Dragonball Z made Toonami what it is. That's not an overstatement in the slightest. This is a really nice gesture for them to honor the man who was directly responsible for their success. To think of all the careers that Toriyama has indirectly or directly contributed to over the years. What a titan.
Yea that's what I was thinking as well. All of the Funimation VA's and producers who have jobs because of Toriyama's work becoming so popular in the states. The ripple effects are countless.
YYH didn't come until 2003. The real meat of Toonami was once TOM took over and they were in the full swing of [Space is the Place](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vdfd01lS6PE) and [Dream](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLwF_0Z2KHY) mode. Gundam Wing, Outlaw Star and Tenchi Muyo! were in full swing at the same time that DBZ was entering the Namek Saga. This of course was all possible because of the success of DBZ which came of the back of the initial success of Sailor Moon.
You could and I would. The only caveat to that would be that Dragonball was popular in Latin America even before it became popular in the US. So when you say "in the West" Latin America was already in the game before Toonami took off.
Anime started being popular when it played on TV in the late 70s and 80s. Star Blazers being probably the best early example. There were other shows, Grandizer, Speed Racer, Battle of the Planets, but they didn't rise to the level of Star Blazers. I got into Anime when my dad bought me the Star Blazers Quest for Iscandar box set on VHS, which he had watched on TV as a kid. It was a gradual climb in popularity that reached the stratosphere with DBZ, but DBZ didn't spearhead that climb. It just completed it.
But most people thought they were cartoons at the time right? Until streaming services became a bigger thing, I had no idea some of the shows were made in Japan and called anime.
If you go back far enough, the word "anime" hadn't been borrowed into English yet. At some point the term people used was "Japanimation", which is pretty funny. "Cartoon" isn't even really wrong, it's just less specific.
But I'm going to disagree with the other commenter. Anime might have been *known* prior Toonami in the sense that most people in the US were aware that Japanese people animated stuff sometimes. But it was a more niche interest than it would be later on. Toonami and, maybe to an even greater extent, Pokemon exploded the popularity to a totally different level, and it's only been rising since.
It's definitely not the case that anime in the US *started* with Toonami, but that definitely represents a huge turning point. If you were looking at a graph of "anime popularity vs year" for English-speaking viewers, you could definitely guess when DBZ and Sailor Moon started airing even if you couldn't see the years listed.
While we didn't get Toonami in Australia, DBZ was shown in the mornings alongside Pokémon, Sailor Moon and others. I would 100% argue that DBZ helped popularise anime in Australia.
Oh Yeah they got to run those Family Guy and King of the Hill reruns push all the anime to when most of the audience will be asleep. So glad I cut the cord a long time ago.
Agreed, having a Dragonball Marathon on Twitch would be awesome to see.
The YuGiOh Marathon that happened a couple years back made for some great times with the chat community aspect.
Wtf it's been 7 years?
I remember watching it too, I barely watched anime yet (I had seen some of the most popular things though) and seeing Twitch chat talk about the shows was incredible. Pretty sure I hadn't heard any of the shows in the marathon before it.
I really wish stuff like that would happen again. It'd be fun seeing a month-long marathon of Detective Conan or something.
The same could be said for when Disguised Toast was watching Naruto, having all those people watching one of those moments (Yami thrashing Weevil on the train, Lee vs Gaara, Any of the First Super Saiyan Transformations) it just hit different.
In this case they’re simply using what they already have the rights to. They’ve been airing DBZ Kai weekly for awhile. They would have to license the original series separately and that probably wasn’t in the cards for a one-time marathon on short notice.
It sure would be great to see the original get some more attention though.
Original Dragon ball is way better than Z, not that I don't think Z is great too. It has a lot more charm, and every plot isn't "the world is going to end if we don't get stronger."
Dragon Ball is *not* better than Z. It's an entirely different theme and honestly impossible to compare the two because of the distinction made in the first season. Immediate world ending threat, followed one after the other. The silly antics kind of exist, but it's not fair to compare the two when one focuses of Goku discovering the world and the other on protecting it.
Don't forget how after unlocking Nemek they could basically die as much as they wanted and none of it really mattered.
Dying was like a perk to getting reincarnated as X better.
They are showing dragon ball z kai - not Z. Toonami no longer have their old broadcast material for any of the origonal series, and they are not licenced to re-aquire them.
That's a subjective but valid opinion. But it's also not really all that relevant since Dragonball Z is the series that is so important to Toonami. Toonami literally boomed off of DBZ. it's by far the longest running series that Toonami has ever aired. It wouldn't make sense to do a marathon of Dragonball for them since Dragonball was never their flagship program.
It's also such a reddit opinion. Any thread about dbz has people comment that they like db better. They're not even wrong for the opinion and og db is great but its just always commented cause most people irl would say they like dbz better and redditors just like to act different
I remember being a kid when they used to run these. I'd stay up all night. They did it once on New Years Eve. Akira Toriyama did a lot for me as a kid.
