Will Toonami survive without new Dragon Ball Content?

[WittyUsername]

Speaking of which, and it would obviously never happen but if Toonami really needed fresh Dragon Ball content they could always air Kai again, but this time with the Ocean dub. It would be like a treat for people who were fans since the days they aired the old Saban episodes.

I’m not even sure they’d be allowed to do that.

[Kunzait_83]

I have a hard time believing the industry moved away from more adult material and put all its focus on what you deem to be tripe. My guess is more mature material got as much focus as it got before.

That guess would be VERY much stone cold factually incorrect.

The disparity in the level of general anime fandom and licensing attention and focus given towards "mature" anime throughout the 80s and 90s in the U.S. versus the 2000s is nothing short of staggering, and for much of the 2000s (particularly in the latter half) there was DEFINITELY a pretty major and overwhelming downswing in general fan and licensing industry focus on mature titles in favor of children's/Shonen (and Ecchi/Moe). If you were in any way invested in anime from the early 90s through the mid 2000s, it was flat out IMPOSSIBLE not to notice.

Its certainly gotten at least a TAD bit better in the 2010s thankfully (entities like Crunchyroll and Discotek have certainly helped tremendously in that department; oddly enough, I would also argue that Tumblr has as well, where there's been a fairly active Seinen/Gekiga fanbase that spreads a ton of images, gifs, and media from those kinds of anime, thus raising awareness of them - I myself being among them), but we're still quite a ways off from the Seinen/Gekiga dominant period that defined so much of the Western market pre-Toonami.

But particularly from around 2003/2004 or so up to around 2010-ish maybe, there was a period of time where (with relatively RARE exceptions) adult-focused mature anime had all but nearly completely evaporated and slid off of the mass mainstream zeitgeist for this stuff, and a great deal of the kinds of titles that Hellspawn had mentioned earlier (and which you correctly note are now MUCH easier to find for most people) were largely out of print and had all but vanished from easy access or visibility (outside of obscure torrent sites), particularly for younger/less experienced fans.

For a fairly long stretch of time in the 2000s, it was often a desperate hunt for people (like myself) who actually knew & remembered these titles from before and actually knew what they were looking for in the first place to actually locate reasonably priced avenues to view them again.

Mid to late 2000s, I remember spending HOURS upon hours upon hours absolutely scouring the internet - oftentimes in the most ridiculously obscure corners - looking for titles that back in the late 80s/early 90s were as simple and easy as a trip to the local video store to access and view at anytime, and combing through rare, over-priced out of print DVDs and VHS tapes that in a few cases would well exceed triple or quintuple digit prices.

Streaming services and companies like Discotek (which didn't come about until a bit later from this point) as well as some social media outlets, really did do a LOT to all but totally rescue this type of anime from completely vanishing entirely into the ether.

I don't think Toonami is responsible for that. They responded to audience demand.

Once again, quoting myself:

And if you want to lament along with me the depressingly narrow scope and lack of visibility in the mainstream for other kinds of anime apart from the Shonen Jump set... then most of the people reading this can't really blame anything for that but themselves. Because these things don't just magically grow out of nowhere from a vacuum.

The overall fanbase ITSELF is and remains largely to blame for anime's horrible mainstream perception and reputation in the U.S. (and other English language countries).

For the umpteenth time: the onus of the blame for this incredibly extreme shifting of paradigms falls largely on the post-Toonami anime audience itself rather than on Toonami as a block. Like you and others here have correctly noted: Toonami was a block on a channel that was ALREADY dedicated almost entirely to children's programming, and it was simply responding to its audience's demand.

The fault lies primarily with the audience - once again I repeat, NOT ALL of the audience down to the last individual, just a VAST glaring chunk of them who largely have (unfortunately) defined and dictated the dominant focus of Western anime fandom in the 21st century thus far - for spending so many years eyeball-deep in "hardcore anime fandom" while simultaneously lacking even the FOGGIEST hint of intellectual curiosity to broaden their interests and horizons beyond the same kinds of Shonen Action fluff that Toonami specialized in. No matter how many years had passed and no matter how much older they'd grown.

