Forum - View topicWhy do we hate Harmony Gold? Can you help me?
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GrdAdmiral
 Posts: 101 Location: Tokyo, Japan |
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Good Evening,
I am currently taking a speech class with the University of Maryland University College. I am writing an informative speech on Fansubs and Anime. But I need to know some information, that I don't really know. I loved Robotech growing up, and loved Macross even more once I saw the original unedited fansub version of it. But I was curious, what did "the fans" do, that drove Harmony Gold under? Why does Harmony Gold hate "us?" And finally, why won't they allow another company to license, and distribute Macross. Especially the newer ones? I am going to use this argument, as a base on why fansubs are popular, and why it created an avenue for them to expand. But as you can see, I don't really know why I hate Harmony Gold. I know I want to see more Macross, and they won't allow it.  But it's like families that have been fighting for years. Eventually the new generations are born, and hate the other family, but have no idea why they are fighting them.
If anyone could help me, or point me in the right direction, it would be greatly appreciated! V/R Lee |
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SalarymanJoe
 Posts: 468 Location: Atlanta, GA, USA |
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Where are you posting from? 1987? I think it depends on what you mean, "drove Harmony Gold under". As far as business goes, they're still alive, though none of their other anime properties were as successful as Robotech, so we don't see much from them as far as other anime. Why did fans (well, some fans still do) hate Harmony Gold? Mostly because of business practices that they held at the time. Because of what it took to get Robotech on the air, they began a practice of simply combining series together and creating an otherwise non-existent narrative to flow between them. HG, and most notably Carl Macek, held a policy of producing dub-only versions (Macek continued this practice with his next business venture, Streamline Pictures). In addition, they used a much more liberal translation train of thought and quality of acting at the time was probably fair, at best. Hence, why I asked if you were posting from 1987. The whole "Harmony Gold is holding back Macross!" farce was true then, but it's hardly true now. Harmony Gold holds the use of 'Macross' in North America; they permitted US Renditions (and later Manga Video after USR folded) to release Macross II: Lovers Again as far back as 1992. And when Manga released Macross Plus later that decade. They did it yet again in 2000/01 for AnimEigo to release its DVD remasters of the original Macross TV Series (which was transferred to ADV a few years later). There's other, bigger things holding Macross back from having more released in North America than HG, usually relating to legal cluster-loves in Japan.
You're right about some of the newer generations and not knowing why they're fighting but don't also forget the older generations who continue to fight and not noticing when times and circumstances have changed. Which is what a lot of people who still hold this grudge seem to be, to me. I don't think that Harmony Gold is necessarily a target for why fansubbing started. Fansubbing, illegality aside, was mostly created out of a very niche market force of people who wanted to watch Japanese cartoons in Japanese and be able to understand the dialog. Harmony Gold was just one company in a handful that released Japanese cartoons, period, and to point the finger solely at them would be to ignore the ones who had similar standard operating procedures and just weren't as successful at it. Literally after a few years of anime spreading because of fansubs, circles, clubs and tape-trading, legitimate licensors began releasing legal products to these fans, nullifying a lot of the anti-HG, anti-Streamline rhetoric of the time. |
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Charred Knight
 Posts: 3085 |
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Most of the hate leveled against Harmony Gold is due to the the belief that they are holding Macross back. Theirs a couple of reasons why Macross has rarely seen release
1. Harmony Gold holds the rights to the name Macross in english 2. Macross uses heavy amount of music which is expensive to get the rights (this is the main reason why Macross 7 is usually stated to have been never been released) 3. Macross 7 is old, when old anime can only be sold sub only due to the fact that its a niche audience If your going to blame Macek, and HG for their dubbing pratices, just remember that Robotech was a much more high quality dub than most anime made for that time. While Robotech wasn't accurate at least Macek had people die, most made for TV anime removed death until the late 90's. |
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penguintruth
 Posts: 8503 Location: Penguinopolis |
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I would say that Harmony Gold has somewhat redeemed itself with the boxset they put out last year of the uncut Super Dimensional Fortress Macross, remastered, with production note inserts. I don't know why more people haven't caught onto that set, I have it and it's excellent.
