Toonami Returns To Weekday Afternoons After 20 Years With Weekly 'Toonami Rewind'
Toonami Returns To Weekday Afternoons After 20 Years With Weekly 'Toonami Rewind'
Toonami has its own checkered past to explore, with some modern upgrades, every Friday starting May 31
There’s a new flavor of Checkered Past coming to Fridays, courtesy of a better cartoon show. Toonami, the classic anime and action cartoon block that has been residing on late Saturday nights in Adult Swim hours since 2012, is expanding once again, but in a way that’s unique to this era thus far. Adult Swim is launching Toonami Rewind on Friday, May 31 from 5 to 7 PM, shrinking Checkered Past to Mondays through Thursdays.
Toonami creator Jason DeMarco confirmed on Twitter, shortly before deactivating the account in favor of Bluesky that Toonami Rewind will use "classic older Toonami music and some older packaging" that were recreated in HD for the 20th anniversary festivities in 2017. He also asked fans on both platforms what shows they want to see. The initial lineup brings the Viz Media dub of Sailor Moon to linear television in the United States for the first time, leading off the block in the 5 PM slot. Of course, it was the DIC Entertainment dub’s run on Toonami and Cartoon Network (with a sprinkle of Toonami on Kids WB!) that was a major popularizer of anime in the west, and this slot brings the show in general back to US television seemingly for the first time since its 2002 departure. It will be followed by an hour of Dragon Ball Z Kai, the streamlined and remastered version of the original Dragon Ball Z. This version of the series’s latest stay on regular Toonami began in February at 2:30 AM, but will become 2:00 AM on the latest lineup configuration as My Adventures with Superman season 2 takes over the midnight premiere slot from Ninja Kamui starting June 1 (early June 2) after the two-episode season premiere next week. Closing things out is the original Naruto series at 6:30 PM. Its sequel series, Naruto: Shippuden is being worked through on main Toonami, lately having been at 2 AM and will move to 1:30 AM under the same reconfiguration.
Toonami is well known to have begun in 1997 on Cartoon Network, in fact its Midnight Run events seem to have been a progenitor for Adult Swim, which was created in 2001. Those beginnings were as an afternoon/early evening block in the very hours Toonami Rewind will play, though it sometimes would gain the 4 PM hour. It was April 17, 2004 that the block was moved from its weekday slot to Saturday nights from 7-11 PM. That was where the block would gain Naruto (and others) and spend the next 4+ years before its September 2008 cancellation. Adult Swim’s The Room streak-breaking April Fools Day 2012 prank resurrected Toonami and was so well-received it would permanently return by the end of that May, where it has outlasted the original run of the block through many more and expansions and contractions while still maintaining its core slots of where it stands at midnight to 3:30 AM. It took 20 years for Toonami to return to its original home daypart in some fashion.
Likewise, Checkered Past has gone through many changes, including adding shows like Evil con Carne and Cow and Chicken to its lineup. As it stands, its original format of four shows Monday-Thursday and a focus on one for all four slots Friday has been replaced. It is currently Ed Edd n Eddy in the 5 PM hour and The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy in the 6 PM hour Monday to Thursday, and Dexter’s Laboratory and Samurai Jack doing Fridays. With Toonami Rewind, this has been crunched in a manner that makes the former Monday to Wednesday and the latter being the new Thursday. The promo, at least fan-captured is below. It’s up in an official capacity on the Toonami Facebook page.
Sources: Anime News Network, Toonami Wiki (1, 2, 3), Cartoon Network/Adult Swim Archives Wiki