Bob Schroeck Wrote:I don't get it... the man was anathema to every anime fan I knew while he was alive. And now that he's passed away, he's practically the patron saint of importing.
It is easy to lambast someone for their efforts when they are alive and there to continue to provide an example of how not to do something. It's also very fashionable to appear jaded and less than appreciative of someone's effort on your part. I felt that way about Macek when I was younger, just as I felt that way about Gygax when I found there was life beyond D&D. But the truth of the matter is, that someone has to be the guy to risk ridicule to introduce the rest of us pikers to something interesting. Macek did something that the folks that brought all previous anime to the United States really couldn't do; he started a phenomenon. For people of my generation, Robotech was what we talked about, when we were about 12 to 15 years of age. It was something new and different; an serial cartoon that lacked the camp and episodic amnesia of the Hanna Barbera stories. It wasn't particularly good, but it did start us on the road to anime, and it started America really on the road to mainstream anime. Someone had to be the first guy to show the rest of us what we were missing, and Carl Macek was that guy.
Ebony the Black Dragon
http://ebony14.livejournal.com
"Good night, and may the Good Lord take a Viking to you."