The result of this, for quite some years now, was a complete ignoring and drowning out of mature anime titles in favor of overly-extreme visibility and attention towards largely the shallowest children's fluff (and some of the most cringiest fetish nonsense) out there.

I mean, what else is going to be the logical outcome when not just the "casuals" but even most of the supposed "hardcore online enthusiasts" are people who not only have NO IDEA whatsoever that more mature alternatives exist out there, but furthermore don't even WANT to know or CARE to know? And when confronted with them, would often recoil away from them in outright palpable DISGUST? Who the fuck else then, within that sort of climate, is going to keep these kinds of titles in any sort of reasonable visibility?

When you're NOT actually paying close attention to something - in this case, the broader status of mature, adult-focussed anime across the decades - it's fairly easy apparently to take for granted how shockingly easy it can sometimes be for even things that were fairly popular and we'll regarded once to just... seemingly slide out of existence suddenly.

And the overwhelming majority of most folks who post here are almost without a doubt just NOT people who'd been paying the least amount of attention to this kind of thing.

Again, things don't just materialize from a vacuum: you NEED at least SOME sort of grassroots support and word of mouth for things to gain ANY kind of traction, certainly in the absence of any kind of concerted professional marketing. And for SO long for awhile there, because of the VASTLY altered and unrecognizable audience makeup for anime in the West in the wake of Toonami, mature/adult-focused anime titles simply were not getting any. In point of fact, many of them were getting outright FAR LESS exposure and awareness than they were in the "pre-internet" analog VHS bootleg/video store era of the late 80s and early 90s!

The fact that these sort of anime titles HAVE been "resurrected" and ARE once more gaining traction again in the 2010s is, given how bad things were for them the previous decade, nothing short of miraculous and a relief to me (not to mention at least somewhat hopeful).

Some of you (Kunzait) get way too into these arguments... Just let people enjoy what they want to enjoy.

Not stepping into the massive wall of a discussion about whether or not liking Toonami as an adult is okay or not

Let the normies like what they like while Kunzait can sit back and enjoy his "real" anime.

Different folks for different strokes.

at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter, even if it supposedly narrowed the perception of anime. So what? I really don't think it's such a big deal. People like what they like, and I'm not here to judge them for it, just like I don't like being judged for what I like.

And, to once more yet again repeat myself (since reading comprehension among a few of you seems to be set aside in favor of over-focusing on my "tone"): this matters, a LOT even, because genuinely challenging art and creative media outside of purely children's fluff is a critically important piece of like... essential human culture and basic human experience/personal growth and development.

I (and others) would argue and have argued that ANY creative/artistic medium without ANY hint or trace of genuinely challenging or boundary pushing material meant for a developing or developed adult mind is a creative/artistic medium that is GREATLY hobbled and crippled from being of any real long-term value or worth. And that, for some time at least, was the overwhelmingly large status of anime in the U.S. for a good chunk of the 2000s.

Its certainly gotten better and been improved now since then, without a doubt... but, and you can call me greedy on this if you like, but I still think there's a vast ways to go yet before the medium is in a more comfortably healthy place of broader artistic maturity and creative/intellectual growth.

This matters a lot to me because both general art of all forms and mediums as a whole matters to me, as does animation (both Japanese anime and otherwise) matters to me similarly as an individual medium within that broader tapestry. I care about art of ALL kinds - but in this case for purposes of this discussion, animation specifically - having the room and ability to grow and bear creative fruit that's capable of soaring to greater heights and deepening human enrichment and experience beyond just the shallow thrills of a 5 to 10 year old kid's still under-developed mind.

The message that the Toonami audience (again ABED, not Toonami itself: its hardcore audience) has been sending time and time and time and time again throughout the years is that they. Simply. Do not. Give. One. Iota. Of a. FUCK. About anime as anything beyond that which Toonami had introduced to them in the late 90s/early 2000s: i.e. shallow and insipid children's action fluff made to make them relive being 11 years old again.

This image, this piece of marketing that the broader mainstream Western anime fandom had clung onto for so many years (and in many corners is STILL clinging onto) had for quite a long time done SO MUCH to stifle and regress the image and impact that anime could've had (and at one point in time before Toonami, was in the process of having) on broader Western culture's perception of anime (and thus, animation as a medium).