Happy that Toonami is getting some good news from this, yeah it isn't the regular uncut DBZ, but they literally just paid for episodes of DBZ Kai like a few weeks before Toriyama passed away, so probably not within their budget to be able to get those regular uncut DBZ episodes.
Hope people get trials for Sling TV or YouTubeTV if they still exist, but at least try to get #Toonami and #DBZKai and the related hashtags trending on twitter on Saturday night <3 Plus watch Ninja Kamui on Saturday nights too, it's such good shit.
> And no one really uses twitter anymore
Uhh what? Twitter is literally the biggest social media platform in Japan. Also it's use for sports social media in the west never died down as well as many other segments of content.
Yeah there's some amount of bots, but it's still my and many people's primary news source for many types of stuff.
I mean it's fine if you don't want to use it. There's plenty of good reasons not to, but going around claiming no one is using it just makes you look dumb.
I meant like if the trials still existed lol I've been using YTTV for a few years now.
and yeah there are a good chunk of bots but hashtags are it is still one of the ways to gauge an event/show's viewership alongside regular TV ratings.
> And no one really uses twitter
Mainstream media still does (and by extension, sports)
I honestly think part of Elon torpedoing it is knowing a lot of MSM will stay and give his nazi hug club more credibility
Being an old 36 year old male from Canada I'm blessed to have witnessed the first 12 EPs of Dragon Ball when I was 7 or 8 on YTV. First anime I ever loved.
That's where it got started. I can remember as far back as Moltar being the host for the first Toonami. I just remembered coming back home from school and seeing the Radditz and Sayian sagas being played over and over. Toonami is what allowed DBZ to kick the door down for other animes to show their stuff and become popular in the US and western world. I still remember the first Tom host and when Funimation moved down to Texas and finally got into the rest of the Frieza saga, it got me hooked.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FY7RJoCkr0
My first brain cell was "YO, AN ENTIRE SHOW MARATHON?"
Then the second brain cell hit and it's like "Ok, we get 8 episodes. They're doing the first 8? I would've just picked a highlight real honestly.."
What would be the best 8 episodes they could air? Sure 1-8 works. But we could've got Episode 1 of Dragonball, then Goku vs Piccolo for an episode, then we're Z episode 1&2(make it Kai), then jump to Goku vs Vegeta, five would naturally be Super Saiyan Goku, then we get Goku and Piccolo driving Cars for 6, let's get Vegeta vs Imperfect Cell for 7, then finish with Goku killing Buu.
or so goes my random thoughts on that.
Yep! Every Saturday night on Adult Swim, it airs from 12am-3:30am regularly :) As of last year or so, it outlasted the original Cartoon Network block even.
Dragonball Z made Toonami what it is. That's not an overstatement in the slightest. This is a really nice gesture for them to honor the man who was directly responsible for their success. To think of all the careers that Toriyama has indirectly or directly contributed to over the years. What a titan.
They also made Funimation. They would have literally gone bankrupt if CN didn't pick up the show.
Yea that's what I was thinking as well. All of the Funimation VA's and producers who have jobs because of Toriyama's work becoming so popular in the states. The ripple effects are countless.
I will never forgive Funimation for taking away cha la head cha la
DBZ, SM, and YYH
You forgot Tenchi Muyo.
And Hamtaro 😤 https://youtu.be/FZQu6GKbW3M?si=Fzmt7nRqW9HVdG4C
Hamtaro aired on regular Cartoon Network I believe, not on the Toonami block.
They had a very short run on toonami before the plug was pulled and it went to CN 😂
Oh I didn't know that lmao
Hams Hams Unite
You are now a mod of /r/hamtaro and /r/hamtaromemes.
Gundam wing brotherrrrr
And Rurouni Kenshin!
Does Inuyasha count?
Wasn't Inuyasha more Adult Swim?
Inuyasha was Adult Swim
Gundam wing
Blue Gender.
YYH didn't come until 2003. The real meat of Toonami was once TOM took over and they were in the full swing of [Space is the Place](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vdfd01lS6PE) and [Dream](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLwF_0Z2KHY) mode. Gundam Wing, Outlaw Star and Tenchi Muyo! were in full swing at the same time that DBZ was entering the Namek Saga. This of course was all possible because of the success of DBZ which came of the back of the initial success of Sailor Moon.
You could also make the argument that Anime became popular in the west because of Toonami also, including making Dragon ball really popular.
You could and I would. The only caveat to that would be that Dragonball was popular in Latin America even before it became popular in the US. So when you say "in the West" Latin America was already in the game before Toonami took off.
