Forum - View topicANNCast - Macek Training
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penguintruth
Posts: 8493 Location: Penguinopolis |
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Oh, don't get me wrong. I understood why he did the things he did, and came away a little more knowledgeable about the process of bringing anime to a more broad audience. That still doesn't excuse his arrogance. The man talks like he's some sort of creative genius, like he's the saivour of anime, and if everyone had listened to him, the marked would have been better off. The rest of your argument against mine is nonsense. Actually, its nonexistent. You have not countered a single thing I have said and have instead attacked me and labelled me some simply raging fanboy. I deeply respect your opinions when you have them, but it right now you're having a reaction, not an opinion. I had no real problem with Macek before the podcast. Sure, I resented him as the guy who made bad dubs, but I didn't hate him, because it made sense for the time he worked in. But the things he did later, when anime was more than capable of having solid dubs and subtitles for Japanese tracks, are just disgusting. And I dislike his attitude. Don't pigeon-hole me. GATSU - Saying that Macross fans don't want an authentic dub for Macross is like saying Dragon Ball fans don't want one for Dragon Ball Z. The market is definitely there. And I've found that a lot of people didn't even know ADV put out Macross on DVD. Hell, I didn't even notice until they were playing episodes on Anime Network. |
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jgreen
Posts: 1325 Location: St. Louis, MO |
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An even better podcast than usual, guys...thanks for all the hard work! (And for asking my Fist of the North Star question!)
Lots of food for thought here, but the part that struck me most were Macek's themes of localization and evergreen titles. I get the feeling that I'm somewhat of a rarity among anime/manga fans in that I like localization....I like having a story communicated to me in a way where I, as an American, can lose myself in the story without having to screech to a halt every few minutes to consult translation notes or what have you. You can, of course, take localization way too far and there are times when the material just doesn't support it (particularly if its strongly rooted in Japanese customs), but as long as its done with care, and with the intent of maintaining as much of the creator's original intent, then I'm all for it. And as for evergreen titles, I think the anime industry's move to producing chiefly TV series has really hurt their ability to cater these sort of evergreen, must-have titles to casual Western anime fans as well as they did in the early 90s. Just as an example, I have a ton of friends who used to be pretty diehard anime watchers, but whose watching habits have waned since college as everyone has gotten jobs, families, what have you. I've been tempted for eons to have an anime night to kind of remind these guys of all of the good stuff they're missing...but what would I show them? If they're only going to watch anime one time, for 2-3 hours, what value is there in showing them just the first 6 episodes of any given show? No matter how good it is, it's not going to give them a complete story, something that offers a sense of closure and, more importantly, something that they might see at the store, remember liking the whole thing, and dropping some money on it so that they can watch it again and again. Movies and OAV series fill that niche so much better, and are able to become those "evergreen" titles both because of their (typically) higher production values and their self-contained nature. I know that the reversal of the TV series trend won't be happening any time soon, but a guy can dream, can't he? A couple other random thoughts... - Oh, man, thanks for reminding me about the Robotech: Defenders comic...UGH! I bought an issue of that out of a 3-for-a-$1 bin just because it had "Robotech" in the title but ooooooh man, what a piece of garbage that was. Even the lettering was bad. It takes a special kind of comic to only cost you 33 cents and still feel like a ripoff. - Nice shoutout to St. Louis when Carl mentioned Voltron! Because the company who made Voltron also owned a TV station here in town, they periodically reran that show well into the late-90s, and it was glorious. - Thank you for letting Carl go off on the Ren & Stimpy tangent...really interesting stuff. - It was great to hear the history of Streamline's growth chronologically, as having come to them a bit late in the game ('95) I had it all mixed up. I had no idea that Totoro was one of their very first products...I love that dub. - The quote that surprised me the most: "14 theatrical releases, all of them making money." Now that's damn impressive. - It was also really interesting to me how much non-returnability factored into Streamline's early successes. Non-returnability is a hallmark of the comic book direct market distribution model and has been working well for that industry (to a point) for almost 30 years. Contrast that with how returnability has completely decimated several anime and manga publishers and it's interesting to ponder how non-returnability would have changed the face of the anime industry. Sure, stores are more conservative in their ordering since they're stuck with excess inventory, but the publisher can operate a lot more effectively when they know that every sale that goes out the door is final. - It was nice to hear his philosophy as to why Streamline's series releases (Zillion, Nadia) were truncated, but it didn't make it any less frustrating. To have 8 episodes of Nadia on VHS only to have to wait another decade to see how the story ended...GUH. But yeah, great podcast all around, guys! And hey, mind if I throw out some ideas of future guests I'd like to hear on ANNCast? This seems like as good a place as any! - Trish Ledoux and Toshifumi Yoshida - Matt Thorn - Claude J. Pelletier |
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jgreen
Posts: 1325 Location: St. Louis, MO |
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Oh, definitely. I grew up watching Robotech and Voltron and Speed Racer on TV, and I knew all of them were "Japanimation" (as we called it back in those days). Their "different-ness" from everything else on TV at the time was pretty readily apparent, even at age 7 or whatever.
