either brought into Adultswim or dropped.
Goodbye childhood.