Even now today, there is STILL a LOT of handwringing in both anime and Western animation fandom over how the medium is perceived by the mainstream in places like the U.S. as still being shallow children's fluff.

What I'm simply putting forth here is that for many of these very fans who still worry about this: if they want to look for something real and tangible to blame for the continually stunted state of anime's broader perception in North America, many if not most of them need to be looking straight into a mirror.

I posted this now fairly old quote from a late 2000s Cartoon Brew article on here once before, and will now do so again, since its still VERY much relevant here, and does a better job of capturing what I've been trying to talk about here than I seem to be capable of:

If animation was greatly affected by television, then the coming of the Internet shook things up even more. The effects of the online revolution are twofold: firstly, sites such as YouTube provide unprecedented access to animation old and new. Secondly, it has increased communication between animation viewers by providing new ways for fans to gather and share recommendations.

The Internet emerged as the ideal home for what can be termed the geek demographic, with TV Tropes being a prime example of a website put together by and for self-proclaimed geeks. The site prides itself on covering as broad a range of fiction as possible, emerging as a sometimes fascinating form of populist, open-access media scholarship. In theory, this would make it the perfect place to cover lost gems of animation, but in practice it has many blind spots. There is little discussion about Svankmajer or Norstein, while juvenile mediocrities such as Disney’s Gargoyles are treated as masterpieces on a par with the television dramas of Dennis Potter and David Simon.

TV Tropes has a page devoted to what it calls the Animation Age Ghetto, which gives a reasonable if scattershot overview of the subject. The page’s “examples” section, however, consists in large part of people filibustering about how their favorite superhero cartoons never caught on. The main reason that most of these cartoons never attracted adult audiences, of course, is that they are simply not for adults.

That’s not to say that there’s anything wrong with having guilty pleasures. The humorist Stephen Fry summed things up well: a fan of Doctor Who, he commented that “every now and again we all like a chicken nugget.” As he continued, however,

"If you are an adult you want something surprising, savory, sharp, unusual, cosmopolitan, alien, challenging, complex, ambiguous, possibly even slightly disturbing and wrong. You want to try those things, because that’s what being adult means."

The ever-enthusiastic geek demographic certainly does not see animation as being merely for children. But it suffers from an inverted snobbery, with more inventive or experimental animation dismissed as “pretentious” or “arthouse”, and from a view of the medium that is built largely on nostalgia for beloved childhood cartoons. Even dedicated animation enthusiasts can overlook much of the best work which is out there: perhaps it is in human nature for audiences to stick to the films which they think they might enjoy rather than try anything new.

THIS. THIS RIGHT HERE.

The impact that Toonami, and moreover its audience, had on anime for much of the 2000s (and to a certain extent, even today still) is PERFECTLY SUMMED UP by what the above quote is talking about.

And it simply IS NOT "nostalgia" or what have you for someone to day that this situation described in that quote above was at one time the complete fucking reverse in the years prior to Toonami in the late 80s and early 90s. Its simply the stone cold, sobering fact of the reality.

And the impact that Toonami and its audience had had on the mainstream North American landscape (largely by way of sheer, overpowering numbers combined with raw, boundless enthusiasm and visibility online: just repeating and hammering, ad nauseam, their skewed and fucked up narrative on what anime supposedly "is" as a medium and on its "history" - or their own skewed, warped interpretation of it - within the Western world) did a TON of damage and outright REGRESSED things enough to the point where there even NEEDED to be a "comeback" for mature titles in the first place.

[ABED]

And that damn article, while having merits, keeps this pendulum of people accusing each other of snobbery and reverse-snobbery going.

"If you are an adult you want something surprising, savory, sharp, unusual, cosmopolitan, alien, challenging, complex, ambiguous, possibly even slightly disturbing and wrong. You want to try those things, because that’s what being adult means." Quotes like these that people spout as if it's undeniably true, is little more than pretention. For whatever good points the article makes, and it makes many, it also comes across as more than a tad cynical. "Slightly disturbing and wrong" is not what it means to be adult.

