July 17th, 2008: Let's Go Retro

Eric thinks that it might be a good idea for Toonami to delve into the vaults and bring forth some old favorites, and here's why.

http://www.toonamifan.com/toonamigoingretro.html

As the resident nitpicker around here, I'll save Jeff Harris the trouble. Robotech was not part of the original Toonami lineup in 1997. You have everything else right. Thundercats & Voltron were separated by "Cartoon Roulette" (the old H-B shorts mixed in with Fleischer Studios 1940's Superman shorts) for about 15 minutes. Another round of "Roulette" separated Voltron from TRAoJQ.

Robotech hit the block in 1998. As for your retro idea, I'm totally for remembering the roots of cartoons. In fact, [adult swim] took a big chance in 2007 by airing the original 1963 Astro Boy. The 1st anime series with regular characters & a semi-ongoing plot. The haters piled on it because they were wanting Death Note (which they got in October) or the latest & "greatest" anime... plus AB was in Black & White. WTF?! Now it's living out its last days on AS Video with 3 episodes to go. There were 104 eps dubbed, but if [as] tried to put the last 52 on TV, **it would hit the fan... AGAIN!

Your idea belongs on Boomerang, but I'm afraid it would be buried. I still agree with your last sentence:

I will add: You also can't know where you are and appreciate how far you've come.

If Escaflowne wound up on Toonami I'd eat my shoe.

I would love that. I enjoyed seeing it during its brief run on the now deceased FOXKids.

I agree and disagree. I think something showing old animation is needed, the best(first) three seasons of pokemon are branded "new episodes" and shown after transformers animated("reinvented" old idea).

I disagree for two reasons:

1. That means dropping all but one series, if keeping that. Naruto is keeping us afloat for now, like it or not Ben 10 and Jack aren't enough to keep us alive. We aren't anywhere near influential enough anymore to get away with this, if we have a good year with a re-made TOM(likely given the factors, so this isn't out of the question) we might be able to do something.

2. Demographic. Plain and simple. CN is obsessed with it at the moment, it's why we lost JLU, and got teen titans for it. Cartoon Network want's to be a kids network and remade TOM to show it. Up until this week we've had dancing kids all day. Comedy all night. Turner wants this to be a comedy channel made for two demographics, Toonami's youngest are CN's maximum age, it's oldest barely capable of legally watching [AS].


So in short we have one show and are a now slightly warped piece in the animation puzzle.

I personally like the idea of bringing back an classic for a new audience. I'd actually like to see those old Superman shorts again. Or maybe even Silverhawks?

Silverhawks was actually put on a few advanced Toonami schedules way back in 1999-2000 if I've heard this right, but never actually aired.

And I've advocated Toonami giving Outlaw Star a quick one-time run as well, because I bet the people watching Naruto have never seen Outlaw Star, considering fansubs of that one is rare and the DVDs aren't exactly in high circulation.

Still though, the Holy Grail of retro-Toonami should-have-beens is undoubtedly Escaflowne. Toonami wanted that one bad and it would've been given a full, not-quite-as-edited run on the block. It is likely Toonami would've remained gender-balanced a little longer if they had landed Escaflowne instead of, say, Outlaw Star or Mobile Suit Gundam.

It would be nice to see Thundercats on Toonami again. It's one of my favorite shows. I really enjoyed watching Escaflowne on On Demand too, so if Escaflowne came to Toonami that would definitely be a good look.