apparently Carl Macek died

[davemerrill]

I expect all my social media to be filled with tributes and reminisces. Already I have seen one huffy Facebook comment claiming that jerky anime fans will use this as an excuse to complain about Robotech. Commentator is obviously unaware that if there's one thing fans love more than complaining about edits and rewrites in anime, it's maudlin, reverential hagiography. I wasn't a big Robotech fan, but I will say that I got a lot of enjoyment out of his works, mainly providing me with cheap laughs during productions like "Bad American Dubbing". He was an entertaining con guest and always had a great story to tell. Sometimes they were even true, but that's not the point, the point is they were entertaining, way more entertaining than we had any right to expect, what with him being the target of so much vitriol at the time. Then again, if fans didn't over-react or fail to use their indoor voices, they wouldn't be fans.

Former Otakon chair John Scofield has also passed away. My only Otakon was around his tenure as chair and I remember the show as being shockingly well-run for its size; it's impressive to move through a conglomeration of that magnitude and have the most notable things be the efficency of the staff and the lack of problems or trouble.

My weekend? Friday we saw a dinged-up print of PSYCHO at the Bloor, Saturday I would up having to go into work, Sunday was the AN staff meeting, followed by a little shopping and lunch at Fran's and working on the new Zero Fighter at the newly updated Mister Kitty site. I'm back to being a little ahead of myself and I need to keep up the pace if I want to have a backlog in place for May. Lots of stuff going on in May.

Comments

[hooverdam.livejournal.com]

I expect all my social media to be filled with tributes and reminisces.

They are, they're just cobbled together out of other tributes and dubbed to suit the purpose.

[thebasilblog.livejournal.com]

Years later some of the people will start complaining about the cobbled tributes and then proclaim the original tributes better, and the other people will vehemently disagree.

[hooverdam.livejournal.com]

We will now observe a moment of silence, during which our mouths will keep moving.

[davemerrill.livejournal.com]

You know, I was trying for a lot of different angles to crack wise on this one, but you nailed it.

[tohoscope.livejournal.com]

You win an internet!

[tochiro998.livejournal.com]

Ha! Fail! Everyone knows that Carl was all about the synch! If the lips be movin' make up something to match it!

We're Goin' to the Olympics, men!

(I know, there's no way to really 'do' the "I HATE SILENT EMOTIVE SCENES!" thing, I'm just ribbing)

[davemerrill.livejournal.com]

"RICK AND LISA STOOD IN THE TWILIGHT. THEY KNEW THAT THE ROBOTECH MASTERS WOULD BE COMING SOON FOR THE PROTOCULTURE BURIED IN THE RUINS OF THE SDF-3 THAT FOR SOME REASON LOOKS LIKE THREE SMALL HILLOCKS. WOULD THE FUTURE BE AS TUMULTUOUS AS THE PAST FEW DAYS? WOULD IT BE LESS INTERESTING? OR WOULD THE SPECTRE OF DOOM RAISE ITS SHROUDED HEAD IN AGONY OVER THE WORLD OF THE ROBOTECH PROTOCULTURE VERITECH GENERATION SENTINELS?"

I predict an over-narrated funeral.

[sobieniak.livejournal.com]

"Well I guess I won't be needing these anymore!" (throws shades on the ground)

Sad but true

[cmndr-x.livejournal.com]

It seems there have always been those sort of fans in the various fandoms, especially anime, the ones who keep nursing grudges against people, organizations, companies, etc. over some real or imagined slight years ago.

See, Carl Macek and others oversaw the editing and dubbing of some cartoon shows and that counts as an assault on Art and Truth and Beauty and you know, stuff...

What got me, even as the years rolled on, was that the Grudge Holders still seemed to think of Macek as the anime Antichrist for whatever stupid reasons and couldn't comprehend why no one else shared their still burning hatred.

Re: Sad but true

[davemerrill.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen any real Macek hate in years. I mean, CPF produced "Bad American Dubbing" which got as much mileage out of the Harmony Gold Robotech and Captain Harlock as anything else, but Matt in particular had some very nice things to say about Macek over on the CPF list. He was widely known as being an entertaining con guest who let his industry track record handle whatever complaints might come his way.

In fact in recent years I've seen many more Macek apologists than I have seen Macek detractors. The comments on the "Robotech Is Better Than Macross" column itself brought forth some interesting viewpoints.

[tochiro998.livejournal.com]

I never hated Macek, but I did strongly disagree with his adapting methods in many cases. Most of all I was uncomfortable with his thinking that mashing three (or two) shows together made him a creative person equal to the original creators.

It harks back to the bad old days where, say, Battle of the Planets credits all the adaption staff and oh, yeah, there's a couple of Japanese names somewhere in there.

but saying that, again, there's no question he was of significant influence. Had he gone forward with dubbing the complete Zillion series I probably would have watched avidly, even knowing he'd mucked something up in the translation.