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As I write this, news just broke, that Toonami Rewind is dead and won’t be returning at the start of next year. Instead being replaced with an hour of Checkered Past and then King of The Hill reruns marking another end of anime in prime time. When Toonami Rewind was announced in May of 2024 it was a surprise to many that Adult Swim would try running anime in the early hours of the evening again. The last time they tried that was in 2018 when Toonami ran from 9pm to 4am on Saturdays. That experiment was always about gauging an audience to see who would be around watching and it turned out no one did. Viewership for Toonami in primetime on Saturdays sounded like a great idea until you realize why they run from midnight to 3:30am. It’s because there’s less competition in the late hours of a Saturday night than in the prime hours of 9pm. It didn’t surprise me by the start of 2019 that Toonami would move back to its late hour time slots. Even with all the kid friendly shows and massively popular series that were running back then it wasn’t enough to sustain itself that early. With linear cable becoming more and more irrelevant year over year I guess it would make sense to try something like Toonami in prime time again but why didn’t Rewind pan out?
To explain this, we need to explain why Adult Swim has acquired what would have been Cartoon Network’s timeslots. In the 2020’s during the mess of the pandemic and consolidation of Warner Brothers, Cartoon Network became a mess. Be it from mismanagement of the brand or Warner believing that the linear network isn’t appealing to the youth like it once did, but the CN of today is not the same CN from twenty years ago. The network had already been losing hours to Adult Swim for years and with them decreasing its output in animated shows aimed at a young audience or shifting their shows to Adult Swim it’s clear that CN has no interest in holding onto the early hours of the night anymore. Maybe viewership for them in those slots aren’t putting out numbers like they used to so Adult Swim decided to gobble up those hours of the night in 2023. That’s where they formed Checkered Past, a two-hour block dedicated to running old shows in Cartoon Network’s library that hasn’t aired on the network in decades. I have been impressed with how it has been handled. They actually pulled old shows from CN’s vault and ran them. Not all of them because of course they are never going to run Johnny Bravo but rerunning What a Cartoon, Cow and Chicken, Grim and Evil, and Cartoon Planet those are some deep cuts that I never expected Adult Swim to run. Obviously, it made sense to extend that vision of the Checkered Past block to another area of nostalgia, Toonami. On May 19th, 2024 out of nowhere Toonami’s facebook page would make a big announcement that it would be launching its own retro/throwback block and would be replacing Checkered Past on Fridays at 5pm and they would call it Toonami Rewind. Toonami when it first began, ran in the late afternoon early evenings that would then transition into evenings on Saturday nights to where it is now. As mentioned previously this wouldn’t be Toonami’s return to early hours as the main block (as I will refer to, to keep things straight). At the time Toonami kicking off Adult Swim in those hours was amazing to see but it unfortunately was short lived. Toonami in prime time was nothing more than an experiment for Adult Swim to see if there’s an appetite for anime running that early in the night. The results were that while people did tune in for Toonami in prime time on a Saturday night there’s just too much competition from sports to Saturday premieres in those early hours for the block to find success at that time. However, 2018 was six years ago and the measurement of success on linear TV has changed quite drastically compared to the past, perhaps Adult Swim thought bringing anime to an early time slot again made sense. Thus Toonami Rewind was created and released on May 31st, 2024 with a lineup of classics any Toonami fan would remember watching way back in the day. Sailor Moon which would be the first time that Viz Media’s uncut dub would air on TV and would mark Sailor Moon’s return to Toonami, DBZ Kai an already established staple of the main block, and the original Naruto that ran on Toonami back in mid 2000’s and would rerun in 2012-2014. A small lineup with only the return of a couple shows and a title already available in their library. Which is fine it’s not like Toonami when it was brought back in 2012 had a lot to work with either, but they made it work with what they had. If viewers supported the block and continued to tune in, Adult Swim likely would look into acquiring more content for it. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like Rewind panned out in the long run as those few shows would be the only things to run on it. I have seen many online points to Adult Swim recently announcing Family Guy’s return as a reason for its demise and honestly it’s not just one thing that sets off a chain like that. It’s always about viewer retention and it seems that most aren’t interested in watching anime that early in the evening. They could have easily kept Rewind going even if they went the same route with Checkered Past by having it be an hour block. Instead they chose to kill it out right because it likely makes less sense to continue paying money for acquired content that appeals to a niche than what already works. For Adult Swim Checkered Past is a block of freebies. Reruns that were already in Cartoon Network’s vault that wouldn’t cost anything to rerun on Adult Swim. Comedies also have wide appeal and unless you are Dragon Ball Z action anime has little appeal in the early hours of the night. As cool as it was that Adult Swim tried this I understand why it didn’t pan out even with the shows it had. Moving forward the main block will continue onwards at midnight to 3:30am every Saturday. As for the content it acquired, anything’s possible but I personally am not expecting Sailor Moon or Naruto to move to the main block. Instead I suspect that Adult Swim will just sit on what they have and let those licenses lapse. Disappointing for sure but considering they concluded Sailor Moon’s run with the end of its first season it’s clear Adult Swim only acquired season one and nothing more. Probably why they did an hour of Sailor Moon, burn through the content it had acquired and move on when it ran out of episodes. I assume for the main block they would have to pay more to acquire it but it would include everything not just season one but in the end I don’t think they view it worthwhile. They likely learned their lesson with Outlaw Star in 2017. A show people begged for them to rerun for years and while I have no confirmation on how it has performed it seems more than likely for the amount they paid for it along with it’s viewership late into the night, I assume for them that acquiring an old series like that didn’t pan out. Considering, we wouldn’t get a whole lot of “classic” anime with the only exception in recent years being Paranoia Agent in 2020.
Even if this did perform massive numbers there would still be the issue of acquiring nostalgic content for the block as most if not all the real popular options are locked behind Crunchyroll, and we know that it’s not doing business with Adult Swim these days and most of the other nostalgic shows aren’t licensed or would take more effort to acquire said content. Even getting content from Warner Bros Discovery’s vault wouldn’t be free; it would cost them a chunk of change just to rerun the original Thundercats series or Johnny Quest.
Toonami Rewind was a neat idea on paper but it’s clear as day that the audience who want to tune into watch old anime outside of Dragon Ball Z are small. Viewers already have tons of options at their disposal to watch the classics compared to how it was back when Toonami was new. Viewership even in the earliest hours of the evening just cannot hold compared to sporting events or syndication of sitcoms animated or otherwise. It doesn’t surprise me that after eight months this experiment is over, and Adult Swim is going to play it safe from here on out. With nothing but Fox syndication taking up a large chunk of the early hours. I feared they’d do something like that eventually and while I don’t like it, I understand it’s what works. Viewers are creatures of habit after all, and it believes that reruns of Fox programming will be far more lucrative with viewers than any action anime in the early hours. I applaud the effort but unfortunately, Toonami Rewind was never going to be long for this world. It’s a tough sell to those tuning in early and it seems the block only appealed to the old viewer, the same Toonami fan who’s stuck around with Adult Swim’s incarnation since 2012.
