This series is my occasional countdown to Anime Weekend Atlanta. I’ve done it two or three times with varying levels of success, and I am once again embarking on a quest to spend 100 days writing 100 posts about anime, manga, animation, comics, film, and conventions. We’ll see what happens.
100 Days of Anime 2026
Day 004/100
ED of the Day: “Lost in Paradise” by ALI feat. Aklo from Jujutsu Kaisen (2020)
Currently Watching: Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
It bothers me how thoroughly I misremembered the [adult swim] anime block of my teenage years. If you’d asked me, I would have listed out a block without hesitation. Something like:
- 11:00 p.m. – Bleach
- 11:30 p.m. – Bleach
- 12:00 a.m. – Fullmetal Alchemist or Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood
- 12:30 a.m. – Fullmetal Alchemist or Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood
- 1:00 a.m. – Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Paranoia Agent or Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit
- 1:30 a.m. – Cowboy Bebop or Samurai Champloo
- 2:00 a.m. – Crayon Shin-chan
- 2:30 a.m. – Bleach replay
- 3:00 a.m. – Bleach replay
- 3:30 a.m. – Cowboy Bebop or Samurai Champloo replay
- 4:00 a.m. – Inuyasha
- 4:30 a.m. – Inuyasha
And as far as I can tell, that particular block never existed. It’s an amalgamation of blocks from my teenage years. Memory is a fallible thing.
I must confess, I loved the [adult swim] anime block, and as excited as I was for the return of the Toonami branding, I do really miss the tone and weirdness of [adult swim] Saturday nights when I was in high school and college.
I’ve experimented with “programming” my own block in the past, but of course, I’m not a teenager with unlimited energy and five or six hours to (play video games, surf the Internet and halfway) watch anime all night once a week. Watching through my personalized blocks was fun once or twice, but I never had the time after that.
One of these days, I’ll build one of those Raspberry Pi cable simulators so I can schedule a block of anime, turn it on, and fall asleep in the middle without it running through every episode of Cowboy Bebop before I wake up.
In the mean time, I may experiment with building out another block, but this would be a hypothetical exercise. I’d pick out shows, look for interesting synchronicity in the schedules, build out branding, but I probably wouldn’t be trying to watch the whole thing. This would be about vibes and feeding the chasm of my personal nostalgia.
Until next time.
Note 1: I will continue to stylize it as [adult swim] because it’s fun.
Note 2: The folks at Toonami deserve all the credit for a cool block with a lot of longevity. It’s an older, more stable block now than when the original run was canceled in 2008.
Note 3: Can you believe they announced OG Toonami’s cancellation at Anime Weekend Atlanta? Crazy.
Note 4: That’s right. I went back and changed the post time on this to 11:59 p.m. You gonna make something of it? I had to go handle a mouse situation in the middle of writing. I’m not going to miss my arbitrary deadlines for a mouse. So I’ll cheat if I want to. It’s still Saturday in half the country.
chasetriesagain.com 