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Zalis116
Moderator
 Posts: 6902 Location: Kazune City |
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penguintruth
Posts: 8503 Location: Penguinopolis |
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Hm, I don't know. The only informaton I can find on the boxset is the place I bought it from, here. |
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Ohoni
Posts: 3421 |
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I hate Harmony Gold only because they're constantly interposing themselves between me and my cheap Macross merch. Without their involvement (beyond the early 90's at least), it would have lead to almost inevitable ports of the Macross videogames (like the PSX ones that were actually really fun), more availability of models, both import and pehaps even domestically released (like the Gundams), and who knows what else. I hate liscensing legislation in general, but Harmony Gold are a textbook case of abuse.
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Panon
Posts: 242 |
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This is untrue, Harmony Gold did not at all 'allow' Macross Plus and Macross II to be released. They have openly claimed those shows "slipped under the radar" as Harmony Gold was mostly an inactive company at the time. They would stop them it if they could. There's also nothing farcical about the situation - Harmony Gold will technically allow other people to license Macross, sure... but they want a cut and to own the rights to it. The Japanese are unsurprisingly not willing to hand over rights to their shows to a company that dubiously proclaims themselves the absolute perpetual owners of. That's why Harmony Gold 'allowed' Animeigo and ADV to release the original Macross. Animeigo got a limited time sublicense, then all their work and material reverted to Harmony Gold's ownership, which is why they re-farmed it out to ADV. Harmony Gold are the anime equivalent of patent trolls. |
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GrdAdmiral
Posts: 101 Location: Tokyo, Japan |
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I'd like to thank everyone for their input. Even more is encouraged.
Would it be safe to say that the new Macross Frontier would not been licensed because Harmony Gold holds the license for it? That being said, then would it also be true that this type of relationship between the fans of the shows and the R1 developer has fueled the ability for Fansubs to step in and fill a void that is not available via R1 means? That would be a direct cause and effect, and could be proven to a degree. |
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Ohoni
Posts: 3421 |
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I'm sure that liscense-trolls exacerbate the fansub vs. R1 cold war, but they aren't the primary cause of it. The primary causes would be timeliness and price, namely that R1 releases almost always take six months to several years to come out, even when released by fan-friendly companies, and they tend to be priced at a cost that makes it prohibative to follow long-format series. Another larger consideration is the "quality" one, in that some R1 companies (far less than there used to be, unless you wathc Sci-Fi channel) churn out very inadequate releases, with low quality dubs, or even worse subs, the fail to meet the expectations of quality one would have when paying a small fortune for an R1 anime release. This is hardly universal, of course, there are plenty of high quality released, but the bad ones tend to prejudice viewers against them as a whole. These are far more significant factors than the small percentage of R1 companies with a stick crammed up their orafices. |
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SalarymanJoe
Posts: 468 Location: Atlanta, GA, USA |
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Hrm, perhaps I am mistaken, but I could have sworn I saw a Harmony Gold logo on the back of the Macross II box. I could be mistaken. I was not aware that US Renditions and Manga had "slipped them under the radar". Or, is it that HG would have stopped them unless Books Nippan/US Renditions/Manga Video were up-front and paid the toll?
And that's the story of the game. So long as your check is big enough and it doesn't bounce, you get almost whatever permission you want. When I said that HG "allowed" AnimEigo and ADV, it was because each of them had checks. The same way that HG keep writing checks to Tatsunoko. Tatsunoko, likewise, doesn't care much about what HG says in North America. They've owned the sub-license for over twenty years now and so long as HG keeps paying, I doubt Tatsunoko is going to rock the boat.
Yeah, except that they're not doing the same thing with anything related to Captain Harlock. They're playing IP whore with Macross because, since Robotech's inception, Macross has been it's bread and butter. It went from being a property they held that probably wouldn't have made them any money to being an international blockbuster. To them, it's a patent worth enforcing. I don't even think they went to the same extent with Southern Cross or Mospeada.
I agree with Ohoni's base sentiments that there are more significant factors keeping MacF out of the North American market than just the Harmony Gold Tax. |
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Iritscen
 Subscriber Posts: 822 |
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I don't even know how they stay in business, throttling the rate of incoming Macross properties like they do (even if they do squeeze as much money out of them as possible on the way through the R1 system). Although I don't get the impression that it's a very large company. Maybe as long as Macek's making his car payments each month he doesn't see a need to do any more business.
For what it's worth, I do think that "Macross" was a good dub for the time, and it's still watchable even today. As you can see, GrdAdmiral, there are really two separate reasons people hate/have hated HG, one is that a lot of fans hated how they produced Macross (a butcher job by today's standards, even though I think the heart of the show was preserved intact), and the second, modern-day reason is mainly to do with the chokehold they have on the American distribution of the later Macross works. |
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