Ditto here. I thought the casting in the original Akira dub was spot-on, personally. Geneon's script was generally clearer and easier to follow, but I still prefer Streamline's overall.
Kind of hard to believe that when your first comment in this thread was you couldn't even hear what he was saying and still found him "rage-inducing." Sounds like you went into this podcast more than ready to be pissed off by anything Macek said.
Arrogance? I didn't hear anything I'd think of as "arrogant"...even when he referred to himself as the "Johnny Appleseed of anime," that was still a pretty modest way of saying he simply got the ball rolling that other people ultimately ran with. I'd say he's understating his historical impact on anime in North America, which is huge regardless of your opinion of the man and his work.
Y'know, if you don't want to be pigeon-holed as a "raging fanboy," you probably shouldn't respond to a two-hour long intelligent, reasoned discussion by calling the guy a "splooge stain." Just a thought. |
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penguintruth
Posts: 8493 Location: Penguinopolis |
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That was just me referencing his reputation.
He's exaggerating and making it seem like if he hadn't, nobody would have, and he should be congratulated for being some creative leader. No, more like he's a savior. His contributions helped, yes, but he sounds proud of bad dubs. Like Dunbine's dub was anything but a disaster.
I went a little overboard with that, yeah. |
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ABetterTimeandPlace
Posts: 101 |
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Since the early 1990s? An entire shelf of Ghibli DVDs The Girl Who Leapt Through Time Paprika and everything else from Satoshi Kon 5 Centimeters Per Second and everything else from Makoto Shinkai Ghost in the Shell films Evangelion films FLCL Jin-Roh La Maison en Petits Cubes Summer Wars (at least in the UK this year) More Lupin III films In the at-least-they're-pretty department like many early 90s stuff: The Sky Crawlers Cencoroll Pokemon Diamond & Pearl film trilogy (it doesn't get more mainstream than this) Blood: The Last Vampire Steamboy Cowboy Bebop the Movie Escaflowne the Movie Freedom Afro Samurai Sure, there is more of everything else, but that doesn't mean there isn't also more feature-length anime perfect for an evening gathering. |
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toddc
Posts: 164 |
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This is fascinating stuff, though it's hilarious to hear someone argue that Lady Death could've been saved at all. I'd really like to hear some people from ADV Films respond to Carl's tales of working there.
The "Uncle Carl" label seems even more appropriate now, since he's like some avuncular old relative who's full of fun stories. And we can all forgive that Thanksgiving fifteen years ago where he had a few too many and threw up in the mashed potatoes. |
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jgreen
Posts: 1325 Location: St. Louis, MO |
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I guess I could have been more specific...I meant that these are guys who, like me, got hooked on anime in the 1990s on stuff like Akira, Fist of the North Star, Ninja Scroll, what have you, and then dropped off shortly after the era of Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, FLCL, etc. So what I was really looking for in my idle musing there were movies/OAVs that are really current to show them what's going on now. You did mention some really good material (the Ghibli, Kon, Shinkai, and Hosoda stuff, for example), but those don't quite scratch the same "big adult action anime" itch. I mean, I know there's stuff out there (Afro Samurai, Appleseed), and maybe I'm not looking in the right places but those seem like the exception rather than the rule. Where's today's Wicked City, or Macross Plus? |
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dizzon
Posts: 338 |
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Even though Mr. Macek spoke very softly at times making it kind of hard to hear, I think this podcast might be my favorite to date. Its fascinating to hear the point of view of someone who has as much experience in the business as he does; puts things in perspective.
