April 17: Toonami premieres on Saturday nights, airing from 7 PM to 11 PM EST/PST with a new look, a new logo, and a premiere night that aired new episodes of DuelMasters, the Bionicle movie, and the North American television premiere of Gundam SEED.
May 1: Megas XLR becomes the first Cartoon Network original to premiere on Toonami. Batman: The Mystery of the Batwoman also premieres on the network.
July 31: The world premiere of the new season of Teen Titans and the world premiere of the third season of Justice League, now known as Justice League Unlimited.
June 5: Toonami presents the North American debut of Rave Master.
Mid-September: For the first time since 1999, there won't be a Toonami Total Immersion Event, probably because the block is on Saturdays only.
September 25: Toonami airs the final four episodes of Samurai Jack and the Emmy-winning Star Wars: Clone Wars. Before that, Cartoon Network airs the Emmy-winning Samurai Jack: The Birth of Aku.
2005
January 8: Bandai's eagerly-anticipated series D.I.C.E. premiered on Toonami. It didn't stay long.
January 29: After prematurely announcing the airing of the "lost" episodes of Dragon Ball GT to begin that weekend, Cartoon Network delays the premiere in order to air the final episode, "Until We Meet Again."
February: Though the "lost" episodes of DBGT began, February was a generally quiet month. The end of the month brings the traditional upfronts, which announces the Toonami acquisitions of reruns of The Batman (a Cartoon Network/Kids' WB co-production like Teen Titans) and 4Kids' One Piece, new episodes of Justice League Unlimited, Teen Titans, Duel Masters, and Zatch Bell, and the US premieres of Naruto (which had been officially acquired the day before) and Bobobo-bo Bo-Bobo as well as the announcement of the first made-for-Toonami series IGPX (oh, and Ben 10, a Dial H For Hero-esque series from the comic book writing tandem of Men of Action and some of the visionaries behind Teen Titans, had been unofficially announced to be in production for the 2005-06 season, but you're going to have to wait until February 2006 to see what the fuss is about).
March : Zatch Bell premieres in Megas XLR's old timeslot, unofficially marking the end of that show's run on Toonami.
March 26: The second half of the Star Wars: Clone Wars airs in its entirety only on Toonami. One and a half months later, the entire Clone Wars saga aired on Toonami without chapter numbers, the only time Cartoon Network presented the micro-series like this, officially making the Clone Wars Episode 2.5 of the Star Wars saga.
April 2/23: Reruns of 4Kids' One Piece air for an hour and reruns of The Batman air at 8:30 PM.
May 30: During Cartoon Network's Summer Preview Special, Toonami is given two sneak preview segments in the hour (the most of any branded block on the special) and the first new TOM and Sara segments produced since the April 2004 revamp. The first segment chronicled the new episodes of Toonami favorites while the second half chronicled the new shows on the block, including Naruto, Bobobo-Bo Bobo-Bo, and IGPX.
July: Transformers: Cybertron premieres, making a temporary home on Toonami before moving to Kids' WB on September 19.
July 30/August 6: The unthinkable happens (Part One). Yu-Gi-Oh: The Movie premieres on Toonami and a week later, the series makes a temporary home at the 7:30 PM slot.
September 10: Naruto premieres on Toonami with a TV-PG rating, the first regularly-scheduled series with that rating since Gundam Wing's "uncut" airings on the Toonami Midnight Run in 2000. That weekend, Star Wars: Clone Wars Chapter Two wins an Emmy for Best Animated Program (One Hour or More) and many individual Emmys for the creators behind the miniseries.
September 17/24: Four strangely underpromoted new episodes of Justice League Unlimited premieres, introducing a Legion of Doom-like supervillians team led by Gorilla Grodd, explorer Carter Hall/Hawkman, the world of Warlord (also the first Stargirl/S.T.R.I.P.E-focused episode), and the apparent resignation of the Martian Manhunter. They never reran on Cartoon Network again.
September 24: The fall premiere of Teen Titans leaps in a big way with an introduction of Beast Boy's first team, Doom Patrol (another popular DC Comics superhero team).
