Toonami Info

Members of the Moltar’s Hub fan-run Toonami webpage have posted a transcript of their discussion with representatives of Toonami. Among the numerous interesting tidbits revealed:

Licensing broadcast rights to Lodoss and Nadesico have proven unsuccessful so far, although both series may make it onto Toonami someday. The Cartoon Network is not interested in Saber Marionette because it “feels too similar to Sailor Moon,” nor Generator Gawl or Gasaraki because they are both “a little slow.” There is interest in both Cowboy Bebop and Evangelion. No Miyazaki anime will be coming to the Cartoon Network as the American rights to all of it are owned by rival company Disney. “Macross” (no explanation of movie or TV) may be coming to Toonami in the future.

Due to licensing problems, the Cartoon Network will not be airing the Sailormoon movies. “As far as Sailor Stars goes, it looks grim.” The network has not aired Sailormoon 1st or 2nd season episodes recently as a reaction to over saturation of these episodes from broadcasts on other networks.

The Cartoon Network commonly doesn’t broadcast the original Japanese opening credits to anime TV series because they can’t get the distribution rights to these animation clips. The Toonami representatives explain, “The openings that the American videos contain aren’t even the original openings either. Don’t get caught up on those. They are created for the American market. Sometimes you see the original Japanese openings, but usually we can’t get permission for them. And generally, they are pretty cheesey anyway… Ours are better.” [The reference to American video versions means that in many cases even American home video openings contain altered footage ranging from American produced title screens and/or English language credits replacing the original Japanese writing to entirely new American opening animation sequences.]