I've never heard of this Toon Army before, but from the no amount of time I've put into precious research, it sounds dangerous and I think I'm glad the nightmare is over. Now I can unlock my doors and leave the zip down on my pants.

Really though, kinda seems a lot like a long-running CARTOONZZZ weekday block we had over here that went from awesome cartoons like Earthworm Jim and Freakazoid to 'Goku Has Huge Cocks In His Mouth' and 'Now A Bunch of French Cartoons Are Trying To Emulate It'. Nobody cared when the station eventually axed it.

I wouldn't worry too much. Friday nights will have this new action block of animes. Probably made of total bullshit.


Toonami barely aired any animes except for Naruto. I started to notice it after they stopped airing One Piece (bad idea) and dropped a few others (bobobo bo,etc). Anyway, toonami was always known for airing some of the best animes of the 80's and early 90's. Good times.

Later ol' Tom. Moltar was better though ;p.

btw,nice way of ending his last words. "bang".

RIP Toonami.

They'll get no hate from me, since they did air the likes of Big O, Gundam 08th MS Team/0080 and New Century Zoids. (Also edited Kenshin lolololol). Wouldn't have really gotten into the stuff were it not for them.

It is certainly agreeable that Dexter's Laboratory had some good fun moments. Perhaps it just clicked like that because of the brother and sister bond that was constantly challenged. But now to add to the sentimentality of what Toonami was good for.

I too can recall coming home from elementary, middle, and high school just to be turning on the TV in time for my favorite shows. I remember in the mid 90s, they aired Robotech. It was the first anime show that I went crazy over as a kid. I went so far as to record as much of it as I could on VHS tapes. Fun times trying to cut out the commercials and get everything exactly timed with the VHS tape's available duration and the placement of the other episodes.

Let's see, Robotech, Speed Racer, Sailor Moon, Outlaw Star, Rouroni(?) Kenshin, Gundam Wing/G/08th MS/Seed, DBZ/GT, Dragonball, Neon Genesis(Was this more of a Adult Swim airing?), Zoids, Pokemon (Hey, it was fun for the first 2-3 seasons), Big O, Zatch Bell, and the Miyazaki movies. No particular order, and I'll probably remember more later on.

I too would of not been more involved with discovering Anime if Toonami weren't there to indulge me when I was a kid. Now that I think about it, there wasn't an Adult Swim programming during the times of Robotech and Sailor Moon. At least not to my recollection.

Well, as a Canadian, I don't get CN at all. [Actually, I'm not sure if other regions can get CN, but ours doesn't--digital nor satellite.] I can't really mourn or 'not care' about Toonami disappearing cause I've never had a chance to watch it.

I hear what a lot of you are saying though--the crap shows of the 21st century. I miss the days of Animaniacs. [To be completely honest, I've never even seen an episode of Naruto--it never really caught me, I guess. I haven't even heard of half of the 'new animes' that CN seems to have aired. Ben 10? Bakugan? No idea. I guess I'm lucky.]

While most of the new episodes were fairly bad, there was one that stood out as excellent, to me. It was the one where every sound in the episode had the same timing and cadence as Mandark's laugh. Man, that cracked me right up.

Tom goes to a better place. Where all good animated tv show line-up hosts go. PO Box 963

Bang. Simmer down.

Um, excuse me, dear sir!

Anime wasn't big round these parts (USA) during Toonami's early years, in fact, I'd dare say that the popularity of the few good and many shitty anime series that Toonami churned out was the direct cause of American studios to adapt Japanese styles (which, as any fool knows, is never a good thing) after at least four years of its creation!

SO, my dear friend, shows on that Cartoon Network, even Nickelodeon, as well as what FOX aired certainly where not, and certainly in their classic forms are still not garbage. You are confusing today's TV-shitfest with yesterday's gold.

Then again, you may be a young person who's early memories of Toonami where all quite recent. If this is the case, then yes, everything on TV was horrible at that time.

