Cartoon Network's 1st Original 'Toonami' Series

Rick Ellis writes "Sunday at the 2005 Tokyo Anime Fair in Japan, Cartoon Network unveiled the highly anticipated new series, IGPX. It's a co-production with Production I.G. and Bandai Entertainment and will be the Cartoon Network's first original 'Toonami' series."

Comments

Hope for some new stuff...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd love to personally see Naruto on Toonami. Nice to see CN is diversifying though. Production IG has been involved with lots of anime intros for video games like Xenogears.

Subbing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Toonami's one of the most popular "programs" on CN right now- what are the odds that we'll start to see things subbed, or at least competently dubbed?

(First?)

Re:Subbing?

[CoffeeJedi]

fans have been asking CN to use the SAP (second audio program) for the original Japanese soundtrack for a while, but no luck yet

when a network gets the broadcast rights to a dubbed program or movie (anime or foreign film, or anything), do they get the rights to the original soundtrack too?

Re:Subbing?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that the FCC requires that if you use SAP for a second audio channel, that channel's closed caption track must be in the same language, meaning you could see it in english with english subtitles (if you call the misspelled crap in the CCs subtitles) or japanese with japanese subtitles.

Re:Subbing?

[fat man with a monke]

Given the fact that series (Yu-Gi-Oh, Yu Yu Hakusho, Cardcaptor Sakura, DragonballZ) have shown that kids don't care about competent dubbing, I doubt Toonami will have too much of it. But comparing the [Adult Swim] anime to the subbed version, the dubs of many of the series they run have been very high quality.
Fullmetal Alchemist, [Adult Swim]'s latest anime draw, has even appeared in its entirety, with no content dubbed out (at least, with the last episode comparison I read). Also given the fact that Toonami has been relegated to the late-afternoon Saturday block once a week, its popularity has gone down (at least in the communities I frequent). Right now, I think [Adult Swim] is the main anime draw for cartoon network, and will stay that way.
By the way, Naruto is coming to Toonami. Which means it'll be shown probably once a week on Saturday. All 200+ episodes of it. That's over 4 years. And even if they do show it multiple times on Saturday, Cartoon Network will probably only buy it a couple seasons at a time, and just keep re-showing the first few until people get tired of it. That's what they did with DBZ and Yu Yu Hakusho Samurai Champloo is coming also coming to CN, on [AS].

Anime Powerpuff Girls

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe this explains the Anime version of the Powerpuff Girls that has been spotted? Maybe CN is trying to get a presence in Japan?

Re:Anime Powerpuff Girls

[Neko-kun]

Mind you there is a rather decent doujinshi. Hasn't been updated in two weeks, but for the quality that is produced, I have no complaints.
http://bleedman.snafu-comics.com/

New? Hardly

[Masami Eiri]

This show aired before, but as a miniseries. Only difference is now its a full-fledged series.

IIRC, it wasn't all that great either.

Power Puff Girls Z

[Deathlizard]

Well that explans this then.
http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/av/docs/20050401/ta f.htm

It's about 3/4th's down the page. or click the link below for the quick picture.

http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/av/docs/20050401/ta f32.jpg

Re:Feh

[CoffeeJedi]

Why do all these shows nowadays focus on some "competition" like a race, or a card tournament? The stupidest one I've seen is that kid's show on saturday morning where a giant arena of people gathered to watch kids fight with spinning tops! It was like ten-thousand people all looking down at a little 2 sq-ft board with little spinning tops smacking into each other, while prebuscent kids yelled at the top of their lungs to... I don't know... get the tops to hit each other harder or something. It made no sense.
There's never any real conflict in these shows, the 'evil' character is just another player in the 'tournament'. When Optimus Prime and Megatron fought, they didn't pull out little decks of cards or summon holographic monsters to fight for them, they went out there and beat the shit out each other! And it wasn't for some lame 'tournament', it was because the Decepticons were trying to take over the whole freakin' world! I tell ya... thank god for Justice League Unlimited, or kids today would have no sense of proper cartoon violence!
[end rant]

Re:Feh

[R.Caley]

Why do all these shows nowadays focus on some "competition" like a race, or a card tournament?