All that said, yes, I do think people don't just have an attachment to their childhood likes, but cling to them, often to an unhealthy degree. Then again, I don't interact with those people much at all to give a shit one way or the other.

Regarding art needing to be "challenging", I've never quite understood what people meant by that.

That guess would be VERY much stone cold factually incorrect.

With all due respect, that's anecdotal evidence Better than none, but not definitive. This feels like a very difficult issue to address with a good degree of objective truth. Are we measuring absolute numbers or relative?

[WittyUsername]

I don’t know what to say about the idea that adult anime is less prominent nowadays, since I don’t really consider myself an anime person to begin with, but it does make me wonder if this is a common consensus among older anime fans. I’m not even entirely sure what constitutes more adult anime to begin with, considering that something like Fist of the North Star is (or at least was) geared towards kids in Japan.

As a side note, this idea that art needs to be more challenging does call to mind Martin Scorsese’s recent comments about Marvel movies.

[ABED]

I respect his talents and opinion, but I found that comment obnoxious and quite frankly, beneath him. Stories are about emotionally connecting with an audience and Marvel's films, especially IW and Endgame did that. I enjoyed Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy, but they aren't films I'll go back to over and over, whereas I will go back to MCU movies over and over, as well as DB.

I think people should be willing to go outside their comfort zone, including with the art they consume, but if they get the bulk of their enjoyment out of stuff aimed at kids and teens I see no problem as long as they mix in some more mature works (which don't have to be dark) and aren't dicks about it.

And while I have nothing inherently against nostalgia, I do think it's healthy to clean out the attic, so to speak, once every so often. That includes letting go of things like Toonami which has more or less become irrelevant.

[Kinokima]

I know a lot of anime fans with very diverse tastes but as I’ve gotten more involved with the Dragon Ball fandom I have noticed many of those fans ONLY watch the popular Shounen titles (and if they do watch something Seinen it’s pretty much always Seinen action)

As for Toonami I don’t find anything wrong with the block. Personally it doesn’t seem like the main place where ppl consume anime these days anyway. I used to lament that we never got any shoujo or Josei or really non-action titles on TV. But these days I hardly thinks it matters. I feel Toonami is an after thought because legal anime is so accessible and on those streaming sites there are a broad range of anime title.


Though speaking of Toonami they will be airing Nagahama’s Uzumaki which is certainly out of the box . In fact it’s premiering on there so it’s not like the block never does anything unique. So make sure you check it out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uzumaki

[Cure Dragon 255]

Isnt Junji Ito the author of Uzumaki?

[Dr. Casey]

Yes, sir. I'll have to watch it; Junji Ito is pretty great.

[Soppa Saia People]

I respect his talents and opinion, but I found that comment obnoxious and quite frankly, beneath him. Stories are about emotionally connecting with an audience and Marvel's films, especially IW and Endgame did that. I enjoyed Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy, but they aren't films I'll go back to over and over, whereas I will go back to MCU movies over and over, as well as DB.

i mean that's really not a shocking comment at all from him when he's said multiple times that he doesn't watch new movies and is a noted film historian/restorer, and comic books movies, well normally fine movies in their own right, aren't gonna win over people who are very deep into cinema history. i get where he's coming from and more or less agree.

I know a lot of anime fans with very diverse tastes but as I’ve gotten more involved with the Dragon Ball fandom I have noticed many of those fans ONLY watch the popular Shounen titles (and if they do watch something Seinen it’s pretty much always Seinen action)

that's probably to be expected of a fanbase of any media that's popular, a lot of people won't go much deeper then it and other really popular stuff like it.

[Kinokima]

Isnt Junji Ito the author of Uzumaki?

Yes Nagahama is directing the anime

[ABED]

i mean that's really not a shocking comment at all from him when he's said multiple times that he doesn't watch new movies and is a noted film historian/restorer, and comic books movies, well normally fine movies in their own right, aren't gonna win over people who are very deep into cinema history. i get where he's coming from and more or less agree.

I get that he is a historian and people have different tastes, but it's ridiculous to say they aren't cinema. Some art is better than other, but it bugs me when take put shots at pop entertainment like it's somehow inherently lesser. I wish he had said he doesn't watch new movies and left it at that.

