March 17: Toonami debuts on Cartoon Network with Thundercats, a classic Superman short, extreme sports interviews, Voltron, Birdman, and The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest. Toonami's debut was in an atmosphere that felt nothing like the rest of Cartoon Network.
April 1: The same Screwball Squirrel cartoon airs for most of the day. Toonami wasn't unscathed. The block showed the regular segueways and eyecatches, but the shows didn't come on. The Toonami opening was shown, but Screwball Squirrel came on after it. Cartoon Network got a flood of complaints that day and around 6 PM, the barrage ended and Looney Tunes shorts aired for the rest of the day. Let us never speak of 4/1/97 again.
Summer: All summer long, Toonami had a Big Giveaway contest which gave away all sorts of Toonami-related bric-a-brac from hats and keychains to bags and t-shirts.
June: Ronin Warriors debut in a rare summer syndication run. The Ocean Group at their finest.
September: Kids' WB premieres The New Batman/Superman Adventures with new episodes of the Dark Knight! The opening credits are removed from every Toonami show except for JQ.
October: Toonami premieres on Saturdays during prime-time.
Fall: YTV, Canada's premiere kids network (I'm sick of all the US-based media organizations calling YTV "Canada's Nickelodeon," because it isn't), debuts a darker, more satirical season of ReBoot, unrestrained by the brutal BSnP of ABC.
1998
January: Robotech premieres on Toonami, marking the block's first acquisition since the block's premiere. Sailor Moon begins its brief run on USA Network. The series is edited even more than usual.
March 9 - 13: Toonami presents the world premiere of the final five episodes of the 1997-98 season of Beast Wars: Transformers, airing the Mainframe-made show for one week only.
March 16: Toonami opens with individualized daily openings, a practice that ended in 2000.
April: Sailor Moon is cancelled from USA. USA and Sci-Fi begin to distance themselves from animation altogether. Toonami begins a dual airing of Jonny Quest, known as Quest Rewind just as Voltron returned to the daily lineup. This would be a good thing to introduce new episodes of JQ, but Hanna-Barbera shut down production after a difference of opinion (the animators wanted less Questworld segments while the network wanted MORE).
Summer: DC Comics' Cartoon Network Presents title started a quarterly publication of stories under the Toonami banner, with origins about the block's host and mascot. Meanwhile, fansites dedicated to the block began popping up, including Toonami Online, Toonami CJB, Toonami: The Unofficial, and some site with a name escapes me at the moment, CN-something or rather (crude graphics on that one), which made its online debut on July 10, 1998. These were the first online areas dedicated to the block, which was surprising considering that Cartoon Network.com launched earlier in the year with sections dedicated to 90% of their programming, yet no Toonami section at all.
June 1: Sailor Moon premieres on Toonami as the new lead show, displacing Thundercats to 4:30 PM for the first time. Meanwhile, the Saturday Toonami block, now moved to 1 PM, now has Thundercats, Voltron, Robotech, and JQ.
August: Cartoon Network acquires the three seasons of Reboot, including the third season that didn't air on American television for premiere on Toonami in the second quarter of 1999.
August 31: Dragon Ball Z debuts on Toonami, kicking the action quotent up a few notches, and, along with Sailor Moon, created the new face of Toonami.
October: The first Doom Age of Toonami. Toonami cancelled the Saturday lineup, the shows that comprised of it, save one. A retread of the Superman/Batman Adventures that aired on USA under the name of Superfriends aired inbetween Sailor Moon and DBZ, the latter of which began airing numerous episodes out of order. To make matters worse, Toonami began showing promos asking if the block was a failed experiment.
November 3: Batman co-creator Bob Kane passes away. Yes, I know he's often labeled as the sole creator, but that's because his estate gave the finger to the other co-creator, a guy named Bill.
November 18: Powerpuff Girls: The Series premieres on Wednesdays. A strange hybrid of 60's animation and Japanese-influenced designs became a marquee show for Cartoon Network.
November 30: The final 17 episodes of Sailor Moon R, unseen in the US but seen in Canada, debuts on Toonami.
1999
January 8: Toonami started getting good again. Toonami Movies brought
Batman and the new Powerpuff Girls to the block for the first time ever.
January 25: The first Doom Age officially ends. Thundercats returned to Toonami, getting rid of Superfriends for good.
February: Cartoon Network.com finally acknowledges Toonami's existance for the first time with an Alternative Universe contest, Toonami's first online contest, two years after the block's creation and nearly one year after the website's relaunch.
Spring: Moltar gives his "Reruns" speech, addressing the problems that
fans have with Toonami airing reruns all the time.
March 15: ReBoot joins the lineup, the first new North American
acquisition. All the episodes aired. Also, a brand new look of Toonami
debuted that day which brought back the red of the original logo with a
very simplistic design.
April 8: Dragon Ball Z replaces Jonny Quest at 12:30 AM in an action hour
that began with Batman. Who'd thought that the midnight hour could
house so much action?
May 23 - 29: Toonami Week hits the network hard. May 23 saw
a Lunar Eclipse, the final 17 episodes of the R season of Sailor
Moon in order on one day. The next day, DBZ20XL, all DBZ, all week long.
May 29 saw a marathon of DBZ movies followed by a Super Chunk of
Batman: The Animated Series. What a great week!
Summer: Cartoon Network announces its first spinoff channel will be
based on their classic block of programming known as Boomerang, giving
Toonami fans the hope that a Toonami spinoff network isn't that far
out of the realm of possibility.
Go here to witness the changing face of Toonami, which added a new host, a new atmosphere, and a new look. Enter the TOM era.
