Every weekend at our booth the same thing happens. Someone in their late thirties picks up a Vicious figure, says "I haven't thought about Cowboy Bebop in twenty years," and buys it without checking the price. Twenty minutes later someone in their late teens asks whether we have anything from a show that premiered nine days ago. Both of them are anime fans. They have almost nothing in common, and the shelf knows it.
We call them the Toonami generation and the Crunchyroll generation. The first grew up with anime as a TV block: a scheduled, dubbed, curated hour that Cartoon Network launched on March 17, 1997, that put Dragon Ball Z and Sailor Moon in front of American kids in 1998, and that was cancelled on September 20, 2008 before Adult Swim revived it on May 26, 2012. The second grew up with anime as a feed: simulcast, subtitled, infinite, and argued about online before the episode had finished loading. Funimation was folded into Crunchyroll in March 2022 and switched off on April 2, 2024, so for the younger group there has only ever been one app.
This is a good week to settle the argument. Bleach, a Toonami show, finished its 22-year run on October 26. Jujutsu Kaisen, the Crunchyroll generation's flagship, dropped twelve Culling Game character posters on October 31 ahead of Season 4 with no date attached. Both generations are watching the same fall. Five rounds, and we score each one by what people actually buy from us, because that is the one place nobody lies.
Round 1: Sub or dub (the reflex, not the opinion)
Ask a Toonami kid and they will say "dub, obviously," then quietly admit they watched the last three seasons of something subbed because the dub was six weeks behind. Ask a Crunchyroll kid and they will say "sub, obviously," then quietly admit they put the dub on while doing dishes. The honest answer for both is: whatever lets me watch it tonight.
What the shelf says: the Toonami generation buys the characters whose English voices they can still hear. Vicious, Spike, Vegeta, Kenshin. It is why the S.H.Figuarts Vicious ($59.95) has been one of the steadiest sellers in our Figuarts case since 2020, and why the Spike with Noodles POP ($25.99) keeps finding buyers. The Crunchyroll generation buys by scene. The Q Posket of Rei Hino in her Eternal uniform (Ver. A, $26.99) sells to both camps for opposite reasons: the older buyer remembers "Mars Fire Ignite," the younger one saw the Eternal films on Netflix. Round to the Toonami generation, narrowly, because the reflex is more honest.
S.H.Figuarts Vicious · $59.95
Q Posket Rei Hino (Ver. A) · $26.99
POP! Spike with Noodles #1217 · $25.99
Round 2: How you found the show
The Toonami generation did not choose anything. A programming block chose for them, which is why their taste is weirdly uniform: everyone over 35 has seen Gundam Wing, nobody over 35 has seen Turn A. Gundam Wing ran uncut on the Midnight Run in 2000 and that single scheduling decision is why there is a Gundam shelf in an American anime shop at all. The Crunchyroll generation chose everything, from a catalogue of thousands, with a recommendation algorithm and a group chat as the only curators. Their taste is broader and shallower: they have seen the first three episodes of two hundred shows.
The shelf says curation wins. The uniform-taste generation buys deeper. The Kotobukiya Mari in the white plugsuit ($129.99, 1/6 scale) is a figure almost nobody under 25 asks about, and it sells anyway, to people who watched Evangelion on Adult Swim in 2005 and finally got closure in 2021. The FiGPiN XL Unit 00 ($24.99) goes to the same crowd. The Gundam Universe GP01Fb ($24.99) is the cheapest way into a mobile suit without a hobby knife, and it moves to exactly the people you would expect. Round to Toonami. Browse the Evangelion shelf if you want to see what depth looks like.
Kotobukiya Mari White Plugsuit 1/6 · $129.99
FiGPiN XL EVA Unit 00 #X45 · $24.99
Gundam Universe GP01Fb GU-21 · $24.99
Round 3: Patience
Here the Crunchyroll generation wins and it is not close. The Toonami generation sat through Dragon Ball Z at a pace of one punch per week, the Garlic Jr. saga, and more Shippuden filler than anyone should admit to, and they will tell you that built character. It did not. It built tolerance. The Crunchyroll generation watches a twelve-episode cour, gets a real ending or a real cliffhanger, and expects the next one in eighteen months. They dropped Bleach when it stalled in 2012 and came back when Thousand-Year Blood War gave them a season with a shape. That is not impatience. That is taste.
