Adult Swim vs Disney XD for Super. Which do you prefer?

[Cure Dragon 255]

I know its a moot point now that Adult Swim has aired the entirety of Super. But I think DXD could have introduced kids to anime.

140 YU-GI-OH! SEVENS DISNEY XD 8:00 AM 30 0.02 53

I know these are miserable ratings but I feel Super could have done great there. And Crunchyroll keeps making an edited version of Super!

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

I'm glad that there is an uncut and edited version of Funimation's Super dub because Adult Swim is perfect for the former and Disney XD is perfect for the latter.

I kinda wish Kai The Final Chapters and Super alao aired on kids channels in the US. It could have gotten more kids into the series and likely would have had no effect on Adult Swim's ratings.

[MasenkoHA]

Kids are way more likely to watch Netflix or Hulu or Disney Plus or YouTube.

I'll never get this "Dragon Ball needs to be on a tv channel for kids for them to watch it and get into it"

Like did I fall in a time hole? Are we back in 2011?

[Kunzait_83]

Kids are way more likely to watch Netflix or Hulu or Disney Plus or YouTube.

I'll never get this "Dragon Ball needs to be on a tv channel for kids for them to watch it and get into it"

Like did I fall in a time hole? Are we back in 2011?

Never mind 2011: this community's general mindset about media (among other things) has been eternally stuck in the early 2000s for something like the last 20 years or so now.

People in DB circles were still making new Linkin Ball Z AMVs as recently as just 5 years ago last I looked. Old Toonami ads are obsessively archived and documented like they're sacred scriptures. Wrestling jargon is still so often widely used casually in DB fight discourse largely because WWE/WWF just so happened to be at its mountain peak in mainstream popularity at the same time the FUNimation DBZ dub was at its height, and thus the two are now permanently linked in tons of the fanbase's collective brains. And Pokemon and Sonic the Hedgehog are still two continual points of reference in the collective imaginations of the broader Western DB fanbase.

Frankly, if it weren't for this forum's staunch anti-piracy policies, I'd be almost half expecting folks around here to be asking for Kazaa or Napster links to things.

A significant chunk of this fanbase has been fundamentally unable and unwilling to move on from thinking about Dragon Ball squarely in terms of early to mid 2000s U.S. (or otherwise Western) children's pop culture for at least as long as this forum has existed now. Network TV as we know it may well be all but completely gone (save for cable news and sports) somewhere down the road within the foreseeable future, and folks here will still be making threads about analyzing children's cartoon blocks as if they're still a thing that matters to anyone.

I've had plenty of close friends with grown children of their own for quite some time now: in ALL the years I've known them and watched them grow up, I can literally count on one hand the number of MINUTES (never mind hours) that I've seen them watching ANY kind of TV, children's or otherwise. Kids spend almost all of their free time on tablets or phones. They're watching videos on Youtube, TikTok, Hulu, Amazon, Disney+, Crunchyroll, etc. They're on social media constantly. Any cartoon they could conceivably give a shit about is just a few taps on a screen away 24/7.

This has been the status quo and the "new normal" for quite some years now. This isn't a recent development at this point: like, at all.

[jjgp1112]

Wrestling jargon is still so often widely used casually in DB fight discourse largely because WWE/WWF just so happened to be at its mountain peak in mainstream popularity at the same time the FUNimation DBZ dub was at its height, and thus the two are now permanently linked in tons of the fanbase's collective brains.

Eh, that's a pop culture thing in general with wreslting having more mainstream acceptance. A lot of people in nerd and sports circles who otherwise have no familiarity with wrestling at all use the phrase "Heel turn" now, for example, and especially in sports media wrestling references get thrown around by both journalists and athletes alike.

Anyway, as far as TV goes, Adult Swim is far and away the better choice since the intended audience are gonna watch it there anyway, and in general like Masenko said, they're getting their shit from Crunchyroll etc anyway.

[Cursed Lemon]

I mean, both?

