
Just under two months after being shoved off into crack of dawn Sunday programming, Code Geass will shift forward to 2:00am late Saturday night beginning this weekend to mark the start of season 2, or R2 as the kids call it. (The first season began airing at 1am prior to the September change.) R2 had already begun when episode 26, “Day A Demon Awakens”, aired at 5:00am last weekend and that episode will be replayed during the new time slot this Saturday.
Also moving back to a more viewer-friendly time is Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit, now at 1:30am rather than 5:30am or 2:30am, but with a caveat: the first ten episodes will be rerun. The first two DVD volumes covering the initial seven episodes were released by Media Blasters yesterday but there is no explicit indication of when future volumes will come out or when newly dubbed episodes will air, although mid-January seems like a good time for new episodes since the run of rehashes will conclude by then. MB CEO John Sirabella said they were “rushing their way through” the series back in August during their Otakon panel.
Other changes involving new episode premieres are Bleach (now on #87) falling back two hours from 11pm to 1am and Shin-chan returning at 2:30am (was at 12am before shelved) picking up where it left off with episode 47.
The three remaining hours from 3-6am will now be occupied by reruns of fan favorites such as FLCL, Death Note, Ghost in the Shell SAC, Cowboy Bebop, Big O, and… InuYasha, all of which are starting from the beginning. The absence of Fullmetal Alchemist in the revised schedule means its latest attempt at reruns has shut down after episode 7, the first major downer in the series.
Overall, re-establishing a continuous five-hour block of anime should increase bleedover viewership and bringing back old standards like FLCL, Big O, and Cowboy Bebop will attract those who didn’t see them during their previous countless airings.
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