Forum - View topicANNCast Classic: Macek Training
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EricJ
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The "Warrior Tetsuro" and "Evil Guardian" plot scenes are taken from the Adieu GE999 movie (where post-series Tetsuro joins an anti-robot resistance and spends the first part of the movie fighting his way through a city siege to the train station), while the scenes of shooting-gallery robots popping in and out of windows, I suspect....are not. |
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GeorgeC
Posts: 795 |
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The Streamline generation is at least the third or fourth anime generation going by TV cycles. Most of the "Streamline" generation had seen localized anime series that aired in the mid-1980s -- Robotech and Voltron being the best examples. That were at least two TV anime cycles before that -- the 1960s and late 1970s/early 1980s. I wasn't alive in the 1960s but just reading and looking at the sheer number of titles available back then (and I saw maybe half those shows rerun in the later 1970s and early 1980s) there's no question there was a lot more Japanese TV product in the US back then, PERIOD. Astro Boy, Speed Racer, Eight Man, Gigantor (Tetsujin-28), Marine Boy (never saw it, no comment), Ultraman, Johnny Socko and His Might Robot (Giant Robo), etc. There were also some weird Japanese sci-fi serials brought over to the US, dubbed and edited into futures. We all know Godzilla and the "rubber suit" films. "Prince of Space" and "Star Man" make the Japanese monster films look sane! There has never been another period of time like this... You almost DON'T need the cable channels and networks so much anymore but the problem they still have is figuring out how to make TV anime and feature films actually make money for somebody, to make it worth someone's money to license these things. Great as the Internet may be for shopping, it's not an option for everyone nor all that that desirable when you still can't preview a lot of the product. There's no question more dubbed anime series SHOULD and COULD have been shown on cable than what we ended up with in the States. I don't think it's racism, ethnicism, religion, or whatever --- There's just a general cultural attitude that anything animated is for strictly for kids unless it's shown at 8PM on Fox and that stuff in particular hasn't been ground-breaking for at least 12 years now! The same's been true with theatrical animation in general for a decade now. They're the same stories and ideas recycled again and again with very little novelty. Gotta look outside the US for anything besides Princess and Buddy movies...
You do realize that Lupin literally means, "Wolf," don't you? "Path of least" legal resistance is sometimes the smartest move. AnimEigo did the same for their two Lupin movie releases as well. "Rupan" or "Wolf" is technically correct. The Japanese production company that makes the Lupin III movies and TV shows made fun of the whole name situation in a scene of the 2008 Lupin III TV movie, Green Vs Red. It's all a moot point now... The copyright on the original French Arsene Lupin character expired in 2012. His grandson already had fans in France -- they knew who he was! |
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KabaKabaFruit
 Posts: 1871 Location: Winnipeg, Manitoba |
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Oh yes he DID! There is more than enough evidence to prove that he was an active member of the ZIV production staff. Even this video proves it! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTUAMVJD7XY In the credits, it is shown that he was one of the Line Producers for that dub. Sometimes, Doom, it pays to do your research!
I am aware of that but the term "Wolf" just sounds too generic for english speaking audiences. I and others liked "Lupin."
I don't know about you, George, but prior to 1995, I had never heard of anime being openly discussed anywhere except in brief spurts in hobby shops and when it was discussed, it was strictly referred to as "Japanimation". Whatever anime was broadcast back then was strictly edited to the point that viewers needed to be led to believe that this stuff was made in America, not Japan. We all knew that there was something different in the animation and the way the characters looked and acted but we just couldn't put our finger on it. We had no means of knowing whether or not this stuff was more popular than it should have and for that reason, I can't honestly say that the reputation of anime was positively cemented in people's minds. For all we knew, anime could've been a passing craze and we didn't want to speak up about it for fear of getting teased by our fellow peers. Then Sailor Moon happened and the rest as they, was history! I noticed more people openly discussing anime than every before and I felt that it helped bring more people out into the mainstream. So to that, I believe that Sailor Moon helped my generation become great anime fans and helped future generations become more aware of the medium of anime. If Robotech had achieved that similar effect, I sure as heck never felt it. Last edited by KabaKabaFruit on Sun Jan 19, 2014 12:39 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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GeorgeC
Posts: 795 |
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They had anime playing at cons in the US in the 1970s and 1980s.
