As any person who grew up in Canada, I was exposed to YTV as a child. And the majority of people who watched YTV in the 2000s probably had exposure to the late Friday night anime block called bionix. Just out of curiosity, who here watched anime on there until they canceled it? The shows that aired were InuYasha, Gundam Seed/Destiny, Gundam Wing, Ghost in the Shell SAC, FMA, Eureka seveN, Case Closed, Witch Hunter Robin, Death Note, Naruto, Bleach, Blue Dragon, .Hack//SIGN, Avatar, Zatch Bell and many others.

I hear it was similar to the Toonami block in the States and both were shut down around the same time (only difference being that Toonami got re-booted but Bionix didn't since YTV executives are too full of shit to get any other show except iCarly)---but thats besides the point.

I also remember signing petitions to bring it back when it was removed but none of those worked. So anyway, out of interest, who here had exposure to Bionix in the past?

I watched that programing block was the only place I watched my animu before I discovered the wonders of the internet I was pretty sad when the block was canceled.

Oh wow, it's been a while since I've heard anyone talk about Bionix! Yes, I was introduced to quite a few great anime titles thanks to those wonderful Friday nights. Even though I prefer watching subtitled anime, Bionix was a convenient way to try a series to see if it was worth purchasing. Ah, how I miss those days.

Literary Eagle wrote:Oh wow, it's been a while since I've heard anyone talk about Bionix! Yes, I was introduced to quite a few great anime titles thanks to those wonderful Friday nights. Even though I prefer watching subtitled anime, Bionix was a convenient way to try a series to see if it was worth purchasing. Ah, how I miss those days.

Yes exactly, those friday nights were awesome. Even though I didn't care for some anime like Naruto, I got introduced to shows like Case Closed and Death Note through there. It was indeed a very convenient way to catch some new anime [considering back then I didn't use the computer as much]

Stan wrote:Yes exactly, those friday nights were awesome. Even though I didn't care for some anime like Naruto, I got introduced to shows like Case Closed and Death Note through there. It was indeed a very convenient way to catch some new anime [considering back then I didn't use the computer as much]

Yeah, Death Note was one of my favorite shows from Bionix! It was so much fun seeing what kind of crazy/ingenious scheme Light would come up with every week.

On a related note, does anybody remember some of the funny commercials YTV used to do for anime shows? I remember one where they joked that the "Z" in Dragon Ball Z had gone on strike so they needed to find a new letter, and one of the suggestions they came up with was "Dragon Ball H"... I always wondered if they didn't know what the implications of something called Dragon Ball H would be, or if they did know and they were just trying to slip a naughty joke past the radar.

Speaking of naughty jokes, they had a Sailor Moon commercial where this guy was singing the praises of the characters with rhyming words ("Sailor Moon, you make me swoon," etc.) and then when he got to Sailor Venus he said "Sailor Venus... nothing rhymes with Venus except... I can't say that on TV!"

Literary Eagle wrote:Speaking of naughty jokes, they had a Sailor Moon commercial where this guy was singing the praises of the characters with rhyming words ("Sailor Moon, you make me swoon," etc.) and then when he got to Sailor Venus he said "Sailor Venus... nothing rhymes with Venus except... I can't say that on TV!"

Oh yeah LMAO, I remember that. When I was a kid I didn't quite catch the joke, but now that you reminded me of it years later, I see what he did there hahaha. The old announcer voice was awesome, he had good humor. Do you remember the Anime-Nia promos (for the 24h marathon of just anime)? I remember he was making fun of Yugi's face during his duels---"now thats what you call a Poker face". Or the "What if DBZ was an opera" commercial

Good times

Stan wrote:Do you remember the Anime-Nia promos (for the 24h marathon of just anime)? I remember he was making fun of Yugi's face during his duels---"now thats what you call a Poker face". Or the "What if DBZ was an opera" commercial

Ah yes, I remember those! I also vaguely recall a Gundam Wing promo that went something like "If you want a show with a lot of explosions, and a story that your parents will never understand in a million years...", ha ha!

Thanks for starting this thread! It brought back a lot of fond memories!

I saw a bionix movie about a mask at one point and I had some toys and a comic book. Until this thread however, I'd forgotten they'd existed.

Very late on this, but all traces of anime are now officially gone from YTV. About a year ago they had the 25th anniversary celebration and I managed to take a snapshot - with references to Hamtaro, Dragon Ball, Power Rangers and Reboot, but no direct reference to Bionix :(


After that they shut down the boards and even removed Pokemon after a 16 year run. Now the channel has zero anime or Japanese related content. I was upset about the boards getting dismantled because we had a sub-forum with a "bring back Bionix" petition with like 300 signatures, and we even got Andy the host of Crunch to sign it! So sucks that it's now gone

The block turned 10 on Sep 10th, 2014 since it's launch on Sep 10th, 2004. (if anyone cares lol)

I did however find these, almost shed a tear from the nostalgia:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BeG_56CrZ8 The 2008 version of the disclaimer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TV2ngtkTQaY Coming up next bump compilation #1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pw_Ya0-Xns8 Coming up next bump compilation #2

Trajan wrote:I saw a bionix movie about a mask at one point and I had some toys and a comic book. Until this thread however, I'd forgotten they'd existed.