I don't care what kinds of entertainment people watch, and think people who complain about the state of film/TV as not being adult or sophisticated enough are overblowing things. This isn't me taking a potshot at anyone, especially not anyone in particular, it's just how I feel. Keeping this from being completely off topic, there are many who haven't completely cut the chord, but given the prevalence of streaming, losing a programming block, even for whatever benefits one could ascribe to it, is hardly a tragedy. Will Toonami survive? Probably, but does it matter much in the scheme of things given how easily accessible much of its programming is in other avenues? No.

[Soppa Saia People]

I get that he is a historian and people have different tastes, but it's ridiculous to say they aren't cinema. Some art is better than other, but it bugs me when take put shots at pop entertainment like it's somehow inherently lesser. I wish he had said he doesn't watch new movies and left it at that..

i don't think his point at all was just because something's popular makes it lesser or whatever, that's a 14 year old's level of media criticism, and it's not like he just said Oh They Don't Count Because Their Popular/I Don't Like Them, he elaborated on his point pretty well. hell Scorsese himself is a pretty successful and popular auteur, it'd be ridiculous for him to say that pop cinema isn't cinema.

[Kinokima]

I think Scorsese is wrong even though I am not the biggest fan of the Marvel films. Popcorn flicks are still cinema and have value as an art form. But I do kind of understand him too. And a lot of the people most mad at this are the type who don’t challenge themselves to see anything beyond the most popular blockbusters. Try to get people to watch anything made before the 1970’s lol.

Its same thing I said with anime when there is MORE anime accessible then ever before and most of the really unique stuff it is ignored.

I just wish people were a bit more open minded.


And personally I’d much rather watch Taxi Driver over and over than any of the Marvel films but that’s just me.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

Scorsese is a masterful director, no question about that, and I don't doubt his knowledge of film history but his comments about MCU movies came off as nothing short of complete snobbery.

Comparing them to theme parks? I mean seriously? Sometimes people just go to the movies to have a good time. There's no reason that all movies should be deep psychological experiences, as said above people can enjoy those kinds of movies/art and still have some escapism in there.

[Saikyo no Senshi]

He hit the nail on the head as far as I'm concerned. But, that's because I hate superhero shit and Disney with a burning passion. I'm no snob. I will defend kids media to death and consider them to be superior than most adult media anyways, especially in regards to anime, but cape shit and the larger effects Disney has had on the industry is awful to say the least. So, I certainly wouldn't be any rush to defend their honor like some people did(Joss Whedon lol pls) even if I liked the MCU.

[ABED]

I just wish people were a bit more open minded.

I honestly think people are. I just think the prevalence of blockbusters, especially how they seem to dominate the conversation, makes it seem like people have retreated into a state of perpetual adolescence. However, the long tail effect is a very real thing. There's stuff out there for nearly everyone. I wouldn't look to box office as any sort of metric for people's overall taste. The quality of people's entertainment systems and streaming along with the greater cost of tickets and concessions has made it less attractive to go out to anything but big blockbusters. The more unique, intimate, sophisticated dramas and comedies are on TV or streaming.

[Kokonoe]

Toonami is a double edge sword to me. I do think having an anime block for kids is not bad and know many people who got into anime because of DBZ on CN that are really awesome people. Sadly, most of the anime on Toonami was bad. There was probably maybe like 10 good anime in total before Toonami's rival in 2012. I don't like the impact that it did cause since it made the industry to focus more on dumb kids anime instead.

Say good bye to The Guyver, Fist of the North Star, Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Ninja Scroll, Vampire Hunter D, Urusei Yatsura, Robot Carnival, Wicked City, Golgo 13, Bubblegum Crisis, etc. and say hello to DBZ (A very bad dub of it), Pokemon, Digimon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Naruto, One Piece, Bleach, Medabots, Rave Master, etc.

This post is one of the worst posts I've ever seen on this site.

How did it cause anime to be only kid stuff in the west when Adult Swim aired all that adult stuff before there was even a Toonami revival?

And lol "Ninja Scroll"? That's practically just ecchi and goreporn.

