To be blunt, the merger between Warner Bros and Discovery has been a disaster. While the merger didn’t do anything of note at first–likely because of a brief feeling-out period–the dominoes soon began to fall. It started when a certain movie was straight-up written off as a tax write-off despite it being nearly completed, followed by other series getting wiped from existence so the parent company wouldn’t have to pay royalties to the creators. The animated universes that exist within the Warner Bros Discovery bubble have been hit the hardest, with all sorts of series being canceled, shelved, and erased. Now, Adult Swim can add itself to that list of impacted entities.
Adult Swim has been one of the best places to get anime on television, especially once the programming block brought back Toonami and started to showcase classic and new animes for people to enjoy. It was even able to show off new anime seasons like My Hero Academia, Fire Force, Dr. Stone, and others. Then, they took some of their biggest swings and started to create original anime. But now the hammer has fallen on them and several of their series have been canned or wiped due to Warner Bros Discovery.
Tigtone and Lazor Wulf were already confirmed to be leaving, but now Fena: Pirate Princess, Shenmue The Animation, and Blade Runner: Black Lotus have all been pulled from Toonami. This was confirmed by the co-creator of Toonami himself in a tweet. He apologized to fans for what happened and told them where to go to watch these anime in the future.
A key thing to note here is that not too long ago, Toonami was labeled as being safe from the cuts that Warner Bros Discovery had been enacting. That didn’t hold up, and fans are ticked at the further losses that they’re taking.
This announcement comes around the same time Warner Bros Discovery was revealed to be sued by their investors! Someone cooked the books to make it seem like there were 10 million more subscribers to HBO Max than there were. As such, the investors were lied to, which is grounds for a lawsuit. It couldn’t have happened to nicer folks.
Fans have been livid with Warner Bros Discovery since nearly the outset. Everything they’ve done has caused chaos in the industry, all in the name of saving money and cutting back on costs. Just in the animation industry, people are wary of even thinking of working for Warner Bros Discovery because of how volatile things are with them currently.
This set of cuts from a channel that has been rocking it likely won’t put any faith back in their name. Hopefully, Adult Swim can bounce back in the anime department.
Source: Twitter