As long as we have wonderful shows like Chowder and The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack we'll be golden. Just flip to the Discovery Channel when they aren't on.

Huh? All I meant was that in 1998, when Toonami was hitting its stride, a lot of what was on was garbage (or shows that had been in reruns forever). Dragonball Z and Sailormoon were very different from what was on when they premiered. A lot of the really great shows either had their runs before 1998 (the Disney Afternoon was long gone) or were showing repeats already (or older Hanna Barbara or Tom and Jerry shows were on). The only good things were the original "What.A.Cartoons." and I viewed them as a low-budget novelty at best. Oh, and South Park, which was the shit in 98-99. I forget if Doug (the original) and Rocko were at the end of their runs around this this time though, but I remember there were few little American cartoons competing for my attention in 1998 (Rugrats was huge, but I didn't like it myself...Admittedly, I didn't get into Family Guy and Futurama until their Adult Swim runs).

So I still don't understand this mentality that American animation went to shit by producing low-budget anime ripoffs. It went to shit in the late 90's by not replacing the high quality shows that were leaving the airwaves or were going into reruns like Tiny Toons, X-Men, TMNT and the Disney Afternoon shows (and hey, the last few good seasons of the Simpsons were around this time period as well, so...). It went to shit without a reliable afternoon block (which Toonami ended up filling the void for...I doubt it would have taken off if it had run against the Disney Afternoon in its prime) It got even worse once they started mimicking the anime shows, granted, but that was only because the anime shows (remember, this was also at the height of Pokemon-mania) pretty much walked up for free and garnered a whole new audience because it was fresh and the competition was light. In essence, you're faulting anime for being a quality product that people flocked to and was essentially tapped into by the suits here, that were making American cartoons. Blame the suits for the garbage, not the anime (although do blame the people dumb enough to watch these shows and consider them "entertainment")

If I'm forgetting stuff, feel free to let me know. But I don't recall many great American cartoons coming along in the later 90's and I regularly watch cartoons from the 40's and on, up to that point.

Oh, I know. That fact didn't escape me as I made my first post. However, when you look at the cartoons which aired parallel to TMNT, you'll note that Turtles was pretty distinctive for its time. Other shows featured robots, or ninja action, or teenagers being moody idiots, but not all at once. Nowadays, that's the standard formula.

I do think it's fair to say that different generations can be marked by specific cartoon trends, however.

• The 60s: The "stable" era. Studios produced umpteen six-minute shorts using a rotating cast of characters such as Yogi Bear, Bugs Bunny, Tom & Jerry, etc. Phil Silvers' legacy is further bastardized to pieces as he cries into a penniless grave.
• The 70s: Ragtag cliques of meddlesome teenagers and their danger prone animal mascots travel around unsupervised while solving spooky mysteries, and sometimes sing about it.
• The 80s: Shameless marketing executives use two recurring themes to sell toys:
  • "Plucky band of black-ops specialists/extraterrestrials/cutesy animal heroes use high-tech weaponry/super powers/good moral fiber to defeat poorly gimmicked villains with lousy aim/drug addictions."
  • "Princess Cuddlepants McRainbowshine in the Kingdom of Lotsa-Love protects her bumbling-but-well-meaning friends from the cranky warlock in yonder dark castle through the liberal use of sparkles."
• The 90s: The children of the 60s grow up and make cartoons that are just as much for themselves as they are the current crop of youngsters. Poignant sociopolitic commentary becomes the norm, and it's not delivered by Bugs Bunny for a change. Also, motherfucking dinosaurs.
• The 00s: Teenage ninjas collect cards to save alternate dimensions from giant mechabots.

Every decade's crop of cartoons has had its flaws. Not even the 90s are exempt, despite the overal quality of the era. I simply feel as though this last decade has been particularly lacking.

