For years, Cartoon Network and Adult Swim (where it originally premiered as an April Fools’ Day gag) have used the Toonami name as branding for more action-centric cartoons and anime imports, with a little robot mascot named TOM stepping in to replace original “host” Moltar (from Space Ghost!) early on. TOM, voiced by Cowboy Bebop’s Steve Blum for the last 20 years, generally just introduces new shows—give or take the weird eras where Toonami had a plot and TOM did game reviews—but on last night’s block he took a break from talking about Naruto and Dragon Ball Z to talk about Black Lives Matter.
Which, this being Toonami, involved talking about Naruto and Dragon Ball Z. The clip, which was shared by fan page Toonami News on Twitter, seems targeted at Toonami and Adult Swim’s white viewers, explaining that if you think the current conversations about racial inequality and the protests against police violence aren’t really relevant to you and your life, then “you’ve got some truth to uncover.” The clever angle, though, is that the speech preemptively addresses the people who are going to say “this isn’t why I watch Toonami” with clips from shows that have aired on Toonami of characters talking about fighting against hatred and injustice—as it to say, “Yes, this is why you watch Toonami.”
Toonami co-creator Jason DeMarco explained on Twitter that the idea for the speech came from Toonami employees who wanted to find a way to directly acknowledge the Black Lives Matter movement, with the final clip being produced, written, and edited by Black members of the Toonami staff. Also, Steve Blum tweeted that he stands by the statement, putting a recognizable human face (at least to the anime community) on what could otherwise be read as the same potentially hollow stance that every big company has made over the last few months.
Looking for ways to advocate for Black lives? Check out this list of resources by our sister site Lifehacker for ways to get involved.
29 Comments
Thanks guys.
Just to clarify some nitpicks, Toonami still does game reviews. Their most recent ones were Last of Us 2, Maneater, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Doom Eternal, and Ori and the Will of the Wisps. The clip above was also technically Dragon Ball Super, not Z, since Toonami lost the rights to DBZ Kai a few weeks ago. That was also technically Naruto Shippuden, the sequel series. Yes, I know that’s an incredibly banal thing to point out.
For those curious as to what the show with the black lady was, that was Adult Swim’s original show Ballmastrz 9009, which aired as late-block filler when JoJo Part V went on hiatus.
This also isn’t the first time Toonami’s openly supported BLM. They aired slates at the top of each hour supporting the movement, and when things first started, they did a rerun of one of their old speeches:They also still do speeches every so often too.
And yes, they still do story events:
I had completely forgotten about Toonami’s long history of motivational speeches. Looking those up on Youtube is one of the few rabbit holes I haven’t minded falling down:
I’m, surprisingly, impressed at your level of old school nerditry. Carry on, good sir or ma’am.
Just tired.2020. Twenty years into the official FUTURE (yeah, I’m old, y2k will always be the frontier of scifi, for me).And we’re still on that ? Skin color issue ? Really ?- Humans.
– Yes.
– Different shapes.
– Right.
– Different heights.
– Okay.
– Different colors.
– WHAT !!?
– Get over it.
– NNNNNNEVER !!!
As long as racism still exists. It’s a long road in America still, unfortunately. Where White supremacists still exists, neo nazis (for some reason), and clear racists presidents.
White supremacy and related ideologies had hundreds of years to sink in. People are getting generally better at recognizing personal prejudice and racism, but we all have a long way to go to undo the racist assumptions that are embedded in many institutions.
There’s no shortage of shape-hate and height-hate these days, either.As someone raised on Star Trek, I was really hoping the future wouldn’t be so full of Nazis. However, the slow pace of progress doesn’t mean it isn’t worth fighting for.
No one is over the heights either and sure af not the shapes. I get where you’re coming from, but this kind of comment always comes off as flippantly insensitive. Like, we know you are a white guy of average height and weight from this comment.
Cartoon Network has been speaking up, not least after they fired Unknown Hinson for trashtalking BLM and Dolly Parton.
I’m guessing they’re still smarting a bit from the absolute shitshow that was Million Dollar Extreme
The fascinating thing about the MDE show is that all bar about two sketches could or would have aired on Adult Swim in the 00s, or even 2013, or possibly even six months earlier, without raising an eyebrow. Any signs of misogyny or racism would have been assumed to be “ironic”. What this might say about Adult Swim’s output is, um, “interesting” to consider.
So, I haven’t seen any of MDE (partially because I wasn’t watching AS at the time), but a lot of what you said could be said about comedy in general from that period. It was this whole “isn’t racism/sexism so fucking stupid and thus funny????” thing going on. Chappelle’s Show is still an absolute masterpiece, but there are a LOT of sketches that REALLY don’t land the way they used to
Had to look up this Hinson asshole. I know it’s gauche to insult someone’s appearance when there are so many other things, but this guy is straight up the ugliest fucker I’ve ever laid eyes on.
Re: Hinson, Weird flex announcing to the world that the racist, backwoods squid you’ve been voicing for two decades is *ACTUALLY* a mouthpiece for the way you feel about the world.
>.>
someone please cut this to spike spiegel clips
I bet that tweet has a lot of angry replies from people with moe avatars
Those avatars are still better than non-store bought dirt, though.
Thank. God. Now the real progress can begin.
Oh man, I can just imagine all the 13-24 SQW’s losing their freaking minds because CN dared to “force politics down their throats”.
Please tell me that stands for “Status Quo Warriors” & that I have permission to use it?
It does, and you may.
Love that so fucking much. Lol.
The media propaganda smear campaign against police has reached a new low. Examining policing data without accounting for the extremely high crime rate in the black community is not just misleading, it’s evil. Look at the data and account for all of the variables, there is no racial disparity in policing. The best predictor of whether there will be a violent encounter between an officer and a citizen is how much violent crime is in the area being policed. It directly correlates. Look at body camera and dash camera footage released about “brutality” incidents. Take a look at the other side of the story, if you aren’t too cowardly to look where the popular narrative tells you you shouldn’t. Please, uncover the truth.
“These words are actually harmful.” No, they aren’t. I can’t respect someone who can’t give their opinions without first declaring everyone else’s to be thoughtcrime.
There’s going to be a lot of upset anime avatars.
This new generation of rappers seem to love anime (Naruto in particular) I imagine they were introduced to the genre from Toonami. Toonami holds a special place in peoples heart, mine included, it’s nice to see them use that power for good.