1. You don't need to come up with plots.
2. You have an obvious way to spin off merchandise.
3. ????
4. Profit!!!!

Re:Toonami?

[Xoo]

You do realize that Toonami has been around since 1997 on the Cartoon Network. The world was a much different place back then.

I agree the tsunami was a terrible tragedy but there is no reason for them to change the name of their Saturday evening block of cartoons because of it.

Re:Toonami

[CoffeeJedi]

yes we do, because:

A: CN is not a children's network, have you seen [adult swim] that was my first exposure to Cowboy Bebop, i, like many other people, never really knew about anime before that

B: this isn't a poorly dubbed show, this is coproduced in America, so the dialogue will be natively written and performed in both languages

C: they've been "riding this Japanese fad" for over 10 years, how long do fads last?

D: alot of kids watch anime on Cartoon Network because its their only exposure, this affects the next generation of sci-fi fans. alot of people on Slashdot probably have kids who are into Toonami and anime, and would be interested in this

E: because its cool, its news... its for nerds... and if you're an animation fan (like many /.'ers) its stuff that matters

Re:Toonami

[tuffy]

Maybe you and your friends are big on downloading fansubs, but the majority of people aren't. Most people get their anime on TV, some from the DVD rack at the store and a small minority from BitTorrent. And since TV exposure has a huge impact on popularity and DVD sales, what the Cartoon Network is airing matters.

First CN produced kiddy japanimation..

[stratjakt]

Maybe for the kids block "toonami", but CN shelled out at least for the translation of Big O, and IIRC, they co-produced it.

That was for the Adult Swim action block (Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, Big O). This is Toonami (Dragonball, Pokemon, Teen Titans).

Frankly, I'd say that Teen Titans anime' style would qualify it as the "first".

There's nothing special about this announcement, /. is just parroting another press release.

Re:Dorks

[Anonymous Coward]

I know, they need to get a real hobby, like D&D, frikkin' nerds.

Re:Toonami

[tuffy]

I'd rather watch high quality dubs than poor quality fansubs. In my experience, fansubs are usually really crappy video quality, while dubs (on the net) are usually ripped from DVD and are much beter quality.

Fansubs typically come out at low quality because they're done on a fast deadline. Many fansub groups crave popularity so they work to get the show subbed and on the torrent as fast as possible. So the quality suffers.

DVDs often have more accurate subtitles and the quality of dubs is good (in general) and continues to improve because the majority of the DVD buying market demands it.

Who digs giant robots?

[TCQuad]

It's a co-production with Production I.G. and Bandai Entertainment and will be the Cartoon Network's first original 'Toonami' series.

Um, no.

Production I.G.

[wickedj]

They have some of the best animation studios around. If any of you ever watched Kill Bill, the animated scene with O-ren in it was done by Production I.G. Top notch stuff there.

Minor correction, major ranting.

[John Pfeiffer]

Not only is this not the first time an American cable network has had a hand in producing an anime, it's not even the first time Cartoon Network has... They were the driving force behind the production of the second season of 'Big O' (An homage to all the old super robot shows...with an unfortunate name.), several years after the original was produced.

Personally, I can't see this being good, I'll reserve judgement of course, but still... We Americans tend to destroy even the best of series with general carelessness when it comes to execution.

Without resorting to non-opposable digits, I can count the English dubs that don't make me reach for the nearest sharp object with which I can kill myself. And I can't even begin count the number that are so bad that I'll settle for a blunt object to just beat myself unconscious.

We have more movie and television media than any other country on the planet...why can't we find voice actors who can, you know, act? Of course, the simple answer is, we can, even I know they're out there... But the licensees don't feel like paying for a decent dub...and so, that's all we get exposed to. Just once, I'd like a mainstream channel to air anime with SUBTITLES. (Even International Channel changed most of their anime programming to dubs...so what exactly is the point of the channel now?) But then, I don't really care. I don't have cable or broadcast or anything... I just download raws of the latest series from Japan and wait patiently for the DVDs. ^_^

As usual, just my 2 yen. I hate everything, deal with it. :)

Re:Feh

[Mr. Slippery]

little kids love toy robots.

But chicks dig giant robots.