And you say Toonami had barely any good shows? What? It had from the top of my head.

G Gundam
Gundam Wing
Outlaw Star
Dragon Ball
Ruroni Kenshin
Yu Yu Hakusho
Big O
Hamtaro

And nearly all these are "mature" shows. All classics.

What a completely misguided post you've made.

[Cure Dragon 255]

I would remove Hamtaro if I were you. Unless you are being sarcastic.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

I would remove Hamtaro if I were you. Unless you are being sarcastic.

I'm still baffled even to this day at how they managed to get Hamtaro on Toonami back in the early 2000's, especially considering how it was a cutesy kid oriented anime and stuck out like a sore thumb when compared to pretty much everything else on the block at the time given it's mostly action oriented setup.

[Kunzait_83]

This post is one of the worst posts I've ever seen on this site.

How did it cause anime to be only kid stuff in the west when Adult Swim aired all that adult stuff before there was even a Toonami revival?

Adult Swim's level and degree of "mature content" is... HIGHLY questionable much of the time. Yes, they aired stuff like Cowboy Bebop, Stand Alone Complex, and Paranoia Agent... but they also at the same time aired a whole TON of children's/Shonen material (much of which either also aired on or would otherwise not at all be out of place on Toonami) like Innuyasha, Bleach, Naruto, Soul Eater, Hunter X Hunter, Gundam Wing, etc. that often ate up vast, vast chunks of its timeslots. Not to mention a sizeably large bulk of their original programming largely being made up of incredibly vapid fratbro stoner content like Aqua Teen Hunger Force and the like.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that Adult Swim is or was entirely without some genuinely mature gems that actually lived up to its title from time to time. But citing Adult Swim as an overall bastion of mature programming in general is... well it certainly says a lot about one's perception of what qualifies as "mature" television.

And lol "Ninja Scroll"? That's practically just ecchi and goreporn.

Ecchi? Ninja Scroll? I'm sorry, have you actually SEEN what an ecchi anime looks like? Because I can 1000% assure you: Ninja Scroll is NOT it and is about as far the hell from it as something can possibly be. That's like saying that Ghost in the Shell is Ecchi simply because there are extensive nude scenes of Kusanagi.

Ecchi as a genre has a VERY specific and clearly rooted definition within the realm of anime, and it doesn't simply denote any anime that contains sexual content or nudity (which certainly seems to be the barometer you're going off of here). By that logic, original Dragon Ball itself would be considered "Ecchi", as would virtually 80% to 90% of the anime content that's ever been in existence in general.

Ecchi isn't simply just anime that has some level of sexual content, but rather its anime that contains an INCREDIBLY specific style of humor and storytelling that revolves entirely around extremely over the top sexual situations as its core plot themes (which are generally little more than a thin clothesline in which to hang sexual gags as well as gratuitous upskirt or downshirt shots of the female characters).

Titles like Najica or Ikki Tousen or Tona-Gura! are some examples of Ecchi anime just off the top of my head.

Ninja Scroll is a Chanbara-style action/martial arts/ninja fantasy anime. It has nudity and sexual scenes, but NONE of them are portrayed over the top or comedically in the LEAST bit: they are VASTLY grounded and the majority of them are in no way gratuitous and are 100% rooted in character development and storytelling (particularly when it comes to the character Kagero). Its as straightforwardly serious and earnest in its dramatic approach (both to its sexual content, and just in general) as can be, with not so much as even the BAREST hint of the wacky humor and over the top "fanservice" style of cheesecake that ENTIRELY defines Ecchi to its core.

Ecchi is oftentimes (though not necessarily always) also considered a kind of "soft/light" pornography (softer than full-blown Hentai generally). If Ninja Scroll were a live action film, literally fucking NO ONE would consider it to be "pornographic" in the slightest bit. There's a couple of graphic sex scenes in it, but they're 100% played for straight drama (and are the absolute farthest thing from eroticized: they're fairly clinical and even somewhat stomach churningly uncomfortable to watch, and purposefully so) and tie directly into the storyline and character arc of Kagero as a survivor of a lifetime of sexual abuse and being used as a sex object by men throughout her life (the story is set in Feudal Japan during the Edo period, a time where many Japanese women were often used and discarded as little more than concubines, particularly by politicians, military leaders, and other such powerful figures).