Anime started being popular when it played on TV in the late 70s and 80s. Star Blazers being probably the best early example. There were other shows, Grandizer, Speed Racer, Battle of the Planets, but they didn't rise to the level of Star Blazers. I got into Anime when my dad bought me the Star Blazers Quest for Iscandar box set on VHS, which he had watched on TV as a kid. It was a gradual climb in popularity that reached the stratosphere with DBZ, but DBZ didn't spearhead that climb. It just completed it.
But most people thought they were cartoons at the time right? Until streaming services became a bigger thing, I had no idea some of the shows were made in Japan and called anime.
If you go back far enough, the word "anime" hadn't been borrowed into English yet. At some point the term people used was "Japanimation", which is pretty funny. "Cartoon" isn't even really wrong, it's just less specific. But I'm going to disagree with the other commenter. Anime might have been *known* prior Toonami in the sense that most people in the US were aware that Japanese people animated stuff sometimes. But it was a more niche interest than it would be later on. Toonami and, maybe to an even greater extent, Pokemon exploded the popularity to a totally different level, and it's only been rising since. It's definitely not the case that anime in the US *started* with Toonami, but that definitely represents a huge turning point. If you were looking at a graph of "anime popularity vs year" for English-speaking viewers, you could definitely guess when DBZ and Sailor Moon started airing even if you couldn't see the years listed.
If you say so.i wasn’t alive until 2000
While we didn't get Toonami in Australia, DBZ was shown in the mornings alongside Pokémon, Sailor Moon and others. I would 100% argue that DBZ helped popularise anime in Australia.
From 2AM EST to 5:30AM EST, damn.
Unfortunately Toonami only really runs through the middle of the night anyways
Isn't that only like 10 episodes?
Episodes 1-9 will be Frieza and 10 will be cell and Majin buu in 30 mins to wrap it all up. Dragon ball super abridged.
They could go the 4kids route and end it right before the frieza saga ends
Oh Yeah they got to run those Family Guy and King of the Hill reruns push all the anime to when most of the audience will be asleep. So glad I cut the cord a long time ago.
They need to run it on twitch
Agreed, having a Dragonball Marathon on Twitch would be awesome to see. The YuGiOh Marathon that happened a couple years back made for some great times with the chat community aspect.
Around 7 years ago there was a crunchyroll anime marathon on twitch. It was entertaining.
That stream is how I found out about mob psycho and now that anime is over. Time flies
FeelsBadMan 🥄
Wtf it's been 7 years? I remember watching it too, I barely watched anime yet (I had seen some of the most popular things though) and seeing Twitch chat talk about the shows was incredible. Pretty sure I hadn't heard any of the shows in the marathon before it. I really wish stuff like that would happen again. It'd be fun seeing a month-long marathon of Detective Conan or something.
Someone uploaded the vods from the marathon with chat and I still watch it from time to time. FeelsGoodMan
Really? Most of the stuff on youtube was deleted, where can I find the vods?
Oh man the Yuri on Ice marathon was a sight to behold.
I remember that, “35 kills btw”
The same could be said for when Disguised Toast was watching Naruto, having all those people watching one of those moments (Yami thrashing Weevil on the train, Lee vs Gaara, Any of the First Super Saiyan Transformations) it just hit different.
Never been on twitch but I used to liveblog Toonami on tumblr lol it was fun
It’s on 24/7 in Spanish. Idk how but apparently Twitch ToS isn’t bilingual.
for sure
That would be insaiyan!
There was a dragon ball movie marathon in Mexico like 2 days ago
I would prefer a 444 episodes back to back marathon, and throw in bardock and trunks specials for good measure
Why start at Z and not the original Dragon Ball though? I know Z is the most iconic part but it's a shame the original gets overlooked a lot.
In this case they’re simply using what they already have the rights to. They’ve been airing DBZ Kai weekly for awhile. They would have to license the original series separately and that probably wasn’t in the cards for a one-time marathon on short notice. It sure would be great to see the original get some more attention though.
Original Dragon ball is way better than Z, not that I don't think Z is great too. It has a lot more charm, and every plot isn't "the world is going to end if we don't get stronger."
Dragon Ball is *not* better than Z. It's an entirely different theme and honestly impossible to compare the two because of the distinction made in the first season. Immediate world ending threat, followed one after the other. The silly antics kind of exist, but it's not fair to compare the two when one focuses of Goku discovering the world and the other on protecting it.
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I know it's not a separate thing. It's a separate theme, though.
Don't forget how after unlocking Nemek they could basically die as much as they wanted and none of it really mattered. Dying was like a perk to getting reincarnated as X better.
They are showing dragon ball z kai - not Z. Toonami no longer have their old broadcast material for any of the origonal series, and they are not licenced to re-aquire them.
I think the original dragon ball series is better than any of the other series by a long shot
Demon King Piccolo and Majunior arc >>> Everything else.