It really got ignited big-time as a sub-culture in the US in the 1980s after VHS player prices dropped tremendously. Japanese pen pals and American soldiers recording shows broadcast off their bases were sending more and more tapes of shows and feature films back to the US. I got very well aware of the whole Japanese side of this during Robotech. It was real obvious to me that these shows were not Western. Never had an issue with that as long as the stories and characters were entertaining and didn't care so long they didn't get too deep into the ninja stuff or psychic powers. (I care for ninjas about as much as I do westerns... There are things I just don't want to waste my time on.) The design motiffs and genres are different than what you'd see in the States. I bought and still have a copy of Robotech Art 1 with the explanations of the shows origins and an overview in anime in the US up to 1986. Carl Macek touched on some of this in the old audio interview. I talked to people online years back who claimed to have helped introduce Macek to anime at cons. These were also some of the 40- and 50-something-year-old guys I talked about who still had some growing up to do, too. You have zealots in every field. Not a good frame of mind and very difficult to deal with. They're not the best business people or creatives. For all the criticism about not "being a storyteller," Macek obviously understood some things ADV and other defunct anime licensing competitors didn't. Some people are too purist for their own good. What Macek said about conditions at ADV was eye-opening and explains a lot about why that company went under and why their dubs were never anything special. You don't necessarily have to go to the most expensive technical school to learn this stuff but if you want to be competent you have to be willing to learn and pay attention when someone show you things... It's amazing they lasted as long as they did. Where was the common sense there? No wonder they got passed by Funimation! It's not just DBZ that drove Funi ahead of ADV... Every generation in the English-speaking world thinks their show is the one that ignited interest in anime... It never truly left after Astro Boy if people pay attention. There were feature films and TV series being localized through the 1970s and 1980s for Europe and the US. They still do British dubs in addition to American dubs for a bunch of shows. (I'm fairly certain Project A-ko has a British dub and Ghibli's "Secret of Arriety" also had a dub produced for the UK.) Some series only have English-speaking dubs created for the UK market or parts of English-speaking Asia. Some markets were just more receptive to certain shows and movies than others. Example: North America was one of the last major markets to get Dragon Ball! DBZ was playing in Latin American markets well before the first English dubs of the episodes hit in the mid-1990s. |
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doomydoomdoom
 Posts: 278 Location: Michigan, USA |
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LOL, yeah. I think we got our first one in like the mid or late 80s. Either that or those tapes with 80s TV that I have were taped by someone else. :/
It could be that those two eps were dubbed by Toei and not at all by ZIV, or at least pre-production was handled by them (scripts, etc.) and ZIV was told exactly what to do; Toei then tried to shop it around to a distributor or maybe even a TV network or someone. This would explain why the first tape has episodes 1 and 9; Toei might have thought that those were the best showcase episodes. They were dubbed somewhat faithfully because, well, they thought that was the best way to present it; but an American production company would have DBZ'd the hell out of it. ZIV picked up the slack and shoehorned in that disco song to the first two dubbed episodes, stuck on their own in-house score and went their own way with the dub. There's a multitude of other theories that you can conjure up, but that's the one that makes the most sense to me.
Yep, his name was Tommy Dexter that's about as good as you'd be able to come up with when Americanizing.