October 1: Bobobo-Bo Bo-Bobo makes a hair-raising debut on Toonami.
October 15: The Toonami debut of the Dragon Ball Z "Uncut" episodes, also rated TV-PG.
October 22: Just days after debuting on DVD, The Batman Vs. Dracula, a feature-length story pitting The Dark Knight against the legendary Prince of Darkness, debuts on Toonami. It was scores better than what was originally scheduled for Toonami that night, Alien Racers, which premiered a week later on Miguzi.
November 5: IGPX: The Series debuts on Toonami and introducing the Toonami Original Series vanity card (TOM nodding on camera with a sound cue from the first Toonami original production, The Intruder) for the first time.
November 19: The unthinkable happens (part 2), but at least it's something more watchable than Yu-Gi-Oh: The Movie. Batman, Tim Burton's 1989 live-action reinvention of Caped Crusader into the Dark Knight in the mainstream, makes its Cartoon Network debut exclusively on Toonami. Although it was rated TV-14 V, it was heavily edited, with profanity almost all gone and numerous violent scenes removed (including when Joker shot and killed Bob the Goon at point blank range, though the electrification scene leaving the crispy critter remained intact). And despite this blemish, the block is still called Toonami.
December 31: The final Toonami installment of 2005 is a day dedicated to the overactive, knuckleheaded ninja known as Naruto.
2006
February 4: Wulin Warriors, a much loathed adaptation of a series of popular Taiwanese puppet shows known as Pili, premiered. It only lasts one more week, which is funny because the two episodes shown were the two episodes already streamed online.
March 6: Toonami UK shifts format from an action-animation network to general entertainment adding old sitcoms, teen soap operas, science shows, and sports programming to the lineup, and still having the audacity to call themselves Toonami.
March 18: A Month of Miyazaki, a four-week celebration of the movies of acclaimed director Hayao Miyazaki, airs on Toonami, including the Toonami premiere of Spirited Away, and the Cartoon Network premieres of Princess Mononoke (a movie Toonami plugged during its theatrical run), Castle in the Sky (a movie that Toonami presented during the 2000 New York International Children's Film Festival), and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind.
April 22: Ultimate Avengers, the first American comic-inspired production not from DC Comics, premieres on the block.
May 13: The final episode of Justice League Unlimited, Destroyer, premieres on Toonami.
June: Pokemon Chronicles premieres on Toonami much to the disgust of nearly everyone present. Also, some Superman movie, Brainiac Attacks, came on, but nobody liked it.
July 14: Toonami Jetstream, the successor to the original Toonami Reactor, launches on broadband with new programming like The Prince of Tennis, MAR, and Hikaru no Go as well as shows like Megas XLR, Samurai Jack, and Toonami's biggest property, Naruto.
September 2: Fantastic Four, Toonami's first weekly Marvel series, debuts.
September 9: Pokemon Mystery Dungeon makes its US debut. Yeah, talking Pokemon doesn't make one feel right.
October 21: Ultimate Avengers 2 premieres.
October 28: The first animated Hellboy movie, Sword of Storms, makes its world premiere on Toonami.
November: Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh GX take over the first hour of Toonami.
December: The Prince of Tennis and MAR premiere on the Toonami broadcast, skipping episodes all the way through March 2007.
2007
January: During the Xiaolin Showdown marathon, the first teaser celebrating the 10th anniversary of Toonami is shown.
February 14: The Cartoon Network advertising upfront meetings revealed that Toonami is a major brand of the network and announced that Master Control will take over the afterschool lineup beginning in mid-summer replacing Miguzi.
March 3: The Toonami premiere of The Invincible Iron Man, Toonami's third movie (second animated movie) rated TV-14.
March 10: The Toonami premiere of Stan Lee's Mosaic, the third animated movie rated TV-14, which actually seemed better than The Invincible Iron Man. This installment of Toonami was the final one to feature the third incarnation of TOM and the second incarnations of SARA and the Absolution.
The following week marked the tenth anniversary of Toonami. The current era has arrived.
It may be the final era. Let's see the current era.