DB should be looking to get picked up by as many platforms as possible, especially if we assert that there is a meaningful split between the demo that watches Adult Swim and the demo that watches Disney XD.

[dva_raza]

DisneyXD closed months ago but if you mean Disney Plus I've actually heard they're in negotiation to get the rights from Warner Channel to transmit DBZ, I don't know about Super.

But yeah broadcast and cable TV are far from being irrelevant obviously. I rediscovered DBZ on Adult Swim last year when I was channel surfing. So basically, by chance. I know I wouldn've have looked for the series if that hadn't happened.
I don't even like the concept of selecting every single thing and not having it come to you. I've discovered many films and series by catching them on TV, whereas with the on demand or streaming thing I've discovered pretty much nothing.

[TheGreatness25]

The only cool thing about Kai and Super being on Cartoon Network is that it could air on Adult Swim and even more importantly, Toonami. That's home for US Dragon Ball. Except it kind of "grew up" with us (now on Adult Swim uncensored).

I'll be honest, though, I watched it on TV exactly one time--when the Copy Vegeta episode aired. Otherwise, I opted to wait for the Blu-ray. I'd imagine that most people don't care about the physical release (I knew I was going to get it anyway, so I wanted to actually experience the series for the first time through the home video release for the first time), but there are so many better alternatives.

I pay for live TV and it's basically useless. I watch a fraction of a fraction live.

[Super Sonic]

DisneyXD closed months ago but if you mean Disney Plus I've actually heard they're in negotiation to get the rights from Warner Channel to transmit DBZ, I don't know about Super.

Perhaps it's your cable company as I just changed there and it's airing that cartoon "Amphibia" which I never got into.

But yeah, I'd say Adult Swim as while haven't watched a lot of shows on Disney XD in years, remember when Shippuden was airing on it and they censored things that CN let slide with the original series.

[Cure Dragon 255]

DisneyXD closed months ago but if you mean Disney Plus I've actually heard they're in negotiation to get the rights from Warner Channel to transmit DBZ, I don't know about Super.

But yeah broadcast and cable TV are far from being irrelevant obviously. I rediscovered DBZ on Adult Swim last year when I was channel surfing. So basically, by chance. I know I wouldn've have looked for the series if that hadn't happened.
I don't even like the concept of selecting every single thing and not having it come to you. I've discovered many films and series by catching them on TV, whereas with the on demand or streaming thing I've discovered pretty much nothing.

It didnt close in the USA which is the channel I meant. But I love you and your very insightful posts.

[WittyUsername]

Regarding the cable vs. streaming debate, in all fairness, Super started airing in the U.S. in early 2017. Cable may have been struggling at the time, but it wasn’t quite the barren wasteland it is today, and Disney+ wasn’t a thing yet. Of course, now that we’re in 2022, it would be completely pointless to put Dragon Ball on Disney XD. It’s not going to bring in any new fans, and it would obviously have to be censored anyway.

[StevenPiccolo]

This question makes me think back on how Shippuden was on Disney XD for a while (which is how I caught it on TV when I still had cable). No idea how well it did but I'm sure those numbers are out there...in any case, I'd probably go with Adult Swim because I think more people would be going out of their way to watch it. I don't think Disney XD is a very popular channel and I think more people will have Adult Swim as part of their cable package in general, unless things have changed in the last several years.

I wonder how many people in the target demographic even can watch Adult Swim on the TV these days when, like others have said, everything is so readily available online. I do not miss paying for cable at all so I am more than happy about these changes.

[Cure Dragon 255]

659,000(0.33 P18-49)

Rick And Morty's ratings. I guess its best it stays on Adult Swim lol.

[MasenkoHA]

This question makes me think back on how Shippuden was on Disney XD for a while (which is how I caught it on TV when I still had cable). No idea how well it did but I'm sure those numbers are out there...

It also apparently aired in 2009. So completely different landscape.

