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“What are you saying? Nobody’s getting expelled, okay? Listen up, on my word, as the current number one seat, I’ll accept a Food War Challenge from anyone. It’s not like I outright beat Chef Tsukasa and Rindo in a one-on-one in a Food War or anything. So, I hold this seat only temporarily. If you battle me, you don’t have to wager anything of your own. Anyone wants to come after me, be my guest. I got a ways to go but I’d like you all to stick with me. We could go totally crazy in this exciting and endless wilderness. So, let’s butt heads.”
– Soma Yukihira, Food Wars: The Fourth Plate (Ep. 12)
The Toonami Trending Rundown for November 26-28, 2021. It was Thanksgiving weekend, and Toonami gave us plenty to be thankful for. Among other things, fans enjoyed some additional Blade Runner content to get fans immersed into the universe and to promote Black Lotus, followed by a double dose of Yashahime and the finale of Food Wars! The Fourth Plate.
The weekend started with Toonami airing on a Friday night (albeit without the bumpers due to time constraints) for the first time since the Naruto Hundo event in August 19, 2007, as Adult Swim showcased the Blade Runner short Black Out 2022, before moving on to the feature presentation of Blade Runner 2049. On Twitter, #BladeRunner2049 would trend in the United States as a result of the film’s buzz.
Toonami still aired their regularly scheduled lineup the night after, and in a week of food and being thankful of what you have and accomplished; it was appropriate that the main feature of the night was the season 4 finale of Food Wars! In regards to the social media trends on the night, #Toonami would trend in the U.S. on Twitter alongside Blade Runner: Black Lotus, Yashahime, and Food Wars! Yashahime also saw a character trend with Setsuna, and #Toonami also trended on Tumblr. The full list, including statistics and tweet counts from the Twitter app, can be seen below.
For the night of December 4-5, 2021, following the premiere of Blade Runner: Black Lotus Episode 5, Toonami would marathon all five episodes of the Blade Runner anime series that have aired up to that point. Unfortunately, no Toonami related hashtags trended during the night.
This week’s feature was a new animated music video for “Paincantation” by CONAN. You can check it out below.
This past Friday, the newest film to the Sword Art Online franchise, titled Sword Art Online: Progressive -Aria of a Starless Night-, made its premiere in U.S. and Canadian theaters. The film covers the first 121 pages of Volume 1 of the Progressive light novels, expanding on the events of Episode 2 of the first season, including an anime-only storyline featuring a new character named Mito. Bryce Papenbrook and Cherami Leigh return to voice Kirito and Asuna respectively, joined by Anairis Quinones as Mito, Kayleigh McKee as Mito’s SAO original avatar, Ryan Colt Leavy as Asuna’s brother Koichiro, and Kimberley Anne Campbell as Argo. If you’re interested, check out Fandango’s website to look up viewings near your area, and give your support to the anime industry on the big screen.
As previously mentioned, given that the SAO films are canon to the overall storyline, and given the uncertainty of Toonami being able to show the events of the films if and when the show returns for successive seasons, we’d highly recommend checking this one out if you can. And if you do wish to see Sword Art Online back on the block, it helps to let @Clarknova1 and @AniplexUSA know on their respective social media outlets.
This past Thanksgiving weekend, I attended San Diego Comic-Con: Special Edition, the first time in two years that the event has taken place. No announcements were made that were of note for Toonami viewers, but I did manage to snag an interview with Bryce Papenbrook to discuss some of his latest roles. Look forward to that in addition to a report coming soon.
On December 1, Toonami revealed the schedules for the December 11-12 and 18-19 editions of the block. Tonight’s broadcast looks to be the final “regular scheduled” edition of Toonami for 2021, as following the premiere of Blade Runner: Black Lotus episode 05, the block will see a tripleheader of the final three episodes of Yashahime’s first season. The block will finish off with the regularly scheduled episode of Naruto Shippuden, followed by reruns of Dr. Stone and Dragon Ball Super.
In addition, on the night of December 18-19, 2021, Toonami will premiere the 6th episode of Black Lotus, which will be followed with the airing of the 2003 anime anthology film The Animatrix. The Rick and Morty anime shorts and the rerun of Dragon Ball Super will end the night. The airing will be due in part to promote the upcoming fourth installment to the Matrix franchise, The Matrix: Resurrections, releasing on December 22 in theaters and on HBO Max. In addition, according to executive producer Joseph Chou, the idea of a Blade Runner anime series came as early as when he was producing The Animatrix all the way in 2001. That idea eventually culminated to what Blade Runner: Black Lotus is today, and airing The Animatrix at the same time Blade Runner: Black Lotus is airing makes sense.
As previously mentioned, on November 24, Jason DeMarco tweeted that “Frankly, we’ve had some unforeseen issues getting the shows we had lined up (issues out of our control). Once we are in the new year, we’ll launch some new ongoing series & things will settle down!” However, on Tuesday, Jason subtlety tweeted out that the Toonami crew has hit a significant road bump with Sony over bringing back Demon Slayer for season 2, which may or may not be a contributor to the issues regarding bringing in new programming.
When sharing the article by Screen Rant titled “10 Classic Sci-Fi Films That Deserve The Anime Treatment After Blade Runner: Black Lotus,” he mentioned that he would love to make a ROBOCOP anime series happen. However later in the discussion thread, he mentioned that “Sony’s busy freezing us out of Demon Slayer and who knows what else, I don’t see them letting me make ROBOCOP! Ha.” Whether the Toonami crew are dealing with Sony just playing hardball in the negotiations to bring back Demon Slayer, or is it a sign of deteriorating relationships with Aniplex and Funimation since their acquisition of Crunchyroll, is anyone’s guess. But that’s in the realm of speculation since we don’t know much beyond that, and perhaps beyond the scope of this trending rundown report. Hopefully it’s just a situation where cooler heads will eventually prevail and Toonami and Sony-Funimation Group will complete a deal to bring back Demon Slayer and other shows in the new year. Unfortunately, all we can do now is wait and see what happens, though it doesn’t hurt to let @AniplexUSA, @Crunchyroll, and @Funimation know on their respective social media outlets that you want them to continue working with Toonami. Let them know your show requests and concerns, but of course, politeness goes a long way.
Until next week, congrats to New York City F.C. for winning the MLS Cup, stay safe, be sure to visit blacklivesmatters.carrd.co and anti-asianviolenceresources.carrd.co to see what you can do to help the fight against racial inequality, and continue to do your part to stop the spread of COVID-19 and protect others by following your local health advisories. Get fully vaccinated if you are able to, wear a mask in public and practice social distancing by staying six feet/two meters away from one another, if possible, and wash your hands thoroughly for at least 20 seconds.
Legend: The shows listed are ordered based on their appearance on the schedule. Show trends are listed in bold. The number next to the listed trend represents the highest it trended on the list (not counting the promoted trend), judging only by the images placed in the rundown. For the Twitter tweet counts, the listed number of tweets are also sorely based on the highest number shown based on the images on the rundown.
November 26-27, 2021 Trends
United States Trends:
- #BladeRunner2049 [#18]
November 27-28, 2021 Trends
United States Trends:
- #Toonami [Trended with #FoodWars and #Yashahime]
- #BladeRunnerBlackLotus [#23]
- #Yashahime [#25]
- #FoodWars [#6]
Tweet Counts:
- #BladeRunnerBlackLotus [1,554 tweets]
- Setsuna (From Yashahime) [10.7k tweets]
Tumblr Trends:
- #Toonami
Only Toonami on [adult swim] on Cartoon Network.
