By Chris Snellgrove | Published
“When did you first get into anime?” it’s the kind of question reserved mostly for middle-aged intellectuals. Anyone younger than that grew up in a culture completely infused with Japanese animation and Western cartoons that are clearly cousins to their Eastern cousins. For many kids of the ’80s (myself included), the answer to that question was Toonami, Cartoon Network’s seminal programming block that introduced a lot of young people to popular products like anime. Dragon Ball Z again Sailor Moon. This year, the network brought back another of its original programming through a special Friday block called Toonami Rewind, but its recent cancellation sent shockwaves through the nostalgic Nerd community.
Toonami Rewind Dies
The original Toonami died in 2008 and was resurrected (for an April Fool’s Day episode, at least) in 2012, and continues to air shows every Saturday night. The concept of Toonami Rewind was to double this episode of programming each week, with Saturday nights focusing on new shows and Fridays being reserved for a throwback block featuring Dragon Ball Z Kai, Sailor Moonagain Naruto. Program block intros and interstitial bumpers still feature modern Toonami Tom and Sarah as hosts, and short block intros often refer to painful memories such as coming home from school and skipping homework to watch killer cartoons.
It’s fair to say that Toonami Rewind, like regular Toonami, always had a specific audience in mind…not only did the audience have cable TV for a certain line (a rarity in the era of cord cutting), but they would have cable TV for a certain line. they should prefer to watch hours of programming full of commercials rather than just watching their favorite shows on the air. The network apparently decided there weren’t enough people tuning in, so Toonami Rewind is being replaced with Checkered Past (featuring a Cartoon Network original). For this naive fan, though, Toonami Rewind’s death is like watching an old friend die a second time.
That doesn’t mean this block was perfect. From the beginning, I was disappointed that Toonami Rewind didn’t include new voice dubs in addition to the Tom and Sara animations. I would have loved to hear more of the great music from that era of Toonami promos, and it’s a shame I had to turn to archived YouTube videos for my fix rather than relying on Cartoon Network itself. Nevertheless, this block of programs opened up many fond memories about falling in love with anime for the first time, and also served as a way to introduce young otaku to this basic series.
Toonami Rewind was great and had the potential to be great, and I kept waiting for Cartoon Network to invest more in this nostalgic block. But it remained unchanged from the beginning, it didn’t really deviate from the small presentations and the same stable of shows. Forget watching block hugs later loved ones shows like Gundam Wing. To judge by the selection of games, Toonami Rewind was forever stuck in the ’90s.
Because of this, I’m sad to see Toonami Rewind die, but I’m not that surprised. This block seems to have lacked strong network support from the start, and it’s a wonder it made it to the air in the first place. All things considered, I’m just thankful that the main Toonami block continues (I have to fix both Invincible Fight Girl again Mashle: Magic and Muscles) despite Rewind airing its finale on December 27.
Sadly, Toonami Rewind died with a whimper rather than a bang, and only a few of us witnessed the quiet death of anime’s greatest celebration. Younger fans may not remember or care, but we probably won’t have a glut of Dragon Ball Z spinoffs and games (anyone else is really bad Sparking Zero?) if the original Toonami hadn’t already turned it into a global sensation. Toonami Rewind was an imperfect but charming celebration of the good old days, and if I need anything, I’ll be trying to convince David Zaslav to collect the Dragon Balls and wish them well.
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