Don't feel alone, I also like localization for the same reasons you state as well as a few others. I'm certainly not what you'd call a purist, in anything really, not just anime.
That's right, I had forgotten about that. What station was that? |
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GATSU
Posts: 15479 |
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ABTAP: My point was that, without Harmony Gold, Macross might have ended up with some faceless corporation only out there to get some toy sales out of it, where the rights might have been stuck in licensing hell, like DYRL. In other words, it would not be subbed and uncut today. And I've seen the subbed tape for Akira, and I did not notice any difference from the Geneon subs, other than the slang. In fact, the Geneon script was worse, because the company just had to insert some random joke about Tenchi Muyo in there. The Cagliostro print I've seen only had the names changed, as per the legal wrangling with the LeBlanc estate. And the Nue/Tatsunoko tension out-dates HG's own assertion of its Robotech copyright.
Charred Knight: I've seen all the original shows and Robotech, and I seriously do not notice a significant difference in the content. If people want to see a company rape an anime, watch the DiC CCS or 4Kids One Piece. Or the obvious Warriors of the Wind. AWO:
That is such bs. You could still watch the imports or fansubs. Totally different from when a monpolistic a-hole like Harvey Weinstein sues sites like HKFlix from selling uncut versions of Shaolin Soccer, or writes a contract where he's the only one allowed to distribute Fist of Legend and Drunken Master 2 on home video. Or when Buena Vista Japan and Sunrise try to screw us out of the Japanese tracks for Princes Mononoke and the original Mobile Suit Gundam. Renaissance:
But the Japanese version ends up going in the same direction with the added episodes, anyway. penguin:
Actually, I remember a couple fans who were absolutely pissed at the idea that ADV "stole" Macross from Animeigo, and they were buying up leftover box-sets. Didn't matter that ADV would have made the series cheaper and more available, with the possibility that the thing was profitable enough to get some of the newer OVAs. ADV was just stepping on their turf. [There's some sort of rivalry issue for some reason, just because ADV picked up the YUA movies and Shin KOR, since it's completely different from CPM licensing Beautiful Dreamer. ] And yeah, you can tell that the fact that ADV went under very soon after that the dub didn't make a difference. As for DB, I'd imagine the hardcore fans want a dub which isn't from FUNimation. But unfortunately, FUNi wouldn't be where it is today if those newbs weren't so eager to buy the edited versions of Z. Hell, they're willing to settle for an inferior picture job being misleadingly labeled as "enhanced". And some of them were even willing to stand their ground on friggin' DB: E, for f**k's sake! So I don't really consider that fanbase a beacon of a quality. Last edited by GATSU on Fri Jan 15, 2010 6:06 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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jgreen
Posts: 1325 Location: St. Louis, MO |
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KPLR channel 11. Which back then was an independent but is now a CW station. Voltron even gets a mention in their Wikipedia article....apparently they were the company behind Denver, the Last Dinosaur, too. That explains a lot... |
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ikillchicken
Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
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The fact is that Macek is a very smart business man. You may not like everything he's done but I think he deserves a lot of credit for that. It's easy to sit back in retrospect and talk about how if he hadn't done what he did for anime someone else would have but that's nothing but wild and baseless speculation. It's also highly questionable reasoning. The only people that might have been able to do what he did to push anime into the mainstream would have been someone just like him and you'd probably hate them just as much and if it were some purist fanboy, well I doubt they would have managed to capture even close to the same mainstream appeal precisely because they are not smart business people willing to make smart business decisions. Lord knows I hate to see anime messed with but I for one think that the current industry could desperately use more smart business men like Macek instead of a bunch of fanboys making stupid mistakes and running failing companies. If that means we don't always get accurate dubs then so be it. |
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ABetterTimeandPlace
Posts: 101 |
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Perhaps this is the more accurate way to describe the situation: anime in America has expanded beyond the young-males-with-disposable-income-and-free-evenings demographic that it had in the early 1990s. There's still just as much of that kind of action anime fare--it's just that there more of everything else. American anime fans are getting a better glimpse of wide variety of anime that Japan offers. Now, if you still want "big adult action anime" after FLCL, there's: Sword of the Stranger Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex: Solid State Society New Evangelion films Freedom Patlabor WXIII Blood: The Last Vampire Steamboy Vexille - 2077 Isolation of Japan Diebuster Aim for the Top! The Animatrix Mobile Suit Gundam MS IGLOO: The Hidden One Year War Appleseed Armitage: Dual-Matrix Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Blue Gender: The Warrior Afro Samurai Highlander: The Search for Vengeance Batman: Gotham Knight More Lupin III films There's a lot of that out there, just like there's a lot of everything else out there. |