HA, sounds like TMS was...well...being TMS (I believe as the production company of Detective Conan, they're the ones who demanded stringent localization...during the ANIME BOOM). As bad as American companies were, the Japanese ones were sometimes worse (see Gaga Communications' laughable attempt to bring over a bunch of OVAs during the 80s, trying to sell Project A-Ko as a standard "girl superhero" movie called "Supernova"). No wonder they couldn't sell it, then Geneon comes along and does decent keeping the original plot and names, then Discotek comes along and does even better (Bye Bye Liberty Crisis is MINE, day one) using only word of mouth and archive materials. First thought was "...the hell is this growling duck doing at the beginning of Lupin?" Second thought: "Did the Urusei Yatsura score outtakes spill onto this Lupin dub or something?" Yeah, kind of ironic that Lupin's name had to be changed even for the country his namesake is from! As to the pitfalls of selling anime over here, especially around Carl Macek's time...bleh don't even get me started. My thinking isn't very conformist vs. what you usually hear out of the fans and market people, so methinks I'd get a lot of arguing my way. :P But I have my own theories, and I have my own opinions as to why anime has been better marketed in Europe and Spanish-speaking countries. Step one was probably "better marketing", or maybe "open to media from cultures other than ONLY English-speaking ones", choose one. |
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fuuma_monou
 Posts: 1817 Location: Quezon City, Philippines |
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Funny thing is that TMS had ready-made English credits for Detective Conan that Animax Asia used when it aired its pretty much straight up English dub. None of the "let's pretend they're in the U.S." stuff of Case Closed. |
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EricJ
Posts: 876 |
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And it wasn't just "bad" dubs (or Sojitz) that drove ADV effectively out of business, either: FTR, ADV's dubs, however they were made, were the best mainstream dubs out there at the time. What sank them, along with the rest of the 00's Licensing Bubble, was fans' eventual cynical tipoff that they didn't have to buy single-volume disks anymore if the boxset was coming, and the singles were paying for the dub production. ADV didn't fall as hard for the "Pig in a poke" current-series gold rush as other companies (although they never did quite make back their profit on Coyote Ragtime Show), but Macek comes from the days when you dubbed what you could even license: Unwanted one-off features, limited OVA's, and minor-studio productions. When Streamline Pictures finally tried to take on Nadia and Dirty Pair, it was too little, way too late--Macek's own damage had already been done to the first wave of US anime. I know you're on one of your sugar-rush blue streaks here, George, but...lay off ADV. If there was ever an anti-Macek company, they would be the ones. |
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StudioToledo
 Posts: 847 Location: Toledo, U.S.A. |
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It does seem like "Adieu" with added material to make it a game.
Then I'd probably say I'm part of that generational wave then. You almost DON'T need the cable channels and networks so much anymore but the problem they still have is figuring out how to make TV anime and feature films actually make money for somebody, to make it worth someone's money to license these things. Great as the Internet may be for shopping, it's not an option for everyone nor all that that desirable when you still can't preview a lot of the product.[/quote] Is it no wonder I still believe in broadcasting? Arguably this is where cable TV came in handy 30 years ago.
You could thank Cable TV for having the nerve to cater to these minorities or other thematic groups that the regular "Big Three" couldn't be bothered to devote more than a half-hour to at a time (or the time-brokered independent stations that the larger cities might have).
There was a time when Rocky & Bullwinkle might be the only thing you'd find on the air at 11PM in the 80's!
At least we have GKIDS trying to bring it over.
I did.
It was still amusing to read it as "Rupan" anyway when noticing those titles in a catalog.
At least they do. Not like anyone will be wanting to go back to Maurice LeBlanc's original work, but it's there if you must.
That's what it was for me. It was pretty hard to find out unless you hanged out at those type of places and picked it up.
Now you know how I felt of it all, though I went through a phase in my life where I simply hated cartoons because they were merely sending everything overseas and prevented good-working jobs in that field from happening stateside. This is what you get when you start to read the credits at the end!
The clueless stares certainly went away for a bit, though you'll see get the people using terms like "Chinese cartoons" because they simply don't care either way. It really did feel like you were the only guy who ever gave a crap for it.
It certainly took a while there.
