Before crunchy roll, America and some other countrys around the world watched their anime in one format.

Toonami, now here in America we got a block of shows while in other countries they got a fullfleged channel. But we appreciate the block in the US better.

Now on March 17th 1997, literally 5 months before I came into this world, Cartoon Network, back when they still cared about other shows that aren't Teen Titans GO, premiered Toonam I, a block containing both Anime from Japan and Action Cartoons made in the US, such as Samurai Jack and The first iteration of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, long before Disney took over the star wars franchise and made it better.

Anyway the key point that separated Toonami from most TV blocks is the fact they have a host that interacts with the veiwers, even doing reviews of popular Video Games at the time.

Anyway when Toonami first premiered it was hosted by Moltar, a character from the Space Ghost cartoons, who was voiced by the late C. Martin Croker, who was also responcible for the early days for [adult swim].

Then in 1999 we got the second and still current host, T.O.M., which stands for Toonami Operation Module, first voiced by Sunny Strait, the voice of Krillin from Dragon Ball, then replaced by Steven Blum, who is best known for voicing Spike Spiegel from Cowboy Bebop, Heatblast from Ben 10, and more recently Zeb Orrelios from Star Wars: Rebels.

T.O.M. has gone through some trans formations throughout his time as a Toonami host, but his most infamous happens to be the 2007 revamp which no one liked.

Of course at around this time people found out that you can watch uncut anime online so it had none of this edit it for the kiddos bullcrap. But on September 20th 2008 the inevitable happened.

That's right cartoon network cancelled Toonami, mainly due to the fact it was expensive to animate the characters used in this alteration. We all thought that was it for the best anime block on tv.....but on April 1st 2012 as part of [adult swim] April fools day event, something awesome happened.

MEOWTH THAT'S RIGHT! [adult swim] brought back Toonami for one night only....only for them to ask everyone on Twitter if they should bring it back but for adult with minimal cuts, because you know, the FCC and censorship and such. Why, because this brought the channel a huge increase in viewers. And then on May 26th that same year, Toonami returned, and stayed on [adult swim] ever since becoming a Saturday mainstay for [adult swim]. And this happened more recently but with the new Toonami it brought back another show from the cartoon network graveyard. SAMURAI JACK! Of course all they are doing is finally ending the show because when it was cancelled it ended with an unresovled plotline. So this is just their way of finishing up the story. But Samurai jack wasn't the only show to finish its run on the new Toonami, Shows like Sym Bionic Titan, the cgi Star Ware the clone wars, Thundercats, and even Beware the Batman, finished up their runs on Toonami.

What about the future, well the block had its ups and downs but, hey what did you expect from a programming block people used as a scape goat for anime?

That's a brief history of my first introduction to anime.

-xanderwrites