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penguintruth
Posts: 8493 Location: Penguinopolis |
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The thing is, other people were already doing what he did and I don't see or hear them painting themselves as heroes. Has Macek heard of a guy named Frederik L. Schodt? Peter Fernandez? Sandy Frank? He's probably heard of World Events Productions, since they did Voltron. Bad dubs were necessary back in the day to meet standards and practices, to extend anime's range, but you're saying that bad dubs will help save anime now, when the standards we have are higher? So, what's the ratio we should have, then? For every Darker than Black dub we should have two Dragon Ball Z dubs (I realize that both are by the same company)? |
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ABetterTimeandPlace
Posts: 101 |
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It's not a matter of absolutes, and one can be both--one can be a smart business person and cater to both mainstream and dedicated fan audiences. Prosperity and accurate dubs/subs (remember, even the rare Streamline Pictures subs were needlessly inaccurate) are not mutually exclusive. Despite early mistakes, Funimation and Viz Media are proof of that. Macek certainly was a capable business man, but calling him a very smart business man obscures the major mistakes to which he contributed. Trying to produce 65 animated episodes in less than a year with a measure of quality is one of them. (The falling dollar and lackluster toy sales often get the blame, but people forget that Robotech II: The Sentinels was already doomed by being seriously behind schedule and overly ambitious due to the U.S. team's inexperience in daily television animation production.) Macek's belief that the Lady Death film could've saved it all demonstrates a case of wishful coulda-been thinking at best, and serious myopia at worse. Funimation and Viz Media indicates that there are smarter business people in the business. Macek holds himself up to criticism because he holds himself up as not just a business man, but one who takes creative credit that is not necessarily all his. |
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pparker
Posts: 1185 Location: Florida |
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Great podcast. I keep saying you are knocking them out of the park, then it gets better.
Since I'm a new anime fan, and didn't come to it via cartoons or comics, I have no historical animosity regarding localization (though I watch everything subbed now from the viewpoint of enjoying "foreign" film in its original form). It's just a really fascinating glimpse into the beginnings of an industry, before commercial formula and standardization set in, and I love those stories. Regardless of anything else, you have a guy who had the skills and also the savvy to leverage them. He also got RESULTS. Something an anti-capitalist, or fanboy, won't appreciate. 14 profitable films speak for themselves in comparison to today's market. The Captain Harlock story is classic and priceless. I laughed out loud having witnessed these scenarios before. The point is, though, you could've lined up 50 people behind Macek, and maybe 1 of them would have actually gotten the job done, not to mention right, despite the insanity of the project. That other person might or might not have gotten a better result, but it doesn't matter. All in all, just an inspiring story about someone able to get things done under simply ridiculous conditions and requirements. Someone who, as fate would have it, happened to be in the right place at the right time with the right skills, and more importantly was someone who was willing to put in the effort required to get the best result he could envision to meet the purpose and goal at hand. And I didn't find him arrogant in the least. Proud of what he's done? Sure. And damn well good that he is. He's got nothing to apologize for, and if you can't stand that, then frankly that's your problem and nobody cares. You're more than welcome to submit your own list of accomplishments, though, and impress us with those.
Yeah, stock put-down of someone's talent and accomplishments. See those gravestones... no one's special, and they are all replaceable. No, he's not the second coming, and yes, the anime boom would likely have happened anyway, but that takes nothing away from this guy's work. Sure, maybe the picture is painted more rosy than it was. Fact is, most of what anyone does at that point in an industry's birth is "questionable" by definition. Why? Because it hasn't been done yet, or to any degree to establish standards of success. There aren't any experts to turn to or guidebooks. If you can be that successful in those circumstances, you are a rare bird indeed. It's very easy to criticize those actions in retrospect, but it's rather silly in fact to do so. |
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