Toonami Absolution

Raditz is still standing. Piccolo has a plan. And Gohan is about to show that, under the tears, he has a Saiyan heart.This week on Toonami Absolution, Alyx, Jon, and Sam cover Dragon Ball Z Ocean Dub Episodes 3 and 4: "Gohan's Hidden Powers" and "Goku's Unusual Journey."Episode 3 escalates the Raditz fight in the worst way, as Raditz seems completely untouchable. That is until Gohan deploys Dragon Ball Z’s funniest named attack “Leave My Daddy Alone!” stunning Raditz for just long enough for Goku to get into the fight. However, Goku still has to make the ultimate sacrifice to put his brother down for good.Episode 4 turns the victory into a defeat though, as Raditz's dying taunt that two far more powerful Saiyans are already on their way makes Piccolo takes Gohan for special training, realizing that when Vegeta and Nappa arrive, he’ll need all the help he can get. At the same time, Goku startss his long trek up Snake Way to meet King Kai.We dig into what makes this opening arc so effective as a tonal reset from Dragon Ball, what the Ocean voice cast brings to these early episodes, and how Saban’s edits change Dragon Ball Z’s feel. 🔔 Subscribe for our ongoing watch-through of Dragon Ball Z from the very beginning!📌 Topics covered this episode:– DBZ Ocean Dub Episode 3 "Gohan's Hidden Powers" recap & review– DBZ Ocean Dub Episode 4 "Goku's Unusual Journey" recap & review

Beast Wars breaks your heart two episodes in a row. "Code of Hero" and "Transmutate" arrive back to back, and together they represent Beast Wars at its absolute best.This week on Toonami Absolution, Alyx, Jon, and Sam cover the two most emotionally devastating episodes of Season 2."Code of Hero" opens with Dinobot alone in his quarters, quietly contemplating whether to end it all. But as the existential crisis that's been building all season reaches its peak, Dinobot questions if a deed done that can't be undone, and whether his fate was ever truly his own. But when Megatron locates a valley of early proto-humans and attempts to rewrite history, Dinobot heads out alone to find the answer.What follows is one of the most acclaimed episodes in the entire Transformers franchise: a dying warrior giving it his all against impossible odds to prove that, when push came to shove, they were more good than they believed.Then "Transmutate" takes it up a notch. A badly damaged stasis pod produces something that can't transform, barely communicates, and has the mind of a child, a being both sides immediately want to dispose of. However, Rampage and Silverbolt don’t see a freak, but a kindred spirit and both start arguing about what to do with it.However, this episode is also infamous due to a fake script leak that suggested this episode would feature a very unexpected scene….We talk about why these two episodes hit so hard, what "Code of Hero" means for the rest of the season, and whether Beast Wars has any right to be this good.🔔 Subscribe for our ongoing coverage of Beast Wars from the very beginning!📌 Topics covered this episode:– Beast Wars Season 2 Episode 9 "Code of Hero" recap & review– Beast Wars Season 2 Episode 10 "Transmutate" recap & review

One is a 20-minute theme park ride attraction from 2000 that was only ever shown in Japan, somehow directed by the man behind Genocyber. The other is the first full-length CGI Resident Evil film made to actually sit within the game continuity, one that reunites Leon S. Kennedy and Claire Redfield for the first time since Raccoon City blew up.Together, they represent the two milestones for Resident Evil animation: the first CG Resident Evil movie and the first feature-length CG Resident Evil movie.This week on Toonami Absolution, Alyx, Jon, and Sam cover both back to back.Biohazard 4D-Executer (2000) is set concurrently with Resident Evil 2 and 3 and follows a five-person UBCS squad sent into Raccoon City to locate a missing Umbrella scientist named Dr. Cameron and retrieve her research. The Cameron Virus she was developing turns out to function like The Thing: it infects any living creature, jumps between hosts, and produces increasingly nightmarish hybrid forms. But, as it was designed as a 3D motion-seat attraction for Japanese theme parks, everything zombie decides to jump at the camera, rather than the characters. It also features a first-person POV sequence from inside a zombified cockroach, which might be a new sentence.Resident Evil: Degeneration (2008) is a different animal entirely. Set one year after Resident Evil 4, the film opens with Claire Redfield caught in a T-virus outbreak at Harvardville Airport when a crashed plane releases infected passengers into a crowded terminal. Thankfully, the most American man ever made, Leon S. Kennedy is dispatched to handle it.The pair reunite in almost exactly the same way they met in RE2. But, this isn’t any regular zombie outbreak, as Leon and Claire quickly find themselves entangled in a conspiracy that features the shadowy WilPharma Corporation, the G-virus, a man named Curtis Miller who is the most Capcom-looking man ever created.We dig into the history of Resident Evil on film, talk about what Executer says about where the franchise was at the turn of the millennium, and question how Degeneration holds up as the first serious attempt at a game-canon RE film.🔔 Subscribe for our ongoing watch-through of Toonami and Adult Swim's most iconic anime, films, and deep-cut franchise lore!

