Toonami is back?

OH. Thought it was by comparison to the one in the Anime section.

In Toonami's last days, how many Western Animation shows were actually airing.

None. It was just Naruto and One Piece.

Well like, 2006-2007, wasn't Teen Titans or Ben 10 airing there?

TT was until it got canceled ... on a cliff hanger mind you.

edited 7th Oct '12 2:15:17 AM by Vyctorian

That wasn't a cliffhanger, that was an open ending. The point isn't whether that was Terra or not, the point was it didn't matter and Beast Boy needed to move on. It's called "Thing Change" for a reason.

And we're lucky it got a fifth season at all; it was planned to end at season four.

Open ending, is just a nice way of saying cliffhanger.

Cliffhanger implies resolution. An open ending is left open for a thematic purpose.

Toonami nearly always had at least one Western Animation show featuring on it. The times it didn't are greatly outweighed by the times it did.

If this incarnation of Toonami survives for a very long time, I wouldn't be surprised if they not only lengthened the block but added a single Western show up there.

The end of Thunder Cats 2011 and Symbionic Titan are probably more like cliff hangers, but even those ended with a little resolution. I really hope good Toonami ratings CN convince executives to give the shows a second chance. Really though, you have to question the motives behind adding them to Toonami. You could just say that the guys running Toonami want to do something nice; adding action shows which were cut short to please the fans.

But just like the April Fools day special which kicked this off, it was a test. They didn't just do it for fun, they did it to get a response. Maybe they wanted to see what sort of response they'd get this time. I got to say, I haven't seen the TC fandom this active in almost a year. And it still surprises me that I still keep seeing people on tumblr who didn't know it even existed.

The other implication though is that CN doesn't care about these shows and wouldn't have done anything more with them if Toonami hadn't asked. It amounts to "You want these? Go ahead, we don't need them anymore." As if that wasn't clear when both Titan and T Cats were airing. Sometimes shows aren't popular because they're just bad, but other times it's simply because their network shows them zero support.

As good as any show is, it can't get popular if it never gets advertised, and no one even knows it exists. And switching its time slot around without warning or letting anyone know only confuses people who do try to watch it. When Thundercats switched to Saturday mornings, I remember seeing only one commercial for it. One measly little commercial, and then everyone was surprised when they found out new episodes were already airing. And I think CN tried to pass it off as a second season, which is just wrong.

And TC got decent ratings compared to Young Justice and Green Lantern, but I think a lot of that has simply to do with it being shown right after Ben 10 and before DC Nation, which CN does promote regularly. It basically had to piggy back on the ratings of other popular shows, but that's my guess. I wonder how much bigger the ratings could have been if CN bothered promoting it. They did a good job hyping up the premiere, but all that effort seemed to just vanish as soon as the premiere was done. And I saw a toy commercial for T Cats maybe twice. Another theory I have is the reason the franchise was so horribly under promoted was because CN and Bandai assumed that one side would promote the other. Bandai assumed that the show would serve as the toy commercial, so they didn't bother showing their own much. CN assumed that the toys would get the show better ratings. But it didn't work because it just ended up with neither side not doing anything.

Seriously, the differences between how CN and other networks handle their cartoons just baffles me sometimes. The new TMNT already has a second season confirmed, and it just started airing. Ultimate Spider-Man got a second season when it was barely out of the gate, and it has gotten such negative reviews. But we can't have second seasons of Titan or T Cats from Cartoon Network. Same goes for Megas XLR. Just typical Screwed by the Network I guess. But I'm glad that Toonami is airing these shows again. Toonami is beloved by so many fans. Having Titan and the 'Cats on there just feels vindicating, and it means that these shows aren't really dead yet.

