Funkenstein Posted January 28, 2010 Share Posted January 28, 2010 Well, Carl Macek can go to an anime convention and tell people that Robotech Shadow Chronicles is better than Macross Frontier. I'd like to see the response. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HappyPenguins Posted January 28, 2010 Share Posted January 28, 2010 Well, Carl Macek can go to an anime convention and tell people that Robotech Shadow Chronicles is better than Macross Frontier. I'd like to see the response. Has he even commented on the shadow chronicles? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VFTF1 Posted January 28, 2010 Share Posted January 28, 2010 Does he even care? I mean...I dunno... I'm still honest to gosh flaberghasted by those comments Seto quoted. Seriously. I mean - ok...fine...if you take into account sales figures, then LEGAL global sales of Robotech PROBABLY are HIGHER than LEGAL global sales of Macross. But isn't it OBVIOUS why? Because Macross is in global legal limbo due to HG. So ok...sales figures might indicate that "the originals" are "unpalpatable." But those sales figures would be majorly skewed because a) you can't count torrenting and generally downloading the originals and b) they only take into account legal sales, meaning sale in Japan vs. sales all over the world for Robotech. That said - as a matter of merit... I...uhh...I dunno...I'm trying to get my head around the contention that maybe there are actually people who honest to gosh believe that Macross is a total niche product and that Robotech is the more marketable, globaly palpatable version... But... you know... That would mean that Macross is the WORST ANIME OF ALL TIME. Because come on - how many OTHER anime needed to be combined with two other shows, have their stories totally changed and retitled in order to succeed? I mean? How many? ZERO!! So - Carl Macek wants us to believe that ALL OTHER ANIME besides Macross (and eventually Southern Cross and Mospedia) ARE globally palpatable and at worse they get dubbed over - but never changed radically.... Meanwhile - Macross sucks so much balls that in order to make it globally marketable --- it needs to be turned into Robotech? But IF that's true...then WHY did Harmony Gold even BOTHER with such a sucky anime? Why invest in the WORSE ANIME in the universe? Answer: because by SHEER coincidence - SHEER BLIND LUCK - the GENIUS idea for Robotech that popped into Carl Macek's haead could ONLY correspond to the animation in the three WORST Japanese anime of all time - Macross, Mospedia and Southern Cross... and so HG HAD TO acquire them so Carl Macek's genius vision could be fulfilled. Oh - and of course Megazone 23 - because that anime SUCKS too and clearly no one outside of Japan, which as we know is full of wierd people who can animate brilliantly but can't write good stories and actually do worse animation than Koreans nowadays - would ever want to watch it...UNLESS it was made into Robotech II and shown in TEXAS - which as we know is the GATEWAY to a global audience. OR Carl Macek is full of SHYT! Pete Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hulagu Posted January 28, 2010 Share Posted January 28, 2010 (edited) Meanwhile - Macross sucks so much balls that in order to make it globally marketable --- it needs to be turned into Robotech? To be fair, I think he means globally marketable as a daily syndicated cartoon solely targeted at children, in the 80s environment, after they decided to go that route. I think they could have gone the mecha series anthology series route, however. I just don't get this obsession with "creating" an original work by sourcing for and badly stitching together vaguely similar shows. Edited January 28, 2010 by hulagu Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wanzerfan Posted January 28, 2010 Share Posted January 28, 2010 I'm just glad Macek decided not to stitch in Super Dimentional Century Orguss into Robotech. Who knows what would've happened if he got his grubby little mitts on that one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VFTF1 Posted January 28, 2010 Share Posted January 28, 2010 To be fair, I think he means globally marketable as a daily syndicated cartoon targeted at children, in the 80s environment, after they decided to go that route. I think they could have gone the mecha series anthology series route, however. I just don't get this obsession with "creating" an original work by sourcing for and badly stitching together vaguely similar shows. There's nothing to get. He's lying. I read in Robotech Art III that it was explicitly the result of the US based syndication guidelines that Macross had to be longer - and since there were no more Macross episodes, they decided to acquire and attach Southern Cross and Mospedia to Macross to make Robotech - and after making this decision, they sat down to thinking about how to make one TV show out of them