[TheBlackPaladin]

As others have discussed, it would only mean so much which TV network it ended up on given the modern media landscape. That said, if I had to pick, I'd say Disney XD. Why? Purely and entirely to see what an edited dub of Super would look like. The version I really want--the uncut version--is out on home video already, so at this point I'd simply have a passing curiosity at what was deemed necessary to edit.

Some of these edits end up becoming memorable and amusing in and of themselves. I still laugh at this edit for the Toonzai cut of Kai. Just imagining the people in charge of determining the edits and what their reaction was when they saw that. And the emails that likely followed.

[MasenkoHA]

As others have discussed, it would only mean so much which TV network it ended up on given the modern media landscape. That said, if I had to pick, I'd say Disney XD. Why? Purely and entirely to see what an edited dub of Super would look like. The version I really want--the uncut version--is out on home video already, so at this point I'd simply have a passing curiosity at what was deemed necessary to edit.

Some of these edits end up becoming memorable and amusing in and of themselves. I still laugh at this edit for the Toonzai cut of Kai. Just imagining the people in charge of determining the edits and what their reaction was when they saw that. And the emails that likely followed.

The CW really had it out for crotches

[Hellspawn28]

Kids are way more likely to watch Netflix or Hulu or Disney Plus or YouTube.

I'll never get this "Dragon Ball needs to be on a tv channel for kids for them to watch it and get into it"

Like did I fall in a time hole? Are we back in 2011?

I believe that many of the people here may have grown up not being allowed to use the Internet or didn't have it, so they may automatically assume that this is the case for kids today. I still remember when people want the Buu saga on Nick Toons because they thought kids would be so confused by watching GT despite the fact the Toonami kiddies usually saw DBZ first. Not to mention in 2011, the entire series was already on DVD and the manga had the whole volume.

Cabel TV and Public TV is becoming a thing of the past now. Kids these days can get into anime way easier than finding it on a Disney Channel or a channel that would air after school. The days of after school TV blocks and Saturday morning blocks are from 20-35 years ago and have been long over. I also saw Halloween stuff for Dragon Ball, My Hero Academia, Demon Slayer, etc at Party City earlier this week. Anime is hardly a grow up thing these days.

[TheBlackPaladin]

As others have discussed, it would only mean so much which TV network it ended up on given the modern media landscape. That said, if I had to pick, I'd say Disney XD. Why? Purely and entirely to see what an edited dub of Super would look like. The version I really want--the uncut version--is out on home video already, so at this point I'd simply have a passing curiosity at what was deemed necessary to edit.

Some of these edits end up becoming memorable and amusing in and of themselves. I still laugh at this edit for the Toonzai cut of Kai. Just imagining the people in charge of determining the edits and what their reaction was when they saw that. And the emails that likely followed.

The CW really had it out for crotches

More so than any reasonable human being, in my opinion. The thought never crossed my mind as either a kid or an adult, but somebody looked at that scene and said, "Whoa, look what that alien's packing, we can't have that!"

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

Purely and entirely to see what an edited dub of Super would look like.

Worth noting Funimation's edited Super dub has aired in the UK and Ireland on Pop. LostTimeLord has documented the various edits, which is really cool. I know Super also aired on kids channels in Australia, South Africa and Pakistan, presumably using the same cut or a largely similar one with extra edits on top.

[MasenkoHA]

I believe that many of the people here may have grown up not being allowed to use the Internet or didn't have it, so they may automatically assume that this is the case for kids today.

Which is a very weird and out of touch assumption to make if that's the case

still remember when people want the Buu saga on Nick Toons because they thought kids would be so confused by watching GT despite the fact the Toonami kiddies usually saw DBZ first. Not to mention in 2011, the entire series was already on DVD and the manga had the whole volume.

Nothing funnier than the same people insisting the original Dragon Ball is unimportant getting upset Nicktoons skipped the Buu saga when those seasons were at least out on dvd and available on almost all anime pirated streaming sites.

And its not like GT is impossible to follow without having seen the Buu saga.