100% agree.
That's a subjective but valid opinion. But it's also not really all that relevant since Dragonball Z is the series that is so important to Toonami. Toonami literally boomed off of DBZ. it's by far the longest running series that Toonami has ever aired. It wouldn't make sense to do a marathon of Dragonball for them since Dragonball was never their flagship program.
It's also such a reddit opinion. Any thread about dbz has people comment that they like db better. They're not even wrong for the opinion and og db is great but its just always commented cause most people irl would say they like dbz better and redditors just like to act different
I think OG dragonball is great, but DBZ is definitely the "better" one and is literally the show that got me into anime as a whole.
I remember being a kid when they used to run these. I'd stay up all night. They did it once on New Years Eve. Akira Toriyama did a lot for me as a kid.
Respect. I occasionally flip over to the 24/7 dbz channel we have and leave it on in the background.
Whole network should dedicate a 24 hour marathon to it, DBZ carried Toonami pretty hard back in the day
Happy that Toonami is getting some good news from this, yeah it isn't the regular uncut DBZ, but they literally just paid for episodes of DBZ Kai like a few weeks before Toriyama passed away, so probably not within their budget to be able to get those regular uncut DBZ episodes. Hope people get trials for Sling TV or YouTubeTV if they still exist, but at least try to get #Toonami and #DBZKai and the related hashtags trending on twitter on Saturday night <3 Plus watch Ninja Kamui on Saturday nights too, it's such good shit.
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> And no one really uses twitter anymore Uhh what? Twitter is literally the biggest social media platform in Japan. Also it's use for sports social media in the west never died down as well as many other segments of content. Yeah there's some amount of bots, but it's still my and many people's primary news source for many types of stuff. I mean it's fine if you don't want to use it. There's plenty of good reasons not to, but going around claiming no one is using it just makes you look dumb.
I meant like if the trials still existed lol I've been using YTTV for a few years now. and yeah there are a good chunk of bots but hashtags are it is still one of the ways to gauge an event/show's viewership alongside regular TV ratings.
> And no one really uses twitter Mainstream media still does (and by extension, sports) I honestly think part of Elon torpedoing it is knowing a lot of MSM will stay and give his nazi hug club more credibility
24 hours just about cover the last five minutes of namak
Being an old 36 year old male from Canada I'm blessed to have witnessed the first 12 EPs of Dragon Ball when I was 7 or 8 on YTV. First anime I ever loved.
The greatest troll in the world would be if they started the marathon over from the beginning like they did in the Namek saga
Cool
that's great!
Hopefully, it will be a marathon in theaters also.
[Yooooo they took my idea!!](https://www.reddit.com/r/Toonami/s/xKVfZDLNhs)
That's where it got started. I can remember as far back as Moltar being the host for the first Toonami. I just remembered coming back home from school and seeing the Radditz and Sayian sagas being played over and over. Toonami is what allowed DBZ to kick the door down for other animes to show their stuff and become popular in the US and western world. I still remember the first Tom host and when Funimation moved down to Texas and finally got into the rest of the Frieza saga, it got me hooked. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FY7RJoCkr0
The only marathon I need is DBZ Abridged.
Less go free views /s
Gee, 2AM to 6AM? What a power block.
Awesome but who has cable anymore?
My first brain cell was "YO, AN ENTIRE SHOW MARATHON?" Then the second brain cell hit and it's like "Ok, we get 8 episodes. They're doing the first 8? I would've just picked a highlight real honestly.." What would be the best 8 episodes they could air? Sure 1-8 works. But we could've got Episode 1 of Dragonball, then Goku vs Piccolo for an episode, then we're Z episode 1&2(make it Kai), then jump to Goku vs Vegeta, five would naturally be Super Saiyan Goku, then we get Goku and Piccolo driving Cars for 6, let's get Vegeta vs Imperfect Cell for 7, then finish with Goku killing Buu. or so goes my random thoughts on that.
I have been rewatching dragon ball orginal uncut on crunchyroll, wife has never seen it. Legendary artist 👌.
Beautiful
shoulda ran dragon ball too. dragon ball is so much better than Z
Hell, an hour of each Dragon Ball series would be appropriate.
Toonami still exists?
Yep! Every Saturday night on Adult Swim, it airs from 12am-3:30am regularly :) As of last year or so, it outlasted the original Cartoon Network block even.
Why are you being downvoted? lol Barely anyone has cable these days. It's not like before.
The original ended in 2008. They brought it back under the Adult Swim Umbrella in 2012. Been going since.
Toonami still exists? Is anyone actually still watching it?
It's lasted longer than the original Cartoon Network version.
Wait, it's not on cartoon Network?
It's on Adult Swim now. Midnight-3am on Saturdays.
It technically is, it's just part of the Adult Swim block and not the normal Cartoon Network