all and did it. There was never any grand vision or grand plan beyond that - and the fact that he now claims there was is testimony to the fact that HG has realized that a group of brainless semi literate people exist on Earth who think Robotech is the greatest story ever told, and unless you lie to them and tell them that indeed it was planned this way all along rather than being a result of chance, unless you tell them that even the Japanese in continuing Macross are trying to emulate Robotech - then you loose the glue that apparently holds this motley crew together: namely the notion that what they watched as kids WASN'T a bootleg hack job, but was actually some grand epic akin to Star Wars. I may be cynical - but I think it's just a spin job. Nothing more. Pete Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hulagu Posted January 28, 2010 Share Posted January 28, 2010 I read in Robotech Art III that it was explicitly the result of the US based syndication guidelines that Macross had to be longer - and since there were no more Macross episodes, they decided to acquire and attach Southern Cross and Mospedia to Macross to make Robotech - and after making this decision, they sat down to thinking about how to make one TV show out of them all and did it. Yes, but go through the extra work to turn the three distinct series into one storyline? Could they not have done a "Robotech Presents: Macross" "Robotech Presents: Megazone 23", etc. king of deal, saving themselves a lot of effort (and everyone a lot of future drama and legal issues). They would even have more freedom to source for mecha shows more dissimilar from Macross. It just seems more trouble than it was worth (and has actually turned out to be more trouble than it was worth IMO). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheLoneWolf Posted January 28, 2010 Share Posted January 28, 2010 Yes, but go through the extra work to turn the three distinct series into one storyline? Could they not have done a "Robotech Presents: Macross" "Robotech Presents: Megazone 23", etc. king of deal, saving themselves a lot of effort (and everyone a lot of future drama and legal issues). They would even have more freedom to source for mecha shows more dissimilar from Macross. In one of his interviews, Macek said that he pitched that same idea to the networks, but they didn't like it. If he was going to use 3 different shows, then they wanted them to be stitched together, ala Voltron. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VFTF1 Posted January 28, 2010 Share Posted January 28, 2010 Carl Macek couldn't have pitched that idea to the networks. That would contradict the truth that Robotech came to him in a divinely inspired dream that just happened to fit the animation from three different poorly ploted Japanse anime This is the problem I'm talking about. You can still respect Robotech and HG if you read the McKinney books and Robotech Art I and III and (was there a 2?) ... But the stuff they say nowadays or recently... it's like...huh? Pete Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheLoneWolf Posted January 28, 2010 Share Posted January 28, 2010 But the stuff they say nowadays or recently... it's like...huh? What Harmony Gold says nowadays is of no concern to me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wanzerfan Posted January 28, 2010 Share Posted January 28, 2010 Carl Macek couldn't have pitched that idea to the networks. That would contradict the truth that Robotech came to him in a divinely inspired dream that just happened to fit the animation from three different poorly ploted Japanse anime This is the problem I'm talking about. You can still respect Robotech and HG if you read the McKinney books and Robotech Art I and III and (was there a 2?) ... But the stuff they say nowadays or recently... it's like...huh? Pete Yes there is an Art 2; I have a copy. It's full of fan art (I happen to like Don Yee's work), production sketches, as well as as some information about what inspired mecha anime as a whole. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Einherjar Posted January 28, 2010 Share Posted January 28, 2010 I remember that grand vision of Robotech and all the memories behind the scenes. Remember when people talked about Reba West getting drunk in order to sing all the songs for Minmay? Also, many of the character lines that ended up being added spontaneously to fill time, which fans obsess over thinking they have a deeper meaning rather then showing it was a production that was rushed in some places (Rick Hunter - war criminal, etc.)