30 days until Anime Weekend Atlanta
Alright, actually that italicized text is wrong. I’ve been a day off all year. I keep a countdown on my phone (because sometimes I need the dopamine boost), and when I set up this year’s countdown, I mistakenly set it for midnight Atlanta time on Friday, November 20 instead of Thursday, November 19.
So actually there are
29 days until Anime Weekend Atlanta
That mistake in mind, let’s talk about another mistake I’ve made. For years, I’ve been able to recite an [adult swim] anime block from memory that carried my interest in anime into adulthood. I distinctly remember being in late middle school and early high school, staying up late at my grandmom’s house, playing Age of Empires II and watching this lineup.
The specifics shift slightly in my recollection as you can see if you dig through this blog, but the vague outline remains the same. It started with Bleach for an episode or two at 11 p.m. Then at midnight there was Fullmetal Alchemist or Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood for an hour. At 1 a.m. and 1:30 a.m. there was some combination of Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex and Cowboy Bebop. At 2 a.m. there was something else juicy like Paranoia Agent, Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit, Samurai Champloo or what have you. 2:30 a.m. was time for Shin Chan and the signal to go to bed. Then they’d replay something? Probably that night’s episodes of Bleach, and by 4 a.m. it was time to crash during the Inuyasha ending.
I’ve talked about it with friends. We’ve nodded knowingly and fondly recollected our time with the glowing box and the cool anime lineup they put together in Atlanta.
I recall that block more fondly than Toonami.
But it’s not real. Parts of it are real, and all those shows did air on [adult swim] and Toonami at some point, but it wasn’t all at once. I’ve lumped together about a decade of lineups in my memory from my middle school years right up through college and the return of Toonami to the weekly rotation.
There’s a wiki cataloging all the Cartoon Network lineups over the years. It proves me wrong pretty substantially, but it does make it clear that I am primarily lumping together the summers of 2006, 2007 and 2008.
In 2006 and 2007, I spent most summer weekends (most weekends, generally) staying at my grandmom’s house. Saturdays, being very cool, I watched British sitcoms on PBS from about 8 p.m. until 11 p.m. locally.
That British sitcom lineup I’m still confident in. At 8 p.m. it was Keeping Up Appearances. Throughout most of that stretch you then got some rotation of As Time Goes By, Are You Being Served?, To the Manor Born, and Waiting for God. I believe, given its somewhat bawdier nature, Are You Being Served? came late in the block. Then the last train out of the station was the Vicar of Dibley, and PBS switched to Austin City Limits and Chase switched over to cartoons.
Bleach did feature at 11 p.m. my time in some stretches of that block, and Shin Chan was sometimes the last show before the block looped or (weirdly) the first show in the loop. In 2006, there was a run with Eureka Seven, GITS:SAC, Samurai Champloo, Cowboy Bebop, Inuyasha and Fullmetal Alchemist, and I know I’m biased, but that seems like a helluva high point for anime blocks on cable television.
Looking through these schedules has certainly clarified my memory a good bit. I can now remember ignoring a lot of shows that never really worked for me. They aren’t bad shows, but I like less than half of them half as well as they deserve. Younger, fickler Chase rolled his eyes a lot through the 2008 block.
Eureka Seven, Death Note, Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion, Blood+, Trinity Blood all got on my teenage nerves. Also, why was Futurama ever in the middle of that block? I like it, but it’s a weird programming choice.
When Toonami returned in 2012, I was more excited than most of my friends. Of course at that point, we were all streaming a lot of shows when they were new in Japan, but I’m a sucker for a cool programming block.
I ended up disappointed, though. I’m glad Toonami has endured, but ultimately, it hasn’t really been for me. The shows are great, but it’s not the Saturday night vibe I craves. That moody 2006 block and the strange bumps of that era haunt me, just out of reach.
Anyway, at least two posts remain in this countdown to Anime Weekend Atlanta. I’m not entirely sure what they’ll look like. We’ll find out.
Until next time.
