User blog:Concernedalien11780/Hey, Toonami Fans.

Hey, Toonami fans, this is Concernedalien11780. I've been a fan of Toonami ever since I got out of boarding school in 2013. When it was still a Cartoon Network block in the early 2000s, my mom and sister conditioned me to fear it with its dark atmospherics, creepy voice of TOM, and violent shows. Of course, that didn't stop me from watching it from time to time, but I still felt weird watching it until I was 11. Even when it was on Cartoon Network, it always skewed older, so I guess it only makes sense that I would feel that way. I didn't even notice when it was taken off the air in 2008. During that period of time in late 2008/early 2009 on Cartoon Network, the channel's main blocks were Har Har Tharsdays on Thursday nights for comedy shows such as Chowder, Flapjack, Total Drama Island, 6teen, and Stoked, You Are Here on Friday nights for action shows such as Ben 10: Alien Force, The Secret Saturdays, and Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Flicks on Sunday nights for airing family movies, and, in the place of Toonami on Saturday nights, Action Flicks, in which an animated film that skewed towards older audiences and was full of TV-14 violence would air. This was a weird time for Cartoon Network. While the network seemed to always attract kids by producing shows that parents would have reservations about letting their kids watch because of the old marketing tactic of "if your parents don't want you watching it, it must be cool" with classics such as Johnny Bravo (a show about a guy trying to get laid), Ed, Edd, and Eddy (about three twelve-year-old conmen), Codename: Kids Next Door (about parents and authority as evil and puberty as an illness) The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy (a show about the GRIM FRICKIN' REAPER, THE OLD-FASHIONED MYTHOLOGICAL PHYSICAL EMBODIMENT OF DEATH living with two children) My Gym Partner's A Monkey (which, according to some chick that wrote in the teen section of the local paper when it was on, promoted revenge as an acceptable way of dealing with problems) and, of course, Toonami, they seemed to be trying too hard and were even hypocritical at times. As critically acclaimed as Star Wars: The Clone Wars was at the time, its advertising was so dumb that, even as a twelve-year-old, I would never want to watch the show. They put warnings in front of Total Drama Island saying "THIS IS RATED TV-PG. PARENTAL GUIDANCE IS SUGGESTED" every time it aired, yet edited out almost all of the content that warranted the TV-PG rating that was kept in the show in its original Canadian airing because of different social standards between the two countries. Fortunately, Adventure Time started airing in 2010 and was TV-PG from the get-go, with frequent use of "crap" and "suck" in dialogue and frequent suggesstive and drug references and disturbing imagery, and most importantly, no warning before the show. This was a sign of changing times and what was considered acceptable for kids. Not every kid was allowed to keep watching Cartoon Network, but that was OK because of the large adult fanbase of Adventure Time and Regular Show, which is probably the perfect bridge between Cartoon Network and Adult Swim shows. Turner Broadcasting and Time Warner understood this and decided to start airing Adult Swim earlier, with the actually-pretty-family-friendly-if-you-think-about-it show King of the Hill airing at times that families could still all be awake to watch it together. But never did anyone expect that a simple April Fool's joke in 2012 would turn into the revival of the only real anime block on cable television. Toonami would not work with Cartoon Network's modern schedule and agenda, so it was made into an Adult Swim block. Cartoon Network's marketing does not match the tone of most of their shows. The only shows they want people to watch are on the New Thursdays block, and they relegate the rest to early Saturday morning to get ad money. While Gumball has earned its kids' audience, and Adventure Time, Regular Show, Steven Universe, and We Bare Bears have all earned their kids-and-adults audiences, I don't even believe that the videos sent in and aired in commercials are even of real fans, at least in the cases of Teen Titans Go and Uncle Grandpa. I think that they're just kids of various Turner Broadcasting employees getting paid to say good things about these shows. I don't think kids would appreciate being told what show is "their new favorite show", in the case of Teen Titans Go. They want to decide that for themselves. I initially thought Steven Universe was really dumb because of how it was advertised and had to learn of its large Internet fanbase in order to be convinced to give it a fair chance, which shows just how big a problem this form of mis-advertising is. Fortunately, there is no mis-advertising with Toonami. It aired ended Cartoon Network action shows that were popular with adults for some time before airing all anime, and as sad as it is to have those removed, the anime is usually good enough. My favorites to watch are Dragon Ball Z Kai and Attack on Titan. Sometimes I wish that Disney XD and Nicktoons had their own blocks of adult animation at night that included one week a night of airing the anime dubs that Adult Swim couldn't obtain the rights to. Thank you for letting me into this community, and sorry for not talking a whole lot about Toonami as a block, talking about multiple loosely related things, and taking some of those loosely related things too seriously. I guess I have more to say about the history of Toonami and the management of Cartoon Network/Adult Swim than why Toonami actually matters to me, and I often get more passionate than necessary in some descriptions. Even though I did not talk about anything political per se, which is the usual reason I disable comments in blog posts, I think that I was probably controversial regardless with my opinions of Cartoon Network. If I said something out of line, please contact me in the chat section of my user page and we can try to come to a common understanding of one another. Thanks, and remember to stay gold. Bang.