? This was totally professional work, and much better than the stupid intentions of the Japanese. Carl Macek forgets that without the work done on Macross, Southern Cross and Mospeada before he ever touched them, he would not have a career. All the accolades he has received for the last 25 years happened because someone else practically made all the important parts that made up his epic which he stitched together without their consent. Tatsunoko does not count, since a legal battle ensued. In hindsight, it should have been no surprise to anyone how everything after the original 85 episodes turned out, since it was not Macek's talents that most fans were attracted to. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VFTF1 Posted January 28, 2010 Share Posted January 28, 2010 Hm...this promises to be interesting So what - according to RT RT2 inspired mecha anime as a whole? Pete Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gubaba Posted January 28, 2010 Share Posted January 28, 2010 Carl Macek forgets that without the work done on Macross, Southern Cross and Mospeada before he ever touched them, he would not have a career. All the accolades he has received for the last 25 years happened because someone else practically made all the important parts that made up his epic which he stitched together without their consent. Tatsunoko does not count, since a legal battle ensued. In hindsight, it should have been no surprise to anyone how everything after the original 85 episodes turned out, since it was not Macek's talents that most fans were attracted to. I posed a similar question on RTX, in response to Maverick_LSC pontificating about how Macross is Eastern storytelling, which some people like, but Robotech is Western, which most people prefer. I asked if someone took the original Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica, dubbed them into French, and edited them together so that BSG took place forty years after Star Trek (adding in dialogue to say that the Enterprise had found a planet and settled, and that's what the Galactica is looking for, and also that Starbuck is Captain Kirk's grandson; oh, and the Cylons are "Robo-Klingons"))...and then claimed that they had created an "Authentic French Space Opera"...would they be taken seriously, or laughed out of the room? And would any moments of real drama and forcefulness be there because they were present in the original shows, or because it was all in French? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VFTF1 Posted January 28, 2010 Share Posted January 28, 2010 I posed a similar question on RTX, in response to Maverick_LSC pontificating about how Macross is Eastern storytelling, which some people like, but Robotech is Western, which most people prefer. So...aside from the fact that to call Robotech "Western story-telling" presumes to suggest that Shakespeare's plays were actually stories ripped off from some Japanese dude where Shakespeare just changed the names around and linked them together even though they had nothing in common previously... Did Maverick realize he was telling this to Gubaba, whose background happens to be "western story telling" combined with a fairly good knowledge of a certain eastern language and certain eastern story telling? I seriously think that Maverick needs to change his handle to The Living Goose. Why? Well - if you recall, in Top Gun, Goose died after smashing his head against the ejecting cockpit of his fighter. Maverick seems to have also smashed his head against something, albeit he apparently survived. And we're all the luckier for it. I'm now going back to watching Aliens eat space marines... :sigh: Pete Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Einherjar Posted January 28, 2010 Share Posted January 28, 2010 (edited) I posed a similar question on RTX, in response to Maverick_LSC pontificating about how Macross is Eastern storytelling, which some people like, but Robotech is Western, which most people prefer. I like how MEMO came to his defense and dropping it with people agreeing to disagree. http://www.robotechx.com/forums/3-robotech...p;start=30#8983 That didn't address anything. I personally lump it all up into ethnocentrism, a la "translated" in English. Edited January 28, 2010 by Einherjar Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robelwell202 Posted January 28, 2010 Share Posted January 28, 2010 I posed a similar question on RTX, in response to Maverick_LSC pontificating about how Macross is Eastern storytelling, which some people like, but Robotech is Western, which most people prefer. I asked if someone took the original Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica, dubbed them into French, and edited them together so that BSG took place forty years after Star Trek (adding in dialogue to say that the Enterprise had found a planet and settled, and that's what the Galactica is looking for, and also that Starbuck is Captain Kirk's grandson; oh, and the Cylons are "Robo-Klingons"))...and then claimed that they had created an "Authentic French Space Opera"...would they be taken seriously, or laughed out of the room? And would any moments of real drama and forcefulness be there because they were present in the original shows, or because it was all in French? I had thought about throwing this argument at Mav, but since he's hated me from the get-go, I knew it would've been a waste of time... Western-style story-telling? Well, take the movie Das Boot. Now, go through the entire 5-hour long film, remove ANY visual reference to Nazi Germany, and give it some crappy new audio. Bingo, this sounds like a WW2 movie about an American sub in the Pacific theater!!! WE could call it Sub-Tech! That's just about as silly as Mav's argument. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VFTF1 Posted January 28, 2010 Share Posted January 28, 2010 Everything in Mav's statement is silly. Including the notion that "more people" prefer "western story telling" - whatever the hell that is. But...come on...seriously...how the hell can "more people" prefer "western story telling" when HALF THE FUUCKING PLANET'S POPULATION LIVES IN FUUCKING CHINA!?!? AND DOESN'T SPEAK FUUCKING ENGLISH!?!? AND BY DEFAULT HAS READ/WATCHED MORE "EASTERN" THAN "WESTERN" STORY TELLING!?!? I mean - I'm sorry. I am a big fan of western literary works and western arts in general - but on a purely quantative level... his statement is impossible just on the face of it. You can argue that western story telling is BETTER if you want - although such vague generalizations as "western" vs. "eastern" story telling are stupid to begin with. (Is Dostoyevski western or Eastern? - just as an example). And it's a massive overgeneralization to lump them all together by geography like that anyways... but whatever... Oh wait... I forgot!! "China" fuucking "announced" that Robotech is the most popular cartoon ever! D'oh! Ok! I take it back! Most people do prefer western story telling and as we all know, Robotech is the pinacle of the western cannon. Pete Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Einherjar Posted January 28, 2010 Share Posted January 28, 2010 (edited) I didn't know western story telling usually ends with a cliffhanger that either never gets a resolution or gets one, but is then reversed in favor of another cliffhanger. Edited January 28, 2010 by Einherjar Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seto Kaiba Posted January 28, 2010 Share Posted January 28, 2010 (edited) I love how he deliberately uses the term "exploitations of the Macross franchise" there in lieu of "Macross sequels","series", or "properties" to refer to Macross II, Macross Plus and Macross 7. Might as well go and insert a "dubious" in front of that statement. Yeah, I found that amusing too... he's definitely trying to cast Macross as an inferior product that's being "exploited" for a quick buck rather than a franchise that succeeded entirely on merit, seemingly oblivious to the irony in what he was saying... the creator of the cheap knockoff accusing the original creators of making a cheap knockoff. There's nothing to get. He's lying. I read in Robotech Art III that it was explicitly the result of the US based syndication guidelines that Macross had to be longer - and since there were no more Macross episodes, they decided to acquire and attach Southern Cross and Mospedia to Macross to make Robotech - and after making this decision, they sat down to thinking about how to make one TV show out of them all and did it Actually, he says that he picked titles that were already in Harmony Gold's catalog of licensed works... he didn't decide to acquire anything, he just used what was already available. I didn't know western story telling usually ends with a cliffhanger that either never gets a resolution or gets one, but is then reversed in favor of another cliffhanger. Clearly you don't play many video games... easily 3/4ths of all narrative-driven games these days end in some kind of cliffhanger or at the very least have "to be continued..." stapled onto the back end, regardless of whether or not they actually intend to make a second game, just to leave the option open if the first game sells well enough. It's the same with a lot of popular (and not-so-popular) novel series these days, where each and every installation ends in a cliffhanger or with some new villain presenting itself, to force the story to go on FOREVER... the Star Wars and Star Trek novels did it all the time, as do a LOT of fantasy series. On VERY rare occasions, if skillfully hidden under a larger, overarching plot, it CAN work... but examples of that are few and far between. The only one I can think of offhand is Dan Abnett's "Gaunt's Ghosts" series of Warhammer 40,000 novels... though after fifteen novels or so the many variations on "they recruit the disenfranchised soldiers of another destroyed unit/settlement and slog off to the next warzone" have long since started to pall. Edited January 28, 2010 by Seto Kaiba Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Einherjar Posted January 28, 2010 Share Posted January 28, 2010 (edited) Clearly you don't play