#10 - Full Cycle
Twenty-four hours of Toonami. For many Toonami fans, it was something they always wanted to see. It was the stuff that dreams were made of and what inspired others to make dream schedules for. So, on April 8, 2000, Cartoon Network gave Toonami 24 hours to play with.
What did they do?
They pretty much played it safe. Aside from the premiere of the Garlic Jr. Saga, the day was pretty much a couple of Batman movies, a couple of episodes, but nothing truly memorable. Even when the opportunity to air Gundam Wing uncut at midnight arose, they didn't commit, which is a shame.
What went right with Full Cycle? It was the first time Cartoon Network seemed to actually give a damn about Toonami. Toonami was often seen as a block that's just for action-animation shows. For the first time, Toonami seemed like it was a major part of the network rather than a minor block that excites older viewers. They aired nearly every Toonami show they had television rights to at the time and maintained a two Batman movies and a couple of Dragon Ball Z movies during the day. It almost seemed like Full Cycle was just an opening act for a potential Toonami network, but, alas, it wasn't.
It's a pity Cartoon Network didn't bring back the Full Cycle concept for the tenth anniversary of Toonami. Perhaps if they did, they probably would have had a wider variety of shows this time around, but the original 2000 event remains one of the greatest moments in Toonami history.
#9 - Giant Robot Week
It was a cold day in hell when ADV Films and Cartoon Network finally acknowledged each other. In January 2003, they announced that Cartoon Network would program a week of some of ADV Films' biggest mecha franchises around. Giant Robot Week brought Neon Genesis Evangelion, Martian Successor Nadesico, Dai-Guard, Gigantor, and Low Brow (the pilot of Megas XLR) to Toonami as well as brought Robotech back to the block for one week only.
This event was the first time that many viewers got a chance to see some of these titles. While not quite up to the standards viewers had been expecting, the shows of Giant Robot Week was enough to make those unfamiliar with those titles salivate with a taste of great shows. Evangelion, a show people thought would NEVER air on a nationwide cable channel in the United States, made its national English-language television debut on Toonami, as did Nadesico and Dai-Guard. Giant Robot Week also created a strong reaction from the fans of the block who were left to ponder where the block was headed in the future, especially since the future was not a certain one in February 2003.
The end result was a mixed bag. We not only got the first two episodes of Dai-Guard, but Toonami finally saw the final two episodes of the Robotech franchise, which had never been a part of the block. Aside from the hiccups (which I talked about in the flipside of this list), Giant Robot Week was a great moment for Toonami.
#8 - Tartakovskynami
2004 was a strange year for Genndy Tartakovsky. The creator of Dexter's Laboratory and Samurai Jack was moving on to a new studio environment at The Orphanage while both of his productions at Cartoon Network, Samurai Jack: The Birth of Aku and Star Wars: Clone Wars, won Emmys, despite Samurai Jack being cancelled without a final resolution.
Toonami honored Genndy Tartakovsky by devoting September 25 to the gifted creator with a showcase of both his Emmy-winning productions as well as the presenting the world premiere of the final four episodes of Samurai Jack. It was the first time the first 20 episodes of Clone Wars were seen in one night on Toonami (Toonami would later air the entire 25-part microseries with no chapter breaks a year later) and the first and only time the final episodes of Samurai Jack were seen in the US, which is a shame because this was one of the finest animated series ever made in the States.
What's also memorable about this is that the event, dubbed "Tartakovskynami" by the fans, was the first and only time Toonami didn't air anime in its seven years of existance. At all. It's also the first time the Saturday night Toonami began an hour earlier, something it would do rarely in the past couple of years. This unnamed celebration of the work of Genndy Tartakovsky was another great moment in Toonami history.
Read on.