Hey, I just saw Lion-O in one of CN's promos! And he got a decent speaking role! He tries to help Velma look for her glasses. Maybe things are changing for the better, I hope.

edited 7th Oct '12 3:41:44 PM by StarOutlaw

"A cliffhanger or cliffhanger ending is a plot device in fiction which features a main character in a precarious or difficult dilemma, or confronted with a shocking revelation at the end of an episode of serialized fiction" - From The Other Wiki, Our own pages on Cliffhangers backs this up as well.

Yes, that is the technical definition, but the the way the term is commonly used implies that some resolution in intended to be eventually forthcoming. The makers of the Teen Titans intended "Thing's Change" to be the final episode, and never intended to resolve the question of whether or not the girl in question was actually Terra. That counts at best as an open plot thread, in my book. The whole episode feels very much like an ending on pretty much every other level.

Changeling didn't have a shocking realization at the end of the episode; seeing "Terra" raised a question for him early in the episode, which he then spent the rest of the episode trying to resolve. By episode's end the question still was unresolved, and one gets the impression that that was the point. The episode came to a resolution even if the question did not.

edited 7th Oct '12 3:46:25 PM by Robbery

Except Teen Titans doesn't end with them in peril nor does it end with a big revelation. They never confirm if the girl is really Terra, and the message it that Beast Boy needs to move on from her. If it had ended with her suddenly revealed to be Terr, then it could be called a cliff hanger, but it didn't, and the episode ended with the resolution being that Beast Boy has moved on from Terra. So please stop insisting that this is cliff hanger when it clearly was not set up that way. There is no sign that they were ever going to do any sort of further conclusion to that episode.

edited 7th Oct '12 3:41:19 PM by StarOutlaw

... A girl that looks exactly like Terra and sounds exactly like Terra shows up and there is a mystery hook and heavy implication that it might be her and it ends suddenly with no resolution. Also no where have I read that cliffhangers offer a resolution of any kind if they did they wouldn't be cliff hangers! That's like the polar opposite of a cliff hanger!

edited 7th Oct '12 3:44:37 PM by Vyctorian

You. Are. Ignoring the whole point of the episode. There IS a resolution, and that is Beast Boy MOVING ON. Just because you can't move on from it doesn't mean it's a cliff hanger. It's not a cliff hanger because it's not a conflict which concerns the main characters any more. It was resolved when Beast Boy decided to help his friends and no longer dwell on Terra. Just because it's left open doesn't mean it isn't unresolved. The resolution for the characters is to move on from it.

edited 7th Oct '12 3:54:12 PM by StarOutlaw

Okay, there is a character arc resolution, yes. But there is still a gaping mystery filled with implications left wide open with no resolution; see Cliffhanger.

And the show makes it perfectly clear that it's not going to discuss those implications. It's no more a cliffhanger than the ending to Inception.

That just makes them both unresolved cliffhangers. Making a unresolved cliffhanger on purpose doesn't somehow make it not a cliffhanger.

As for making it perfectly clear, I never saw it that way neither did any of my friends until we found out months later it was canceled, I'd always thought it was a case of Screwed by the Network.

Once again, it doesn't matter who that girl was. Point was that Beast Boy needed to move on, and he did. End of story.

The show did conclude Terra's plotline by showing her in a position where she is to be left alone, and concluded the plotline as a whole by showing that resolution can sometimes come from peace of mind rather than explaining everything.

That's a resolution, and there being questions that the show doesn't answer does not make it, by definion, a cliffhanger. It would only be a cliffhanger if the plot wasn't concluded and left hanging, but, as the whole point of the plot was for Beast Boy and the series at large to move on and accept what they shouldn't pursue, that isn't the case.

There was a hole left gaping so wide, you could fit another season into it and they bring up a bunch of plot questions which never get answers; Cliffhanger. End of story.

edited 7th Oct '12 5:29:46 PM by Vyctorian

Nor were they going to be answered. It can't really be a cliffhanger if the writers don't plan to, you know, resolve the issue.

It's called an unresolved cliffhanger/ cliffhanger ending. A series can end on a cliffhanger intentionally.

Not this time.