Adult Swim and April Fools Day

Alright, tonight is the night of Adult Swim's annual prank for April Fool's Day.

Since 2003, Adult Swim has always done a broadcast stunt every year as a prank, some of which have become profound and well-known (most notably the 2009 and 2012 pranks) and now I'm curious as to what the prank is going to be this year.

Now, the prank is always done on the night of March 31 and always starts at Midnight (when the clock officially changes over to April 1) and generally lasts the whole night or most of the night. Some years they do a double-prank, either two pranks in one night (like in 2006) or a prank at midnight the first night and a secondary prank the next night aired before midnight (as in 2017 and 2018)

Here is a summary of each year's prank....

2003: The same episode of Harvey Birdman was aired back-to-back in a loop the entire night from Midnight until the end of the block

2004: Mustaches were drawn on random characters at random points throughout the night

2005: An episode of Robot Chicken was replaced with a surprise airing of the Squidbillies pilot, specifically a poorly-animated black-and-white version of it

2006: A double-prank and one of the more memorable ones alongside the 2009 and 2012 pranks. That night, Adult Swim aired a bunch of campy programs from the 1980's, including Chuck Norris: Karate Commandos, reruns of Saved By The Bell and Pee-Wee's Playhouse, an anti-drug/anti-gang PSA program starring Hulk Hogan and Mr. T, and to top it all off, the final hour was reruns of Fullmetal Alchemist and Ghost In The Shell with fart noises added in. Notably, the reruns of Pee-Wee's Playhouse stuck around on the Adult Swim schedule for a few more weeks in the spring of 2006.

2007: The long-awaited Aqua Teen movie was advertised to air on the block, and after the opening credits finished, the movie shrunk down to a small box on the corner of the screen with no audio while normal programming aired.

2008: A bunch of failed pilots aired that night as a marathon

2009: The Room aired that night and it is argued that Adult Swim airing it as a prank helped expose the movie to a larger audience, helping turn an obscure flop into an internet sensation and the biggest cult film since Rocky Horror.

2010: Once again, they aired The Room

2011: The Room aired again, indicating that it was going to be an annual tradition from now on

2012: The Room was about to air, and as soon as the opening credits finished, it cut to a surprise Toonami night. Prior to this, the old Toonami had been dead for years and anime on Adult Swim was seemingly on its last legs and about to be phased out. This prank was so beloved and popular that it convinced Adult Swim to keep anime on the block and revive the Toonami brand in full. It has been theorized that the Toonami prank was intended to be a "last hurrah" and a send-off of anime programming, but was so acclaimed that it had the opposite effect and saved the anime block.

2013: The block aired with cat-themed commercial bumps and random characters having cat pictures pasted over their faces.

2014: The failed one-season show Perfect Hair Forever aired as a surprise marathon

2015: There was a fish-themed prank on the shows and a coin-hunt game on the official Adult Swim website

2016: The week leading up to the night came with promos recapping the previous pranks and a promise that the 2016 prank would be the biggest one yet. When the clock struck midnight, normal programming aired the entire night, with the implication that the prank was that there was no prank.

2017: A double prank. The main night they aired Adult Swim shows with crazy sound effects randomly edited in, such as laugh tracks, chickens clucking, robot voices, and the bass music from Seinfeld, which was considered to be a lame prank but a step up from the previous year. Then the next night in an unexpected twist, a stealth premiere of Rick & Morty Season 3 aired that night until midnight.

2018: That year, Toonami aired with Japanese audio and English subtitles. Even the commercial bumpers and text were in Japanese and there was also a stealth premiere of FLCL: Alternative and the movie Mind Game, the next night they aired a Rick & Morty fan episode from Australia.

2019: Meth is a hell of a drug. Also, something about tennis and Inca ruins.

 

Adult Swim is still a thing?

 

Wonder what the prank will be this year?

 

Do they still do that thing with the white text on black?

 

Not having watched AS in a long time, it's amazing it's still on at all.

 

I watched it back when anime was still (sort of) popular in America.

(There was an "anime age" in America circa 2000 that faded by 2010.)

 

Yep, I remember that age well. That was when manga suddenly was a thing in regular book stores like Waldenbooks so it didn't seem like a hassle to go to a specialty shop or mail order to get started on it. I do miss it.

 

I miss those days too.

 

What was the prank this year?

 

An array of stealth premieres, including the new seasons of Primal and 12 Oz Mouse

 

So what's Adult Swim like nowadays with all the coronapanic?

 

Agreed. This might catch some heat, but past a certain point Adult Swim kind of became what edgy people thought dadaism was.

 

One may think it's the artsy way of saying "Random-access humor"...

 

Bit late but Adult Swim managed to do a couple things in the last few weeks:
1) Cancel the Venture Brothers which pretty much means another good show dead. And whatever they may of had planned means it ain't going to be done unless Adult Swim manages to give a shit about airing the show again with new episodes.

2) Choosing not to reruncertain episodes of Aqua Teen Hunger Force and The Boondocks due to racial sensitivity. I get one could say the episodes wouldn't be tasteful but the only ATHF episode they give the axe to is one of Master Shake turning black from a radioactive black man which makes me wonder how would African-Americans feel about it compared to whatever assumption Adult Swim could make. As for Boondocks, that show is literally a jab at parts of black culture and how society perceives black people, how the fuck would they choose not to air certain episodes when the show itself was pretty much like South Park in taking a piss at both negative parts of African-American cultures and at shit like police thinking the whitest black guy on the show was some killer when the actual perp was way darker skinned than him?

Only decent stuff I saw from them was Primal and Ballmastrz. The former is due to being a work of Genndy Tartakovsky while the latter is because they got Shakes voice actor for it.

As a side note: people not liking it managed to somehow draw a hot take from someone that works for Toonami. The only thing that made me wonder with hot takes is if they at realized what Boondocks is known for and what irony it is they, Adult Swim, and anyone else could lose over that show in light of not wanting to air a rerun because of racial sensitivity.

 

So TL;DR: AS is going woke (and broke)?

(I haven't watched AS since 2009 because no cable.)

 

Probably but even then these are just old ass episodes and I doubt airing them will set back African Americans. I haven't watched much of their shit in a long time because fuck it, I can watch shit like Boondocks on Youtube or some streaming site. Only instance of Woke I could imagine is if that screen blurb of Zoe Quinn is true but then again fuck it, woke or not AS may as well have other problems going for it such as cancelling popular shows to shill out other ones they got coming up.

 

I remember watching Cowboy Bebop on Adult Swim back in the day, back when anime was really popular in America. Also much Futurama.

I guess they don't show anime anymore though.

And Futurama moved to Comedy Central.

 

Don't think they really did, at the very least they would wanted to of moved away from it once they had their own programming.

 

Tonight's prank night

 

Smiling friends episode 2?