Brady's right, I'm no longer a kid and maybe I've actually matured to the point where I don't find the current material very entertaining. I'm wearing rose-colored glasses, yeah. I'm not even trashing anime, really. I know there are some really awesome series out there despite my lack of interest in the genre. I'm just seeing the influence it's had on American-produced cartoons and I find it upsetting. I must be getting old. Perhaps kids today can see the fundamental differences between Kim Possible, Code Lyoko, Xioalin Showdown and Danny Phantom. I sure don't.

One way or another, this generation took an obsessive liking to Japanese culture to the point where they began acting like retards about it. Toonami wasn't single-handedly responsible but I'm pretty sure it was a major player. That's the biggest reason I'm happy to see it go, even if a dying trend is just another case of history repeating itself.

For the record, while Toonami pushed the Japan obsession, I cannot fault the animation itself. The blame for the past eight year's trend of craptacular artwork and animation techniques lays in the hands of a different culprit:

Please, that looks polished compared to (animation) monstrosities like

Children's programming blocks also produced some crazy wacked out hella good. Sesame Street especially. e.g.,:

YouTube Video

YouTube Video

Chronologically, Dexter did come before Cow & Chicken. Were it reversed, I would've gladly chosen the latter as an example. They were all part of the "What A Cartoon!" graduating class, though (along with Johnny Bravo and Powerpuff Girls.) But all of those animators knew each other during the W.A.C. project's infancy, so it's fair to say they influenced each other equally. Genndy Tartakovsky managed to make it to the stage first, and with great success, however, and it wasn't long before other studios were mimicking his basic style. That's why Dexter gets the lion's share of the blame.

Rugrats, though somewhat ugly to behold, is at least unique in and unto itself; there aren't any instances of other studios trying to emulate the Klasky/Csupo style. They have the dignity to fail in their own right, not because they ripped someone else's style off.

Spongebob is actually pretty well done, all things considered. It owes an enormous debt of gratitude to Ren & Stimpy, however. Chowder is done by the same team and is a pretty solid offering.


Brady: Your Youtube links aren't working. Perhaps those particular ones don't allow outside linking. Either way, yeah, those old Sesame Street shorts were absolutely fucking bizarre.

No, Brady's youtube embedded videos do work. It's just that youtube is doing maintenance right now so they aren't going to display, but you can copy their links to view them if you must see them this second.

And as far as animation styles go the survivors of the WAC did well for themselves. I can understand the argument that other shows borrowed their styles or in some instances cheap flash animations as an easy way to appeal to audiences while not really offering anything new or interesting in the show itself. My chief complaint would be the shows that dumb themselves down to explain jokes for the audience or are just so cookie cutter that it's painful to watch.

A list of cartoons that ought not to be or failed to impress on a regular basis:
Camp Lazlo, My Gym Partner's a Monkey, Squirrel Boy, George of the Jungle (I just don't see how it's necessary), The Cramp Twins (how did this get 4 seasons?), Johnny Test (the current cartoon show I hate most), and fuuuck I'm getting lazy you get the idea.

I like Camp Lazlo. :(

Early on they kept running the same episodes, though, so it felt more like CN made it outstay its welcome.

Camp Lazlo had its moments but overall it failed to impress on a regular basis, and on top of that it's hard to tolerate another STUCK AT CAMP FOREVER show after Camp Candy.

What was wrong with Squirrel Boy? It was nothing incredible, but it managed to be funny on a pretty regular basis.

Squirrel Boy wasn't the worst thing ever but it was definitely no Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, or Kids Next Door.

I could watch KND forever if but for the wonderfully unique art style.

I dunno. Yeah, it had a ha ha in every show but the mediocrity of the setup was so bland it hurt. It just seemed like a waste of a time slot, and honestly if it wasn't for Richard Horvitz's amazing voice most of those laughs would not exist.

I'm sad that there's no Toonami, but I'm honestly surprised it was still going on. I actually thought it ended earlier. I guess I needed to pay more attention. Even though I hated DBZ I remember watching it just to kill time.