“I am…Tetsuo.”

– Tetsuo, Akira

“And that, neo-anime kids, was the masterpiece known as #Akira. Bow to the genius that is old school anime”

– ariennaminx

Well, I guess now we know the reason why the IOC chose Tokyo over Istanbul to host the 2020 Summer Olympics…but in serious business, here’s the Toonami Trending Rundown for November 7-8, 2013. As the Absolution goes into hyperspace, movie month has begun and there was a lot of buzz to talk about across the Twitterverse, with One Direction hosting SNL, and the College Football regular season being wrapped up among other things such as a glitchy trending list. But fortunately, Toonami had one trump card up their sleeve: the television airing of the anime classic Akira.

First, the bad news. Only 3 things managed to trend during this hectic night: #Akira (of course), Toonami, and Adult Swim, all both US and Worldwide (and sadly, nether Tetsuo nor Kaneda managed to get on the list). But here’s the good news: Akira reached the top of both the US and Worldwide trends for the entire 6 hours of the block and then some, meaning that Akira trended during both the East Coast and West Coast airings. Just another example of Toonami’s positive impact to Anime as a whole, id say.

If you haven’t heard the news, it is now official that (after a few retractions due to some uncertainty) Space Dandy will indeed premiere on January 4th at 11:30pm Eastern. Naruto Shippuden will also replace OG Naruto’s spot at 12:30am, but in a surprising move, OG Naruto will restart it’s run at 3am, pushing Star Wars to 5am, and InuYasha loses it’s doubleheader, but will still finish the block at 5:30am. Jason says the reason the first 50 or so episodes of Naruto will be re-shown instead of continuing on is because of cost considerations and for timeslot filler as the 3-6am slots still remain too late for premiere shows, and no doubt that 11:30pm-2am slots will be chock filled with such programming for the distant future. For those wondering why people were asking for a block expansion, well, now you know. But otherwise, start getting used to getting your television on to Cartoon Network 30 minutes earlier in preparation for the expansion and keep up the effort guys so we can make sure Space Dandy and the block overall succeeds, so that Toonami can expand even more and give the anime industry some much needed benefits as a result. Funimation also announced the cast for the Space Dandy with Ian Sinclair getting the role of our soon-to-be Toonami legend Dandy. If you missed it, check out here for the full cast list.

In the meantime, tune in next week as Toonami airs Summer Wars for part 2 of it’s month of movies. Summer Wars’s length is a little shorter, so FLCL will begin it’s repeat run straight after. Not sure if FLCL will also air after FMA or Trigun, though, but regardless you could say that these scheduling issues is why FLCL was given a second run.

Legend: 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 mobile app trends, the listed number of tweets are also sorely based on the highest number shown based on the images on the rundown.

US Trends:

Toonami/#Toonami (During Akira) [#4]

#Akira (Also trended during it’s west coast airing) [#1]

Adult Swim (During Akira) [#7]

Worldwide Trends:

Toonami/#Toonami (During Akira) [#4]

#Akira (Also trended during it’s west coast airing) [#1]

Adult Swim (During Akira) [#6]

Mobile App Trends:

Toonami (During Akira) [#2 with 9547 Tweets]

#Toonami (During Akira) [#2 with 2695 Tweets]

#Akira [#1 with 18.3k Tweets]

Special thanks to @Andy_Salcedo, @Blatch0, @BlueAlexander93, @DatDamnPR, @fmp4711, @H2O_MaskedMan, @jeargumedo, @JMB_70056, @KINGMARZE, @KIL3RP, @MisterADRaveN, @MykeJinX89, @nine1123, @trendinaliaUS, @Zach_Logan and others I forgot to mention for spotting some of the trends on this list.

It’s just a game…isn’t it? Only Toonami on [adult swim] on Cartoon Network.