IGPX has reached a twenty year milestone from its Toonami debut on November 5, 2005. This anime was the first of many Toonami originals. To this day many regard it as the best Toonami original. With a unique premise of racing mecha teams. IGPX captured a cult audience.
The original plan for IGPX during the very early TOM3 era, was a weekday micro-series directed by .hack//SIGN director Koichi Mashimo about mecha combat. This event aired for five short episodes one a day—somewhat like Star Wars Clone Wars by Genndy Tartakovsky. While this variant of IGPX has its fans, it was a prototype for what came later. This was a more traditional robot anime without the racing elements, akin to G Gundam which had been popular as a quasi-super robot anime in the late TOM2/early TOM3 era. Some of the characters originated here, but it is a very different beast from what was to come.
The full series was directed by Mitsuru Hongo, best known for directing the seminal Toonami space opera Outlaw Star about space bounty hunters, which paved the way for Adult Swim to air Cowboy Bebop. However his work is somewhat divisive. His Candidate for Goddess series was localized as Pilot Candidate and heavily censored for a Y7 rating (despite having little offensive content and originally being announced for Toonami) on Adult Swim’s first action lineups. This anime was often ridiculed for its meandering plot and early CGI. Pilot Candidate is widely considered one of the lesser early Adult Swim Action series, disappearing after just a couple runs in 2002.
Hongo’s unique combination of sci fi futurism and characterization made him a good match for IGPX. Much of the appeal of the series is downtime episodes with relaxing music from Ninja Tune. At the time this was a rarity where Toonami chose the soundtrack of an anime. While many anime that aired on Toonami around that time, like Wulin Warriors and 4Kids One Piece, had replaced soundtracks, this was usually done by the dubbing company rather than Toonami. The involvement of Williams Street in production allowed Toonami to create two distinct versions tailored to specific markets: a Japanese version with different score and pacing, as well as the American broadcast version.
Toonami tried their hardest to make this series a hit. Promotional DVDs with the first episode were included in Nintendo Power and Anime Insider magazines. Nonetheless the show failed to live up to the other lighter fall 2005 shows like Bobobo-Bo Bo-Bobo. The core tragedy of IGPX is it attempted to be a very cool and character driven show with teenage angsty characters having relationships on and off the track. While Takeshi and Fantine’s romantic struggles or Takeshi’s rivalries with Cunningham and River were interesting and relatable to teen audiences, kids accustomed to battle Shonen like Dragon Ball GT and One Piece at the end of the block didn’t stay up for IGPX. Shows like this appeal best to the 12-17 audience that Toonami wanted to target, but weren’t allowed to despite initial promises from Jim Sample that Saturday Toonami would be a teen oriented block. Making the older demo targeting especially clear, the second season of IGPX was rated TV-PG-LV. Over time the series included increasing amounts of swearing, something almost never allowed on Cartoon Network outside of non-Adult Swim hours. IGPX became one of the countless TOM3 series to receive an incomplete run on Toonami. As Sam Register said of the beloved 2003 Teen Titans’ cancellation in the most recent Teen Titans Go episode “the Network wanted to go in a different direction” away from teen oriented programs. Instead Cartoon Network engaged in a series of futile attempts to move into live action (Re-Animated) and girls programming (Totally Atomic) to compete with Nick and Disney.
While Naruto was able to survive and thrive in an era when CN didn’t much care for older skewing anime, IGPX suffered the same fate as Gundam Seed. Team Satomi ended up being sent to the Friday night death slots next to Garlic Jr. saga Dragon Ball Z reruns, to finish out Liz, Takeshi, and Amy’s second competition for the IG-1 championship. Toonami did at least produce a promo seeing it off, which is more courtesy than .hack or Gundam shows ever received. Despite Gundam Seed and .hack//legend of the twilight bracelet running two years on Friday nights and IGPX running two months there, IGPX was the sole series to receive promotion on the unnamed pseudo-Toonami Midnight Run Friday night anime block.
Although the TOM3 era on Cartoon Network suffered from many poor decisions harming great shows, the return of Toonami on Adult Swim beginning on the legendary April fools prank of April 1, 2012 allowed IGPX to finally receive a successful run. In the mid 2010s, Toonami ran all episodes of IGPX for the first time on its new Adult Swim timeslot. Another attempt at airing was made in 2023-2024 to promote the new blu-ray set from Discotek. This airing which began during Daylight Savings bonus hour two years ago was aborted after one season, leaving the HD version of season two a Blu-Ray exclusive.
While IGPX certainly hasn’t had the same amount of runtime on Toonami as Shonen Jump titans like Naruto or One Piece, it has an important role in establishing the connection between Production IG and Toonami. Toonami’s partnership with Japanese studios has led to many further anime projects such as Uzumaki in the Adult Swim era of Toonami.
Did you enjoy the original run of IGPX on Toonami in 2005, or did you watch it on one of the later runs?
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