One Piece fans, brace yourselves. It looks like Toonami is ready to run the anime ashore. Captain Monkey D. Luffy and his Straw-Hat Crew have been part of the late-night program’s line-up since May 2013, but its tenure will soon come to an end. Recently, Toonami made the surprising announcement that it will end its airing of One Piece permanently and fill its timeslot with Tokyo Ghoul.
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The program confirmed One Piece would exit its schedule over on Facebook with a tribute video. Toonami announced it planned to remove the long-running anime from its program starting March 25th. On that day, Tokyo Ghoul will immediately take over the show’s slot.
As for why One Piece is being dismissed, it seems ratings are a determined factor. When the anime debuted on Toonami years ago, it kicked off episode 207 to thousands of viewers. In fact, nearly one million fans tuned into its debut, but that number has slowly declined. Toonami has gradually amped up its line-up with shows like Dragon Ball Super and Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn RE: 0096, and the series have pushed One Piece back. It’s later showing combined with slow-moving story arcs led to a ratings drop, and Toonami is interested in reeling back viewers.
To do so, the program is relying on Tokyo Ghoul to get the job done. The dark anime is a hybrid horror-thriller that features far less content than One Piece. At only two seasons, the fluid series introduces fans to a world where horrifying monsters known as Ghouls exist. The horrifying creatures survive by consuming human flesh and live amongst humans in secret. The story follows a boy named Ken Kaneki after a date-gone-wrong leaves him a half-ghoul. Struggling to adapt to his new life, Ken tries his best to fit into ghoul society, keep his monstrous status hidden from humans, and reign in the insatiable hunger he has for flesh.
The series debuted in September 2011 thanks to mangaka Sui Ishida. Weekly Young Jump first published the manga before it was adapted into an anime series by Pierrot. The anime premiered in July 2014 before a second season ran in January 2015.
For now, it seems Toonami is interested in diversifying its contents. Currently, the late-night block features a slew of lengthy anime titles like Naruto Shippuden and Dragon Ball Super. It’s line-up is saturated with shonen action, and One Piece has simply struggled to differentiate itself from other anime series which air prior to it.
In the future, Toonami may reconnect with One Piece given the series’ unprecedented popularity abroad. But, for now, fans should expect Luffy and his pirate comrades to embark on their journeys elsewhere.
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