Anime’s biggest celebration dies a quiet death

According to Chris Snellgrove
| Published 32 seconds ago

“When did you first get into anime?” is the kind of question reserved mostly for middle-aged nerds. Anyone younger than that grew up in a culture completely steeped in Japanese animation along with Western cartoons that clearly intoxicated their Eastern cousins. For many ’80s kids (myself included), the answer to that question was Toonami, Cartoon Network’s key programming block that introduced countless young people to legendary anime productions such as Dragon Ball Z and Sailor Moon. This year, the network brought back some of its original programming through a special Friday block called Toonami Rewind, but its recent cancellation sent shockwaves through the nostalgia nerd community.

Toonami Rewind is dying

The original Toonami died in 2008 and was resurrected (via an April Fool’s prank, no less) in 2012 and continues to air the program every Saturday night. The idea behind Toonami Rewind was to essentially double this block of programming each week, with Saturday night focusing on newer shows and Friday being reserved for a throwback block consisting of Dragon Ball Z Kai, Sailor Moonand Naruto. The program block intros and interstitial bumpers still featured modern Toonami Tom and Sarah as hosts, and the short block intros often referred to nostalgic memories such as coming home from school and putting off homework to watch killer cartoons.

It’s fair to say that Toonami Rewind, like regular Toonami, has always had a very specific audience in mind… not only did viewers have to have cable TV of some stripe (increasingly rare in the era of cord-cutting), but they had to prefer watching hours of commercial-laden programming to binge-watching your favorite shows streaming. The network has clearly decided that not enough people are tuning in, so Toonami Rewind is being replaced by more Checkered Past (with the original Cartoon Network). However, for this nostalgic fan, the death of Toonami Rewind is like watching an old friend die for the second time.

That’s not to say that this block was perfect. I was disappointed from the start that Toonami Rewind didn’t include new dubs over the older Tom and Sara animations. I’d love to hear more sweet music from that era of Toonami promos, and it’s kind of sad that I had to turn to archive videos YouTube instead of relying on Cartoon Network itself. Still, this programming block unlocked a lot of fond memories of how to fall in love anime for the first time, and it also served as a way to introduce younger otaku to these core series.

Toonami Rewind was good and had the potential to be great and I just kept waiting for Cartoon Network to invest more in this nostalgic block. But it remained static from the start, never really deviating from a small handful of intros and the same stable of shows. Forget watching block hugs later on beloved shows like Gundam Wing. Judging by its selection of shows, Toonami Rewind has remained eternally stuck in the 90s.

For this reason, I’m sad to see the death of Toonami Rewind, but I’m not that surprised. This blockchain seemingly lacked robust network support from the start, and it’s a bit of a miracle that it made it to the airwaves at all. All things considered, I’m just thankful that the main Toonami block lives on (I need to get my fix of both Invincible Fighting girl and Mashle: Magic and Muscles), although Rewind aired its last broadcast on December 27.

Sadly, Toonami Rewind died with a whimper rather than a bang, and few of us witnessed the silent death of anime’s greatest celebration. Younger fans may not remember or even care, but we almost certainly wouldn’t have had as many Dragon Ball Z spinoffs and games (anyone else is really bad at Sparking Zero?), if the original Toonami hadn’t turned it into a worldwide sensation. Toonami Rewind was an imperfect but perfectly charming celebration of the good old days, and if anyone needs me, I’ll try to convince David Zaslav to collect the Dragon Balls and bring them back to life.