Toonami announced back in October that their regular programming would be taking a break in December to show a block of movies. This past Friday, Toonami revealed which movies would be airing and when!
12/7 – AKIRA – Akira isn’t just a movie – it’s the genesis of an anime genre. Katsuhiro Otomo’s landmark cyberpunk classic obliterated the boundaries of Japanese animation and forced the world to look into the future. Akira’s arrival shattered traditional thinking, creating space for movies like the The Matrix to be dreamed into brutal reality. Without Kaneda and Tetsuo, without espers and psionic assassins, without that badass motorcycle – our world would be a far less exciting place to exist. But the manga became the movie and the movie became a phenomenon and the world took notice. Now, Akira is everywhere. If you can’t see it in the streets – if you can’t feel it crawling around inside your brain – then you have yet to be initiated. What. Are. You. Waiting. For?
12/14 – SUMMER WARS – Kenji is your typical teenage misfit. He’s good at math, bad with girls, and spends most of his time hanging out in the all-powerful, online community known as OZ. His second life is the only life he has – until the girl of his dreams, Natsuki, hijacks him for a starring role as a fake fiancée at her family reunion. Things only get stranger from there. A late-night email containing a cryptic mathematic riddle leads to the unleashing of a rogue AI intent on using the virtual word of OZ to destroy the real world, literally. As Armageddon looms on the horizon, Kenji and his new “family” set aside their differences and band together to save the worlds they inhabit in this “near-perfect blend of social satire and science fiction.” (AnimeNewsNetwork.com)
12/21 – FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST: THE CONQUEROR OF SHAMBALLA – Munich, 1923: Two years have passed since Edward Elric was ripped away from his brother Alphonse, leaving one existence and appearing in ours. In Ed’s new reality, a plot by the Thule Society and the burgeoning Nazi Party threatens both worlds with war. Occult forces and monstrous Homunculi lurk in the shadows, and alchemy and modern science are set to collide.
12/28 – TRIGUN: BADLANDS RUMBLE – Twenty years ago, an infamous outlaw – Gasback – was staring down the barrel of betrayal. His gang was ready to do the world a favor and take him out – until Vash the Stampede interrupted the stand-off, allowing Gasback to escape and continue his outlaw ways. Cutting the villain loose was a risky gamble – and now, two decades later, fate’s ready to settle up with Vash on the dusty streets of Macca City.
Gasback’s crew – including bodyguard-for-hire Wolfwood – is coming to town to cause big trouble. It’s no coincidence that the outpost’s mayor is Gasback’s traitorous ex-right-hand man. The scorned outlaw isn’t the only one looking for vengeance; Amelia, a tough desert rose with a painful past, wants to punish Gasback for the damage he’s done. Everyone involved is about to learn a hard truth about consequences – and Vash the Stampede might end up paying for the lesson with his life.
Are you excited for movie month? For more information about this special event, please click here to see Toonami’s Tumblr post. If you like what you see, be sure to buy the movies in our FUNimation Shop so you can watch them over and over again whenever you want!