many video games... easily 3/4ths of all narrative-driven games these days end in some kind of cliffhanger or at the very least have "to be continued..." stapled onto the back end, regardless of whether or not they actually intend to make a second game, just to leave the option open if the first game sells well enough. It's the same with a lot of popular (and not-so-popular) novel series these days, where each and every installation ends in a cliffhanger or with some new villain presenting itself, to force the story to go on FOREVER... the Star Wars and Star Trek novels did it all the time, as do a LOT of fantasy series. On VERY rare occasions, if skillfully hidden under a larger, overarching plot, it CAN work... but examples of that are few and far between. The only one I can think of offhand is Dan Abnett's "Gaunt's Ghosts" series of Warhammer 40,000 novels... though after fifteen novels or so the many variations on "they recruit the disenfranchised soldiers of another destroyed unit/settlement and slog off to the next warzone" have long since started to pall. Crap, what the hell, Seto? You're getting too technical. Edited January 28, 2010 by Einherjar Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seto Kaiba Posted January 28, 2010 Share Posted January 28, 2010 (edited) Crap, what the hell, Seto? You're getting too technical. Too technical? My bad. I just cited a few examples of just how prevalent ending the story with some form of cliffhanger is these days in "Western" storytelling. It's bad practice, but it gets done a LOT in narrative-driven merchandise... not so much in cinema, but it crops up every now and again there too. Edited January 28, 2010 by Seto Kaiba Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gubaba Posted January 29, 2010 Share Posted January 29, 2010 Seto can cite all the examples he wants, but I find Maverick's whole premise flawed...there IS no single school of eatern OR western storytelling. There are many, many different ways of telling stories throughout the world, and they cross and connect each other. Any attempt to codify one way as derived from Europe and other as derived from Asia is doomed to failure. Most attempts that I've seen that try to do so rely on anything "weird" being chalked up to "the Eastern style," regardless of the fact that everyone from Homer to Shakespeare can be odd, abstract, and inconclusive; and Japanese and Chinese writers are often concrete and logical. It's a simplistic notion that falls apart utterly upon examination, especially if you look at literary works over the last century or two, as western works started being translated and read by eastern authors, and vice-versa. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Funkenstein Posted January 29, 2010 Share Posted January 29, 2010 We should do a fan dub of BSG and Star Trek to stitch them together. I know Spanish, so lets make an authentic Spanish Space Opera. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seto Kaiba Posted January 29, 2010 Share Posted January 29, 2010 (edited) Seto can cite all the examples he wants, but I find Maverick's whole premise flawed...there IS no single school of eatern OR western storytelling. There are many, many different ways of telling stories throughout the world, and they cross and connect each other. Any attempt to codify one way as derived from Europe and other as derived from Asia is doomed to failure. While I could yammer on about how each culture has certain tropes endemic to its traditional storytelling, and the various regional perceptions of what constitutes "foreign" styles of storytelling, it's really neither here nor there. Your point is valid in that there is no one set of rules or characteristics that divides schools of storytelling into "Western" and "Eastern", or by any other vague geographical definition you could think of. It would be remiss of me not to qualify it by saying that while there's no objective definition of such, most every culture makes subjective classifications along those lines when the writer's background influences their style in a fashion that doesn't appear often among native writers, or draw upon some element of their native culture the readers won't be familiar with. While it IS a seriously flawed premise, people are going to make distinctions like that based on their own experiences anyway. That Maverick is using it as an attempt to draw a distinction between Macross and Robotech is pretty bloody ridiculous... he's falling back on the obviously flawed facade that he's a film industry expert and relying on the old axiom "If you can't dazzle them with your knowledge, baffle them with your bullshit." EDIT: Good grief that first paragraph sounds pretentious, but I really can't think of any way to word it better right now. Edited January 29, 2010 by Seto Kaiba Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
