Goodbye Carl Macek, and good riddance

It has recently come to my attention that Carl Macek has kicked the bucket and gone to the big anime convention in the sky.  Well, I know it's not good to speak ill of the dead, but that won't stop me from evaluating this man's career and impact on the anime community.

First off, I hate the guy.  Let's get that out of the way.  Macek's wikipedia page refers to the man as an "anime pioneer", but in reality, he is no more than an anime opportunist.  The man was egotistical, had terrible taste and was foolishly ethnocentric.

 I know that Carl Macek has many admirers out there.  This is mainly because they believe he somehow introduced anime to North America through Robotech in 1985.  The popular belief is that somehow Macek's efforts made anime what it is today.  What a load of shit.  If anyone takes the time to look closely, we can already see that there were already many popular animes in America before Macek ever got his filthy, grubby fingers on it.

Star Blazers (originally Star Ship Yamato) was a huge hit.  It was broadcast in America starting in 1979, produced by Westchester Film Corporation:

Astro Boy (a.k.a. Mighty Atom) was also another early hit that broadcast in 1963.  The English version was produced NBC and was sydicated:

Then there's Voltron, originally broadcast in 1984 and produced by a dude called Peter Keefe. 

 

And there's more that I'm not going to go into.  America did not need Carl Macek to introduce anime, because American was already familiar with anime.  If you were in Gen X, you will definitely remember Voltron and Star Blazers.

Macek's artistic taste is also very questionable.  The man thought of himself as an artist of sorts and often times felt the need to change or modify the script.  It would be one thing if he had to do it for broadcast time constraints or because of American censorship laws, but Macek often times changed the script because he thought his version was better!  The nerve of this man!  Much has already been posted on message boards everywhere about his treatment of Macross, Nausicaa, and Akira, so I won't re-hash that here.  I will, however, focus on the way he butchered Mospeada, which is a very underrated anime that should deserve it's own article.

Most people know Mospeada as "The New Generation" from Robotech.  The wikipedia article claims it is the least altered of the three anime series that Macek mashed together to form Robotech.  However, I consider it in many ways to be the most altered of the series.  Mospeada had an awesome jazz/blues soundtrack by none other than Joe Hisaishi, the man famous for composing almost all the songs for Hyao Miyazaki's movies.  However, this wasn't good enough for Carl, so he hired his own two bit band to play 3 or 4 songs that they kept looping.  The original Mospeada soundtrack had something like 12 songs, each tailored for a particular episode.  I mean, even the ending theme is kick-ass:

Did Carl Macek think that he can improve on Joe Hisaishi?  Apparently, he did.

That's not all that Carl thought he can improve on.  He thought he can improve on the character design as well.  The original Mospeada had character design by none other than Yoshitaka Amano, the man famous for Vampire Hunter D, Final Fantasy, Gatchaman, and Front Mission.  Macek changed Jim Austin from a psychologically wounded family man to a bumbling doofus called "Lunk".  He changed Hoquet Erose from an emotionally vulnerable tough-girl to a chatty valley girl named "Rook".  It goes on, but  suffice to say, Macek's ego and bad taste knows no bounds.

Macek also mangled the overall mood of the story by adding lots and lots of necessary dialog.  In the original Mospeada, the characters are all traumatized from war.  There are many moments of uncomfortable silence as each character reflects on their situation, alone, with the other in the same room.  It's scenes like these that really make Mospeada stand out from other anime of the time.  After the Macek treatment, it's like the characters are middle school kids in summer camp, constantly chatting when they're supposed to be quiet.

Finally, I should point out that Macek was incredibly ethnocentric, because the man hated, and I mean HATED the idea of subtitles.  In his little world, anime MUST be dubbed before it can be distributed in North America.  Macek felt that American audiences were either too stupid or too arrogant to read subtitles.  Of course, we all know that today there are plenty of "hard-core" and casual anime fans that prefer subtitles over English dubbing.  As if that wasn't bad enough, Macek was also obsessed with matching the English dubbed voices with the actual frames of animation, which you can imagine leads to some really bad dialog.  If you ever watched his version of Akira, then you will remember that there are many odd pauses and bits of fast dialog, all in an effort to match the English with the animated lips.

So, really, I think that if it wasn't for Carl Macek, there might have been more and better anime in the 1980's.  Who knows how many years he set anime back in North America?