The shelf agrees. The figure lines that move fastest for us now, prize figures from SEGA and Banpresto, are built for the cour generation: one character, one scene, twenty-seven dollars, done. The Nanami Ohiruneko ($26.99) exists because a single episode made Nanami the internet's favourite salaryman. The Taito Anya Puchieette ($31.99) exists because of one facial expression. The Giyu nesoberi ($29.99) exists because Giyu has roughly eleven minutes of screen time per season and the fandom decided that was enough. Round to Crunchyroll. Our whole Jujutsu Kaisen and Demon Slayer shelves are proof.
Round 4: Loyalty
The Toonami generation is loyal to characters. The Crunchyroll generation is loyal to seasons. You can see it in what each one does when a show ends. When Naruto ended, the older crowd kept buying Naruto; the Big Nyaruto Naruto ($29.99) is a 2020 release of a cat version of a character whose show ended in 2017, and it still finds its person every few months. When a Crunchyroll-era show ends, its shelf goes quiet in about six weeks and the next cour's characters take the pegs. We have watched it happen to Chainsaw Man, which is why the Nendoroid Doll Denji ($84.99) now lives in the Back Room, waiting for the Reze movie crowd to remember him.
The most Toonami thing on our shelf is a Yamcha FiGPiN ($14.99). Nobody under 25 would make a Yamcha pin. Nobody over 35 can walk past one. It is in the Back Room too, which tells you something about who is doing the walking. Round to Toonami, and it is the round that matters most to a shop, because loyal customers come back when there is no new season to chase. Our Dragon Ball and Naruto Shippuden shelves are twenty years of that loyalty in plastic.
Big Nyaruto Naruto Uzumaki · $29.99
FiGPiN Yamcha #218 · $14.99
Look Up Sailor Moon & Chibi Moon set · $99.99
Round 5: The con floor
This is where the two generations finally meet, and where the younger one wins by being better at it. Toonami kids go to conventions the way they watched TV: show up, wander, buy what catches the eye, leave by four. Crunchyroll kids arrive with a list, a group chat, a budget split into "artist alley" and "dealers," and a cosplay from a show that premiered in the spring. They know what a Q Posket is and which prize figures are underpriced. The older generation taught them none of this; the internet did.
The shelf is split. The Look Up Sailor Moon and Chibi Moon set ($99.99, in the Back Room) is a Toonami purchase: expensive, nostalgic, decided in ten seconds. The Inumaki Jukon no Kata ($26.99) is a Crunchyroll purchase: a side character, bought for the sculpt, which the buyer had already looked up before they reached the table. Round to Crunchyroll. Our Q Posket wall sells to both, which is the real reason it keeps getting bigger.
The verdict, and the part we are wrong about
Three rounds to two, Toonami, and we would score it that way again. The older generation's taste is narrower, but it is theirs; it was handed to them by a block of television and they kept it for thirty years, and it is why a Kikyo Nendoroid ($59.99) from 2021 still sells to people who were thirteen when Inuyasha aired after midnight. The Crunchyroll generation's taste is wider, faster and better informed, and it will outgrow most of what it is buying right now.
The counterargument is that the split is already dead, and the fall of 2026 is the evidence. Bleach, a Toonami show, got its ending because a Crunchyroll audience demanded it. Dragon Ball Super: Beerus is airing weekly on Netflix to teenagers who never saw an episode of Z on cable. The Jujutsu Kaisen posters this week will be collected by people who are also, quietly, rewatching Cowboy Bebop. Toonami itself still airs on Adult Swim on Saturday nights, running shows that premiered on streaming first. The two generations are not two tribes. They are the same tribe at two ages, and the shelf, which sells a Vicious and a Nanami to the same customer more often than you would think, has known that for years.
If you grew up on the block, start with the Cowboy Bebop, Sailor Moon and Inuyasha shelves, and check the Back Room first: everything in it is 30% off automatically at online checkout through November 30, 2026 (online only, not at our convention booth), and a lot of it was made for you. If you grew up on the feed, the anime page is sorted by what your generation buys. Either way, US shipping is a flat $5, and first orders get 10% off with WELCOME10.
— Team Shumi