As you may have already heard, Toonami ended its 11 years of transmission. I spent a good amount of my college years watching Toonami. We all knew this would end one day but its hard to imagine. But Toonami has dwindled the last few years. I have not seen the block in a few years; I think I stopped watching around the time they started to show Naruto (ninjas are stupid btw).

I would say that the downward fall started to happen around the time Toonami ended its weekday block and moved exclusively to Saturday. I see that as a stupid move but I guess things change. That’s the way life is. Toonami was also the cause of many times skipping class. I would rather watch that then deal with an Criminal Justice class.

The great thing about Toonami besides TOM, all the little videos, and series intro was that it really helped introduce a lot of people to anime. That is probably the best thing to happen to anime in the US. Hopefully, the SciFi channel can take up the slack for anime on TV. Wish Adult Swim would not decrease the amount of anime it shows but I guess they are focusing on other things.

Toonami, you will be greatly missed. Here’s to you.

Gia over at a geek by any other name got news that the Sci-fi channel will be showing Gurren-Lagann in July. I wonder if they will show the subtitled version or did they somehow get the dubs for it. I thought the dubs would not be finished by July but by next year. The first volume of the DVD with only the subtitles will be out on the 8th of July. So I wonder which the Sci-fi channel will show? I think gia will give us more details later.

By the way, the shows name is Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann not just Gurren-Lagann. I like calling it Tenge Toppa Gurren-Lagann. Gurren-Lagann just doesn’t sound as cool. It’s not Cool and Spicy. And doesn’t that sound like a fighting move? You know like when they have these ridiculous long named moves, like some the moves in this series. (If I remember correctly.)

Sidebar: I didn’t know the subtitled DVDs had 9 episodes on them. I was not really planning on purchasing this series but that’s not a bad price.

Edit: I just saw this news post at ANN saying that the deal to show Gurren-Lagann on the Sci-fi channel has not been finalized. So maybe the Sci-fi channel will not be showing it? Who knows but it probably will.

Edit: Bandai Entertainment confirms the deal to show Gurren-Lagann on the Sci-fi channel. Also it appears that they will be showing the dubbed version of the series.

It looks like Adult Swim will be showing Death Note on October 20th. I thought Adult Swim was redeeming itself by showing Cowboy Bebop again but I guess not. Of course, Adult Swim has been going down the crap shoot for a few years now. Honestly, I only use Adult Swim at night to help me go to sleep. I’m so glad that I don’t get my anime from TV anymore.

Now, I’d like to point how I can see why Adult Swim picked this show. It’s due to the fact that for some odd reason Death Note is very popular and this would only bring more viewers to Adult Swim. But I really don’t see it as all the great. There are a ton of other series they could have chosen from but I guess they will continue to pick crappy series.

Well, last nite was the first nite of the Scifi channel’s anime block, Ani-Monday. They started it off with the premiere of Ghost in the Shell Solid State Society. It’s was a pretty good movie although that was actually my seconding viewing of the movie. I saw it last year when it came out in Japan (watched the fansub of it). Anyways, the dub was pretty good but not much different than the dub that was for the Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex series. They used the same voice over actors as the series, which I find to be one of the better dubs out there. The one big problem with Ani-Monday’s showing of the movie was that they botched up fitting the movie to the TV format. They didn’t properly letterbox the movie so it looked a little weird but I think HDTVs may not have had that problem but I don’t really know. Currently, I don’t have access to an HDTV.

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This is a heads up for those who care. Tonite at 11pm (EDT) the Scifi channel premieres its anime block, Ani-Monday. They will be starting it off with the latest GiTS movie, Ghost in the Shell Solid State Society. I believe this will be the first showing of that movie in the US. The DVDs of it don’t come out until July.

I think most anime viewers that I know of don’t get their anime fix from TV. But I like to check these types of things out to see how they turn out. The dubs for the Ghost in the Shell series are actually pretty good and I think the same voice actors are doing the movie as well.

Anyways, go check out Ani-Monday (I know it’s a stupid name). We need more of these types of things to bring more to the anime industry. Hopefully, they don’t screw things up. More later.