“There’s no sign that the evils of this world are disappearing. That hasn’t changed since before I became a hero. So…I guess that means I haven’t really made any difference. I’m not necessarily sad about that. But there has been something bothering me lately. As the days pass, my emotions grow more distant. Fear, tension, joy, anger, I feel none of them anymore. In exchange for power, maybe I’ve lost something that’s essential for being human. Before, I’ve had all kinds of emotions whirling inside me when I fought. Dread, panic, rage. But now, all I need is One Punch to end it. Every day I come home uninjured and wash my gloves. When I’m not fighting monsters, I never feel as if my heart’s really in it anymore. I mean, I just do the hero thing as a hobby, but as long as I get a kick out of it, in the end that’s all I really care about.”

– Saitama, One Punch Man (Ep. 01)

The Toonami Trending Rundown for July 16-17, 2016. Indeed, Saitama has punched his way into the action as the highly anticipated series One Punch Man makes its debut on the better cartoon show.

With One Punch Man being one of the biggest, if not the biggest anime series of the season when it came out in Japan back in October 2015, no doubt fans would be excited for the debut as the hashtag #OnePunchMan quickly became the top trend in the US and would trend during both East and West Coast airings. Indeed, every show would also trend in the US during their respective East Coast airings, while #HunterXHunter would trend during the West Coast airing as well. In addition, One Punch Man, One Piece, and Toonami would trend on Tumblr as well. Finally, One Punch Man was ranked #3 on the day on Nielsen Social’s top 5 most tweeted about shows, the 5th time this has occurred and the first time a show outside of 12:30am has done this, making sure the show would begin its run with a bang.

Similar to what we’ve seen with the successes of both Attack on Titan and Sword Art Online before, One Punch Man was a huge hit when it originally aired in Japan and among those that watched the subs, and with the dub now here and on Toonami, there are high hopes that it will do the same among western audiences as well. Whether it will be successful on this side of the Pacific is something be determined in the months ahead, but considering the reception it’s been getting out of the gate, I’m personally sure there’s no doubt that One Punch Man will be able to do so, and the more hit anime series there are, the better things are for the growth of Toonami and the anime industry as a whole.

Comic-Con is coming up next week, and for the first time ever, I’ll be going to the convention center as a member of the press representing the Toonami Faithful. With another live episode of Toonami Pre-Flight planned for Thursday and a Samurai Jack panel planned for Friday, we’ll likely be seeing some more surprises regarding the better cartoon show as well as some more info in regards to Samurai Jack, among others. We’ll let you know if anything news or announcements come about, so stay tuned and for those headed down to San Diego for the festivities, have a great time. Until next week, stay gold.

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Legend: The shows listed are ordered based on their appearance on the schedule. Show trends are listed in bold. The number next to the listed trend represents the highest it trended on the list (not counting the promoted trend), judging only by the images placed in the rundown. For the Twitter tweet counts, the listed number of tweets are also sorely based on the highest number shown based on the images on the rundown.

United States Trends:

Toonami [#9]

#DBZKai [#9]

#OnePunchMan (Also during the West Coast airing) [#1]

#GundamIBO [#9]

#HunterXHunter (Also during the West Coast airing) [#8]

#Shippuden [#8]

#OnePiece [#8]

#Parasyte [#8]

Tweet Counts:

Toonami [9,801 tweets]

#DBZKai [1,806 tweets]

#OnePunchMan [11.6k tweets]

#GundamIBO [2,475 tweets]

#HunterXHunter [3,705 tweets]

#Shippuden [1,025 tweets]

Tumblr Trends

#toonami

#one punch man

#one piece

Notes and Other Statistics: