Honestly I'm confused at why people always draw a false dichotomy with Robotech and say that it had to be done the way it was done to garner any success. If the only requirement for daily syndication is 65 episodes, then why attempt to present three different shows as one story? Couldn't they have done an anthology? Jim Terry figured that out when he did Force Five. He wasn't trying to wrangle five different robot shows into one story, but each was presented under the Force Five banner. I mean, really, what constitutes one show anyway? Who was Carl Macek trying to impress with his great idea? Considering the shit he's done to other dubs I think the guy thinks too much of his "translations."

-Andrew

I'm just saying that TV exposure was better than direct-to-video exposure in 1985. I'm not trying to defend Robotech. I do agree with you that Harmony gold could have released Macross, Southern Cross and MOSPEADA as three unrelated back-to-back series on TV and been just as successful. Hey, it worked for Voltron with Go Lion and Dairugger XV. I think Voltron is more popular than Robotech among the general population in the U.S., but I could be wrong.

Sadly, success tends to go to one's head. I believe that is the case with Carl Macek. He made a poor to mediocre adaptation and thinks it is better than the original just because the show got good TV ratings.

Hmmm.. I'm going to use the magic of the internet to post a quote from one of his interviews on robotech.com. Let's see if I can find a really bad one. Just wait a minute:

"Carl Macek says: It was always my belief that Minmei's immediate popularity onboard the SDF-1 was a bitter pill to swallow. Therefore, if her "talent" was marginal - but her "spirit" was high - it could show that even misguided personalities like "Minmei" could have a positive effect on people and dramatic situations."

Wow. Ok. I was wrong. He was messed up from the beginning. When you think of Macross, aren't Minmay and Hikaru's red/white VF-1J the first two things that come to your mind? Wasn't Minmay the most important part of the story? I don't think he understood any of those shows.

Oh, well. There's always Macross Frontier in 2008....

i love robotech as much as the next robonerd, but really, Carl Macek is just some hollywood jerk, who took ALL the credit for Robotech in the 80s, and gives himself too much credit now.

Because of him and Harmony Gold buying up so many different series' rights, we'll never seen official NTSC R1 US DVD versions of so many shows like CAPTAIN HARLOCK, and many others.

seriously, if i change the word bubbles in a Batman comic, translate it to Spanish, and call it BATTECH, does that mean i'm the genius behind the work?

The good news is that licenses do expire. The license expired for Megazone 23. It went from Harmony Gold to Image Entertainment to ADV Films (and maybe one more in between I think). Even when the license doesn't expire, we can still get the Japanese shows if there is enough demand and someone in the industry willing to capitalize on it(Ex: Macross, Southern Cross, MOSPEADA).

If you like the original Captain Harlock TV series, check out "Space Pirate Captain Herlock The Endless odyssey outside legend". It was released by Geneon in 2004. They went under this year so I think the title is out-of-print but still plentiful. It is both a sequel and a re-telling of the original Captain Harlock TV series with much better animation. I think the lack of demand for not-so-greatly-animated 70s anime is what is really keeping shows like Captain Harlock, Galaxy Express 999 TV and Queen Millenia from an R1 DVD release.

long ago got all of the OUTSIDE LEGEND series. thanks though, man.

the rights to HARLOCK, MAZINGER, GRENDIZER, GALAXY EXPRESS, just to name a few, are a huge nightmare to negotiate for dvd companies (i should know, i used to work for a DVD company that specializes in re-releasing and translating abscure films for the US/UK) so nobody touches them. too many lawyers, too much effort, when you can just get a modern series for cheap...

also i think anime fans in the 2000s are very different from those in the 1990s and 1980s. they are much more interested in high tech CGI animation, scantily clad girls, bad taste humor, and the like, MUCH more interested in this, than compelling stories or history of the culture, or art, or art design direction, there are exceptions to this, but for the most part, whenever i walk by the anime section in the DVD store, it all looks the same to me. I think often Otaku in the US just have a "i'll take what i can get, thank you please sir" attitude than their foreign bretheren. This attitude is historically linked to Harmony Gold and Masek, who presented this attitude to the then-very-fringe us anime community, as they were the only ones doing the direct to video thing in the early 80s. they were deciding what you saw, not you. similar to the US anime market now, except you have a big choice of what you WANT to see, but still the distribution and translation market takes advantage of the ATTITUDE and throws whatever sold a lot in Japan, or whatever is a cheap license. not to date myself, but things are so different now then they were in 1992, way pre-ebay and internet, when myself and a bunch of friends had to team up for a 2hr drive and $50 for a bad bootleg VHS with no subs of Macross: DYRL, just to SEE it, when its available now with overnight shipping all over the place. the struggle is somewhat gone, but with this struggle, it made you much more choosy about what you spent your time and effort on...

lack of demand for these shows isn't so much the problem, i think. its the legal hurdles. at least outside of the US, there is very very serious interest in many of the shows above, in english or french, and their entanglements in the US legal system seriously hinders european companies and others from releasing these shows properly in italy, spain, france, and other countries, as some of the rights in the 70s were not just for the US, but for these territories as well.

the anime fans of today would be served well to check out some shows other than whatever Cartoon Network or Anime Channel are pushing at them, and the attitude of many newer anime fans that the old is worthless is going to bite them back in the end. how can you judge something like COWBOY BEBOP without all that came before it? can you watch a show like AKIRA and not see the influence of BLADE RUNNER in its movie design? does it matter? is there a valid comparison between something like NARUTO, and the poetry and beauty of the voice-over for GALAXY EXPRESS 999 series?

is anime just cartoons, with no redeeming value, or it is true art which deserves respect from academia? is it something in between? comic books asked these questions in the 1980s and got answers. Anime asked these questions in the 1990s and, really, got no real answers just anaylsis...

when the shows of the 2000s become old, who will care as much about BLEACH when it is 35 years old like Mazinger, or 25 like Macross? will they become forgotten in time like much of popular culture, or be the New Classics like their legal-limbo forefathers, who are forever caught in the grip of paperwork and profits, never to be seen again, except on precious bootlegs? at least CDX will be there to remind fans of the past, and present an intelligent thoughtful outlook to the future.

But if the license expires, aren't there zero legal hurdles? And what about Super Dimensional Fortress Macross, which should have been the hardest show to get (it's the most profitable part of Robotech) and got released by AnimEigo and ADV films? Macross II and Macross Plus got released in the early 90s without Harmony Gold being involved at all. Life is chaos. I don't think any logical blanket statement can govern the release of old-school Anime. So much depends on who is willing to invest what.

I wouldn't call all Anime fans from the late 90s and 00s shallow, sex-starved and spineless. Many of them are girls, and girls like comedy and relationship dramas instead of giant robot shows.

In the 80s and early 90s, we only got the-best-of-the-best shows and a few others. Now we get the best shows, and more of the mediocre shows. So yeah, there are more crappy titles out, but there are 10 to 20 titles released per week now. In the early 90s, that was how many titles we got per year.

The future isn't so bad. What about EVA? I thought Azumanga Daioh was funny. Check out Flag, or if you can afford it Freedom. Yeah, Naturo sucks balls, but I don't watch it so I don't loose any sleep over it.

Hehe...I actually did pick this up at a comic book convention in Boston many aeons ago. I was good for a laugh to my adolescent brain, but I doubt I'd find it all that humorous now as a mature adult (who plays with toys! ;) ). Honestly, I doubt I'd be able to find those video tapes again!

--
Sanjeev

That was really funny. Your comments really want me to find this film, watch it, and make a recap of it. I haven't seen Megazone 23 or Southern Cross, except for a few clips, but I can imagine to a limited degree about how horrible they look together.

By the way, Mike sounds a lot like Max from the English dub of Macross, except Mike's voice is a bit higher.