FYI for the confused:
Bionix is a TV block, not the Bionicle series of Legos. lol

Bionicles was awesome!.............wait you mean bionix? my mistake.

How/when did DIC's Sailor Moon air on YTV, out of curiosity? In '97 and '98, it aired at 4:00 or 4:30 PM on Cartoon Network's Toonami block, and later in '98 they aired the 17 "lost episodes" from season 2 (originally weren't dubbed because show was canceled but finished by fan request). Then the early 2000's saw Cloverway's seasons 3 and 4 on Toonami with everybody's favorite "cousins"...

So yeah, I always wondered what was the deal with Canada's situation.

I forget if it was part of Tooanmi proper but Cartoon Network used to have the Midnight Run (uncut dubbed anime), which I guess in later years sort of got replaced by Adult Swim? I don't watch much TV so...

I've heard anime in Canada has a tough time especially lately (like y'all can't get VIZ's Neon Alley/Hulu over there without alternate means), which just blows. Stuff in North America should be in ALL in North America, in my opinion.

@Sailor Star Dust
I cannot tell you crazy specific details since I was very small when Sailor Moon aired. However, I remember watching it at 3:30 pm after school on weekdays in the late 90's (like grade 1 or 2 for me).

In terms of the history of the show, YTV hosted the North American broadcast premiere of Sailor Moon in August 1995. It was one of the stations leading show from then onward. I believe Canada was actually ahead of the States with Sailor Moon (and we were damn proud of it haha). With respect to R, the final 17 episodes of Sailor Moon R were dubbed specifically for the Canadian market due to fan demand and were later broadcasted in the US. Sailor Moon lasted a long time on the channel, I remember still watching it in 2003.

Yeah our anime situation is quite grim. Anime has been absent from TV nationwide since Feb 2010. Even shows like Pokemon got canned. There was a run of FMAB and Black Lagoon on SuperChannel4 in 2011, but it is only available in a super premium package that only about 4 people own in the country. We do get paid subscription services like Neon Alley (not Hulu, and Funimation/adult swim websites restrict us from watching anime there).

--------------------------

I know many people don't know how Toonami relates to Bionix - so I'll clarify. Essentially YTV had plenty of 'kid' anime all over the channel (Pokemon, Digimon, Hamtaro, Sailor Moon, Zoids, Medabots, Yugioh, Beyblade, Dual Masters, Shaman King and so on). However in late 2003 we got InuYasha. The debut of InuYasha turned YTV into Canada's leading station for teens. The station advertised itself as the best channel for teens across Canada - however teens included people up to 17. At that point the company realized that they didn't cater much to audiences over 12. They quickly looked at how the Americans addressed this issue with adult swim and Toonami, so YTV basically copied them

Wiithin less than a year the station had an overhaul. From bright yellow and purple with bubble font - to - a metallic blue and white theme. And to push this 'mature' look they launched Bionix in Sep 2004 with teen Anime shows like: .hack//sign, Ghost in the shell, InuYasha (now part of Bionix), Escaflowne, Witch Hunter Robin and so on.



The programming schedule was pretty much identical to Toonami with us getting the exact same shows as the US a few months later. Interestingly though, Bionix shows were mostly uncut, with the really violent ones broadcasted late. Thankfully, by giving those series a midnight timeslot and a special “serious business” disclaimer stating that it was for older teens (a disclaimer we would see again both for Death Note and, oddly, Case Closed), these concerns were pretty much done away with by YTV.

Thanks for the detailed info

At least I better understand why Canadian fans on Twitter etc (1 dude seems a bit overly passionate, though I understand why) really petition to bring VIZ's Sailormoon streams (limited time dub episodes, always sub episodes, etc) to Canada. Though at least CrunchyRoll gets SM Crystal...I thought CR was in both U.S. & Canada unless I'm wrong.

@Sailor Star Dust
No problem! I am actually quite knowledgeable in this area. It's rare for someone to ask - which gives me a reason to talk about it haha!! (not very useful knowledge otherwise)

I think to answer your question is very easy. Anime was very prominent in Canada throughout the 1990's up to the mid 2000's - so naturally many people grew up with it. I wasn't even fully aware of its full impact until recently. Now that I’ve been in university way too long, I have met too many people to whom anime really spoke to, and who truly viewed it as something special. It’s safe to say that these shows really held some significance, almost like a cultural impact on that generation of kids.

As one blogger I used to follow commented on the issue; "In its heyday, Bionix wasn’t merely a group of incidentally acquired programs slapped together under one banner, it was a block with real drive and an audience worth reaching out to" - so to abandon that loyal audience and keep them in neglect for this many years.. well, I'll let you finish that thought.

Hope that explains it


(Also we get CR, I think aside from Hulu we get most paid services, to my knowledge)