And yes, there's a lot of gore in it. And the problem with that is.... what exactly? How does the presence of blood & gore, all by itself, somehow lessen the degree of depth or maturity in a given work? I'm certainly not saying that it therefore INCREASES it either: but the idea that a work being graphically violent somehow means that its somehow innately more shallow and unserious is JUST as wrong, nonsensical, and ridiculous as saying that graphic violence/gore innately makes something more mature. Gore is little more than a singular element in a given work, neither innately good nor bad, and its all contingent upon how its used and to what effect.

And the gore in Ninja Scroll *certainly* by no means doesn't detract from its overall quality, and largely just adds visceral impact to many of its actions scenes (which are largely phenomenal and largely considered iconic classic examples of action sequences in anime overall). Its level of gore is certainly in keeping and of a kind with that of a vast majority of Chanbara (Feudal-set Samurai/Ninja tales) works in general, which largely tend to be fairly graphic and bloody affairs overall. Lady Snowblood for example is a Chanbara manga (and live action film) that is RIFE with graphic blood and gore, and its generally (and rightly) considered an elegantly and intelligently crafted classic of the genre.

I'm certainly not putting Ninja Scroll within nearly the same tier of excellence as something like Lady Snowblood (which is a flat-out masterpiece and a milestone work), nor am I trying to make it out to be more dense and cerebral than it ultimately is. Broadly speaking, its simply a fairly straightforward and uncomplicated (albeit masterfully directed, animated, and crafted) action/ninja fantasy anime with a healthy dose of period-set political intrigue.

But that being said, its CERTAINLY a tremendous deal more thoughtful, genuinely mature, and exceedingly subtle in how it approaches its sexual themes (which are focused on exploring sexual violence, abuse, and trauma, not on pleasing or pandering to a horny male audience) than is/was/are a gigantic swath of the kinds of Shonen that aired on Cartoon Network (be it Toonami or Adult Swim): sexual themes which are very much far from and indeed (I cannot stress enough) the polar diametric opposite of merely just the kind of gratuitous, dopey cheesecake that defines Echhi.

Don't misunderstand, I certainly don't think that Ninja Scroll is in any way so flawlessly perfect of a work that its totally immune from valid criticism: but dismissing it as little more than "Ecchi" and "Goreporn" is certainly an incredibly shallow and reductive read of it as an anime. Not to mention fairly factually incorrect with regards to the former classification.

And you say Toonami had barely any good shows? What? It had from the top of my head.

G Gundam
Gundam Wing
Outlaw Star
Dragon Ball
Ruroni Kenshin
Yu Yu Hakusho
Big O
Hamtaro

And nearly all these are "mature" shows. All classics.

Virtually nearly ALL of those shows (other than MAYBE Outlaw Star: I'm not 100% sure about that one off the top of my head) are children's anime. Like, SMALL children. Literally almost every single one of those listed titles. Kenshin, Hakusho, Gundam Wing, and CERTAINLY the likes of Dragon Ball, G Gundam, and Hamtaro were made for and directly aimed at elementary school children in Japan.

And while a few of those are certainly children's anime that I happen to very much enjoy myself (particularly Yu Yu Hakusho, and obviously DB): not a SINGLE one of them come within MILES of touching the level of depth, subtlety, and maturity one would generally find in an ACTUAL "mature" anime intended for actual adults (like virtually anything directed by Satoshi Kon, Isao Takahata, or Mamoru Oshii).

And honestly: calling a list that contains fucking Hamtaro of all things as being made up of "all mature classics"? Hamtaro? A "mature classic"? Seriously?

This post is one of the worst posts I've ever seen on this site.

....

What a completely misguided post you've made.

Particularly after that little checklist of supposed "mature classic" anime you just rattled off as a contrast (which further goes to prove the whole point I'd been making for awhile now about the incredibly skewed, warped perspective that much of this community has long had regarding what actually constitutes a "mature" work in the first place), you are indeed throwing rocks from the glassiest of glass houses here.