So a couple of weekends ago I was checking out the Saturday morning fare of cartoons. The channels were run through from Nicktoons to Cartoon Network and finally to the CW where it stopped at an episode of Dragonball Z Kai followed by back-to-back Yu-Gi-Oh 5D’s episodes in a block known as “Toonzai.” TV stations nowadays always have their logos in the right corner and many more have some information running in the left corner perhaps telling you what is coming up next, etc. But I was pretty shocked when this came flying across the screen:
That bright blue wave, with a dude surfing atop it, with orange glow lines coming off him . . . not part of Yu-Gi-Oh 5D’s which is playing behind it. And though I didn’t capture the sound, he actually yells “TOONZAAAAI!!” as he hurtles across the screen. Let me reiterate that the show is going on when this happens, characters were talking and events were happening yet all of that is obscured by the obnoxious logo that tells me something I already know: that this is part of the Toonzai cartoon block. This happened during Dragonball Z Kai as well and I can only assume in all other shows in these timeslots. What exactly is being accomplished here that wouldn’t be if it were just in the left-hand corner of the screen without sound? The complete disregard for the audience is phenomenal.
I’m not going to lie to you. This post is mostly an easy post we are doing to recover from the madness and non stop posts that came from our Otakon 2010 coverage. But just because it is easy post doesn’t mean it can’t be entertaining. These are all series that we feel have the ability to do really well if they were licensed and translated into English but for one reason or another have not been picked up for the U.S. There might be licensing issues behinds the scenes, the price might be insanely high, there might be a bidding war going on, or dozens of other reasons that are keeping these shows from being picked up. But the #1 cure to such problems is enough customer demand. So what do you think? Are we being delusional about the series we picked? Did we leave anything out that you think is a sure fire success?
Honestly, I find it fun to speculate what would make a good license and why going beyond my own personal desire for a series. There are about a million shows and books that I’d like to own for myself in English but a lot of that is wishful thinking (Legend of the Galactic Heroes will surely be picked up, right? RIGHT?) but with this post it is more about a business stand point or atleast the thinking that these series would do well enough to earn a little bit for the companies releasing them. That being said, I don’t work in the anime and manga business and I only have a vague knowledge of certain aspects of it.
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