Toonami
Cartoon Network's action block where a generation of American kids met anime. Hosted first by Moltar, then by TOM — the robot captain of the Absolution — it made Dragon Ball Z and Sailor Moon after-school rituals and treated its young audience like the stories mattered.
Toonami debuted March 17, 1997 as Cartoon Network's action-animation block, created by Sean Akins and Jason DeMarco. Its first host was Moltar, the Space Ghost Coast to Coast character voiced by C. Martin Croker, who ran the block through 1999. On July 10, 1999, Toonami relaunched with its defining icon: TOM, a robot captain of the spaceship Absolution, voiced at debut by Sonny Strait.
By 1998, Dragon Ball Z and Sailor Moon were flagship programming, later joined by Gundam Wing — and Toonami became how American kids first experienced anime at scale: not through specialty shops or imported tapes, but through the living room after school. The block's stylized packaging and music-driven promos treated cartoons like they mattered, and powering up through five straight episodes became the after-school ritual for a generation straddling the 90s/2000s line.
Cartoon Network announced the block's cancellation on September 20, 2008 at the Anime Weekend Atlanta convention, citing declining ratings. But Toonami got the rarest ending in television: revived May 26, 2012 as a late-night Adult Swim block, where it still runs — programmed for the same kids, now grown.
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