taksraven Posted January 29, 2010 Share Posted January 29, 2010 I don't think that any of us would try to claim that Macross is perfect (just damn near it for anime IMHO), but for Macek to talk shite like that about flaws is absolute cheek. Especially if he is still going on like that. (I consider 2001 "modern") Taksraven Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ghost Train Posted January 29, 2010 Share Posted January 29, 2010 Macross is perfect. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BeyondTheGrave Posted January 29, 2010 Share Posted January 29, 2010 We should do a fan dub of BSG and Star Trek to stitch them together. I know Spanish, so lets make an authentic Spanish Space Opera. We can do better... Take a Spanish soap opera, shots from various SCi-fi shows (STDS9, BSG, etc. NO STARGATE) where the ship is seen in space Edit said shows together. And voila Spanish Space Opera. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ghost Train Posted January 29, 2010 Share Posted January 29, 2010 Intriga.... Accion.... Amor.... Super Nave Espacial Zeta GANDAM solo en Univison. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
taksraven Posted January 29, 2010 Share Posted January 29, 2010 We can do better... Take a Spanish soap opera, shots from various SCi-fi shows (STDS9, BSG, etc. NO STARGATE) where the ship is seen in space Edit said shows together. And voila Spanish Space Opera. We already have Spaghetti Space Opera in the form of films like Star Crash, so we probably don't need Spanish Space Opera's. Taksraven Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Einherjar Posted January 29, 2010 Share Posted January 29, 2010 I don't think that any of us would try to claim that Macross is perfect (just damn near it for anime IMHO), but for Macek to talk shite like that about flaws is absolute cheek. Especially if he is still going on like that. (I consider 2001 "modern") Taksraven If it was perfect, why did he permit a bunch of newbies to break down a huge chunk of what he established to go into another direction? Is he going to use the Batman defense this year? "(Robotech's) rich history allows (it) to be interpreted in a multitude of ways. To be sure, this is a (shadowy) incarnation, but it's certainly no less valid and true to the character's roots than the (epic TV series and novels I made in the 80's and 90's, but definitely more valid than those original Japanese anime cartoons)." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seto Kaiba Posted January 29, 2010 Share Posted January 29, 2010 If it was perfect, why did he permit a bunch of newbies to break down a huge chunk of what he established to go into another direction? Is he going to use the Batman defense this year? Y'know, despite Carl Macek spending a fair bit of time rhapsodizing about what he perceives as flaws in the story of the original Macross TV series and how he "fixed" them and "improved" the series as a whole, I don't think he's ever attempted to say Robotech is perfect (an indefensible statement if ever there was one), he just goes on with the standard "because I say so" assertions that Robotech is the superior story. It's certainly not what taksraven was saying in any case. Exactly what Carl Macek thinks of having Tommy Yune reboot the continuity in order to kick virtually everything he ever did, including most of his post-facto explanations and rationaliations, to the curb remains something of a mystery, as he never seems to actually comment on it when given the opportunity to do so. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BeyondTheGrave Posted January 29, 2010 Share Posted January 29, 2010 (edited) We already have Spaghetti Space Opera in the form of films like Star Crash, so we probably don't need Spanish Space Opera's. Taksraven Why not? If we re-dub it in english then it can be shown in other countries. Edited January 29, 2010 by BeyondTheGrave Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gubaba Posted January 29, 2010 Share Posted January 29, 2010 More brilliance from the mind of Maverick_LSC: Speaking of Style, I noticed that the glowing neon Itano circus that was first used in Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles back in 2006 was borrowed for 2008's Macross Frontier. Call it coincidence??? I think not. Maybe Kawamori is a closet fan of Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles??? I wouldnt' blame him for borrowing some elements of Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles for use in Macross Frontier as the old addage goes... 'Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery' :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
azrael Posted January 29, 2010 Author Share Posted January 29, 2010 More brilliance from the mind of Maverick_LSC: And as Charlie Brown would say, "Good grief." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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