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As I write this, the news just broke that Toonami Rewind is dead and won’t be returning at the start of next year. Instead, the block is being replaced with an hour of Checkered Past, followed by King of The Hill reruns, marking another end to anime outside of late Saturday nights. 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 prime time on Saturdays sounded like a great idea until one realizes why anime tends to run from midnight to 3:30am: less competition in those late Saturday hours than in the prime hour of 9pm. It didn’t surprise me that by the start of 2019, Toonami would shrink back to its late hour time slots as it simply couldn’t compete against Saturday staples like sports and other television premieres. 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, it would make sense to try something like Toonami in an earlier time slot again, so why didn’t Rewind pan out?
To explain this, we need to explain why Adult Swim has acquired what had historically been Cartoon Network’s timeslots. In the 2020s, during the chaos of the pandemic and consolidation of Warner Brothers, Cartoon Network turned into a bit of 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. Either way, the CN of today is not the same CN from twenty years ago. The network had already been giving up hours to Adult Swim for years, and with the decreasing output in animated shows aimed at a young audience and shifting of shows destined for CN moving to Adult Swim, it’s clear that CN had no interest in holding onto the early evening time slots. Maybe their viewership numbers in those slots weren’t putting out numbers like they used to, leading Adult Swim to a decision to gobble up those early evening hours in 2023. That’s where they formed Checkered Past, a two-hour block dedicated to running old shows from Cartoon Network’s library that hadn’t aired on the network in decades. They actually pulled old shows from CN’s vault and ran them. Certainly not everything from the old days was on their slate, but re-running shows like What a Cartoon, Cow and Chicken, Grim & Evil, and Cartoon Planet make up some deep cuts that I never expected Adult Swim to run, so I have been impressed with how it has been handled.
Obviously, it made sense to extend that vision of the Checkered Past block to another area of nostalgia, Toonami. On May 19th, 2024, Toonami’s Facebook page announced the launch of its own retro/throwback block that would be replacing Checkered Past on Fridays at 5pm, called Toonami Rewind. When Toonami first began, it ran in the late afternoon/early evenings, later transitioning into prime time on Saturday nights, and ending up up in the late-night Saturday hours in the revived Adult Swim era of the block. As mentioned before, while the block dabbled with an earlier start, Rewind would be the earliest the block would air since the mid-2000s.
Because it had been six years since the last “early Toonami” experiment, the measurement of success on linear TV had changed quite drastically, and so perhaps Adult Swim thought bringing anime to an early time slot made renewed sense, and thus Toonami Rewind was created, first broadcasting on May 31st, 2024. The new block featured a lineup of classics any long-time Toonami fan would remember from the earlier CN era of the block, albeit with some of them taking on a modern twist in their own ways. Sailor Moon would kick off the block, but now being aired with Viz Media’s uncut dub, the first time the modern dub would air on TV. DBZ Kai followed it as the streamlined cut of a long-time Toonami staple, airing for an hour with double episodes. Finally, the original Naruto, which previously ran on the original Toonami back in the mid-2000s as well as having re-run in 2012-2014. It was a small lineup with only three shows, one of which was already available on and off on the main block, but much like its older sibling’s lack of a diverse lineup when it was revived in 2012, Toonami Rewind managed to make it work with what they had, depending on viewers to support the block and continue to tune in. If that happened, Adult Swim likely would be able to look into acquiring more content for it, but unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like Rewind panned out in the long run as that trio of shows would be the only things to run on it for the life of the Friday block.
I have seen many online who have pointed to Adult Swim recently announcing Family Guy’s return as a reason for Rewind’s demise, but honestly, it’s not just one thing that leads to an end result like this. First and foremost, viewer retention matters and it seems that many 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 run as a one-hour block, but instead, they chose to kill it outright 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 thanks to it consisting of reruns that were already in Cartoon Network’s vault. There’s effectively no cost to rerun those shows on Adult Swim. Comedies also have a much wider appeal, and outside of Dragon Ball Z, action anime holds little appeal in the early hours of the evening. While it was cool 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 on at midnight to 3:30am every Saturday, but as for the content acquired for Rewind, anything’s possible. I personally am not expecting Sailor Moon or Naruto* to move to the main block and 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 seems clear that Adult Swim only acquired season one and nothing more. This might explain why they shifted the lineup in July to reduce DBZ Kai to a single episode while doubling up on Sailor Moon episodes. This would allow them to burn through the content they 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 I don’t think they view that as worthwhile. They likely learned their lesson with Outlaw Star in 2017, where they had a show people begged them to rerun for years and while I have no concrete information on how it performed, it seems more than likely that the amount they paid for compared to the viewership it received late into the night, I can only assume that didn’t pan out, especially considering we wouldn’t get a whole lot of “classic” anime after that, with the notable 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 as we know, they’re not doing business with Adult Swim these days. Most of the other nostalgic shows are no longer licensed or would take more effort to acquire said content. Even getting content from Warner Bros Discovery’s vault wouldn’t necessarily be free; it could cost them a chunk of change just to rerun things like the original Thundercats series or Johnny Quest.
In the end, 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. Even in the earliest hours of the evening, the viewership numbers 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 the tried and true syndicated Fox animation titles 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 that it is what works. Viewers are creatures of habit after all, and Adult Swim clearly 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 was 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.
*Editor’s Note: This article was originally posted on 12/19/24 before the 01/11/25 Toonami lineup was published in which Naruto was announced to be shifting over to the main Saturday block.