This week, we're going back to the very beginning. The place where it all began (for American fans anyway) Dragon Ball Z: The Ocean Dub!This week on Toonami Absolution, Alyx, Jon, and Sam cover Dragon Ball Z Episodes 1 and 2 as they aired in the original 1996 Ocean/Saban dub: "The Arrival of Raditz" and "The World's Strongest Team."Episode 1 opens five years after the end of Dragon Ball. There's a farmer with a shotgun, alas his lovely rural day is ruined when a space pod crashes and a long-haired alien steps out claiming to be Goku's brother. Even worse he’s angry that Goku has failed to wipe out all life on Earth.When Raditz finds Goku, he turns Dragon Ball’s lore on its head, instantly drawing a hard line between Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z. Episode 2 escalates immediately: the only way to beat Raditz is if Goku and Piccolo fight together, and that means the series' hero and its former final villain have to put their old rivalry aside and become brothers-in-arms.Ian Corlett's Goku, Brian Drummond's Vegeta-era voice work, the Rock the Dragon theme, Shuki Levy's score, this is the version of DBZ that a lot of North American audiences met first, and there's something genuinely time-capsule-worthy about revisiting it from the start.We get into how the Ocean Dub was made, how it holds up and makes these two episodes such an effective opening for a series that was about to completely redefine what Western audiences expected from anime, and what it meant to encounter DBZ for the first time on a Saturday morning in 1996.🔔 Subscribe for our ongoing watch-through of Toonami and Adult Swim's greatest shows, films, and the dubbing choices that shaped a generation!📌 Topics covered this episode:– DBZ Ocean Dub Episode 1 "The Arrival of Raditz" recap & review– DBZ Ocean Dub Episode 2 "The World's Strongest Team" recap & review

Megatron walks into the alien installation with the Golden Disk and comes out with something that could change everything.This week on Toonami Absolution, Alyx, Jon, and Sam cover "Other Visits (Part 2)" and "Bad Spark.""Other Visits (Part 2)" continues the show’s alien arc as Megatron uses the Alien Disk to gain access to the Metal Hunter (an alien space ship) and charts a course back to Cybertron, triggering a race against time to take the ship out of the sky before Megatron can activate his teleport.Then "Bad Spark" takes a completely different turn: a damaged stasis pod produces Protoform X, a monstrous Transformer whose spark cannot be destroyed. Both Maximals and Predacons are terrified of him. But despite the horrors, Silverbolt and Blackarachnia find the time to have a little bit of romance, even if Silverbolt is a little too dumb to work out what is going on.We discuss the episodes as well as Beast Wars Season 2’s odd tone changes (we’ve gone from cowboys to Universal Monsters in about 3 episodes) and discuss the dropped plot points that were originally planned to build on “Bad Sparks” most interesting plot points.🔔 Subscribe for our ongoing coverage of Beast Wars from the very beginning!📌 Topics covered this episode:– Beast Wars Season 2 Episode 7 "Other Visits (Part 2)" recap & review– Beast Wars Season 2 Episode 8 "Bad Spark" recap & review

Last week, we sent Cooler into the sun. This week, he's back in robot form. Even worse, there are now hundreds of him. Goku just can’t catch a break...This week on Toonami Absolution, Alyx, Jon, and Sam cover Dragon Ball Z: The Return of Cooler (1992), the direct sequel to Cooler's Revenge and the first DBZ film to feature Vegeta.After being blasted into the sun at the end of Cooler's Revenge, Cooler's remains drifted through space until they merged with a massive mechanical entity called the Big Gete Star scoops him up.Now he’s launched an attack on New Namek and begun using the Namekian population as biological fuel, forcing the Z-Fighters travel to New Namek so Piccolo, Gohan, Krillin, and the others can give him a good kicking. However, Goku soon finds himself going head-to-head with Meta-Cooler a cybernetic, self-regenerating version of Cooler who won’t stay down. Can Vegeta (who is here for reasons) turn the tide? Or will Namek fall (again).We discuss the movie and its production and figure out where Return of Cooler sits in the wider DBZ film ranking now that we've seen both halves of the Cooler duology.🔔 Subscribe for our ongoing watch-through of Toonami and Adult Swim's most iconic anime films and series!

It all comes down to this. Alas, this fight is not as easy as it first seems, pushing Yusuke to his limit.This week on Toonami Absolution, Alyx, Jon, and Sam cover Yu Yu Hakusho Episode 25: "Kuwabara's Fight of Love" the final episode of Yu Yu Hakusho season one, the finale of the Spirit Detective Saga and the conclusion of the Yukina Rescue Arc.The Toguro Brothers are waiting. Elder Toguro has already transformed himself into a giant sword for his brother to wield, and Younger Toguro is ready to show that, up until this point, he’s been holding back. Yusuke gives the fight all he has, but as is tradition, he quickly finds himself getting tossed around like a sack of potatoes. However, Kuwabara won’t let Yukina suffer any longer, so he launches one of the stupidest attacks in anime history… 🔔 Subscribe for our week-by-week watch-through of Yu Yu Hakusho and every other Toonami classic!📌 Topics covered this episode:– Yu Yu Hakusho Episode 25 "Kuwabara's Fight of Love" recap & review– Spirit Detective Saga retrospective

Dinobot makes a decision that will haunt the rest of the season. Two fan-favourite Maximals get abducted by aliens. And yes, there are spiders in this one too.This week on Toonami Absolution, Alyx, Jon, and Sam cover "Maximal, No More" and "Other Visits (Part 1).""Maximal, No More" shows Dinobot at his best as, after being captured, he makes the calculated decision to ask Megatron for permission to rejoin the Predacons. An action that forces him to hand over the Golden Disk.While he eventually does return to the Maximals the Disk remains gone, setting in motion a chain of events that will change the Beast Wars forever.Then "Other Visits (Part 1)" opens the aliens-are-back arc in dramatic fashion: Tigatron and Airazor get abducted by aliens. Rhinox tries to work out what happened, only to find that Megatron’s study of the Alien Disks have allowed him to put an evil plan into motion. Tarantulas is also on his way, because of course he is.🔔 Subscribe for our ongoing coverage of Beast Wars from the very beginning!📌 Topics covered this episode:– Beast Wars Season 2 Episode 5 "Maximal, No More" recap & review– Beast Wars Season 2 Episode 6 "Other Visits (Part 1)" recap & review