Arguably the writing is what lured a lot of early fans into it from that standpoint. This was not anything we were seeing done domestically with animation at all, and was sorta what we had been probably wanting for a long while.
He at least had a business acumen that served him well.
If only they knew.
There is a dub of Arriety for the UK release true, not sure about Project A-Ko as I felt it was the same dub for us anyway.
That's true. Don't forget some European countries like Italy and France that had these classics before us as well. They knew how to play ball.
Apparently we had cable TV before I was born as well, so I belong in that small niche group of tots that had pointless stuff like this to watch. http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA06D472C11903494
Too bad it didn't stay like that. I recall TMS also liked to do something like that with their shows as well, often given them English credit sequences that were shown in many countries regardless of what language the show is dubbed in.
I thought maybe they were just crunched for time due to whatever success the first tape had and had to comply the best they could. Some of the voice actors on that first Harlock tape I also heard roughly the same voices in a previous ZIV dub of Little Lulu. Seemed like one show they had that at least managed to get some traction was "Fables of the Green Forest" (orig. title "Rocky Chuck"). That became a classic up in Canada on stations like TVOntario. Best we had stateside was a few episodes crapped out on VHS.
Could've fooled me. Many of those characters don't look remotely Japanese and it would've been easy to simply write them off as Caucasian the way they appear.
It's still amusing going to their website and see what English titles they have for many of their programs like one that's called "Meet The Boneheads".
Again, thank the Estate of LeBlanc for having kept it that way for as long as they could.
From a few correspondences I've made over the years, I conclude the only reason was that it was cheaper to get. These channels usually didn't want to pay top dollar for the American stuff and very often the Japanese imports proved worthy to spend the least amount of cash on as long as they could fill up their slots with the required shows. Plus many of these even had merchandising opportunities as well. Italy had quite a heyday of this in the 80's when the privatization of new TV channels started to take shape. |
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KabaKabaFruit
Posts: 1871 Location: Winnipeg, Manitoba |
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I haven't heard one single instance of anime being played at cons in the 70's. Back up your words, George!
This is a sensitive issue for me because during the 00's, I was purchasing anime en masse not only because I loved the medium but because I felt that I wanted the industry to succeed and to help show people that anime is a great hobby to partake in. I assumed that everyone who saw anime shared my views. While I also was miffed about the high prices back then, I still chose to purchase anime at those prices because people argued back then that it was necessary to charge the prices in order for the licensees to make back the costs associated with dubbing, production and licensing-per-episode from the original Japanese licensors. I also believed that this was a business model that was here to stay so you could only imagine how knocked off my socks I was when in 2006, companies abruptly cancelled singles releases mid-release in favor of boxsets to help pick up sales. FUNimation is one example with the cancellation of the Ultimate Uncut Special Editions of Dragon Ball Z. EDIT: Nice to see you guys remain silent over this. I guess this proves what I've suspected for years: anime fans are nothing more than greedy, ungrateful pricks who are refusing to look at the real issues surrounding the industry in favor of getting a cheap release. You guys don't deserve to watch anime then. You all can go to hell! |
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EmSeeSquared
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If anybody is still interested in this topic, a friend and I did a video a while back regarding anime purists and elitists, and Mr. Macek was a major topic in the discussion. You can check it out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1036ZAtHvVw&google_comment_id=z123ibeo2zvyc3cgd04cinciipfvj1fowus0k I know the title is a bit harsh, but we were pretty heated up at the time. It's lengthy, too, close to two hours, so if anyone wants to check it out, watch in intervals or make sure you have spare time. Also, if you happen to disagree with anything we say, please keep things civil. Topics include Mr. Macek's work with Robotech and Streamline, dubs in general, and the fall of ADV and Bandai Entertainment.
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But I have my own theories, and I have my own opinions as to why anime has been better marketed in Europe and Spanish-speaking countries. Step one was probably "better marketing", or maybe "open to media from cultures other than ONLY English-speaking ones", choose one.  |
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