Monday, April 19, 2010

R.I.P. Carl Macek

Reported on Anime News Network:

Animation historian Jerry Beck reported on his blog on Sunday that American producer Carl Macek passed away due to a heart attack on Saturday. Macek and Beck had co-founded the anime importing company Streamline Pictures in 1988.


Macek is best known for producing Robotech, the 1985 redubbed and edited adaptation of three different anime series — Macross, Southern Cross, and Mospeada. He also worked on the dubbing of many anime projects from Captain Harlock and the Queen of a Thousand Years (redubbed and edited adaptation of Captain Harlock and Queen Millennia) to more recently, Bleach and Naruto. His other dubbing production credits include Vampire Hunter D, Robot Carnival, My Neighbor Totoro, and Aura Battler Dunbine. Although Streamline Pictures did not dub the 1988 film Akira, it did release the film in theaters and on video tape in the United States.
Outside anime, Macek wrote The Art of Heavy Metal (Animation for the Eighties), the 1981 book about the Canadian animated film Heavy Metal. That led to his co-writing credit on the Heavy Metal 2000 spinoff. He also developed the Lady Death film at ADV Films and wrote War Eagles, a novel based on an unproduced film treatment by Merian C. Cooper.

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My comments:
As controversial as the subject of dubbing for Anime is, it is nonetheless disheartening when we lose anyone who made a significant impact on the market of today.  While I have mixed opinions about his work (some dubs of his I like, others not so much), Macek was still pretty much undeserving of the backlash he received from many detractors.  Controversial though his translation decisions may have been, they nonethless have opened up a gate for Anime; we wouldn't be watching Anime in English.  More importantly, people unfamiliar with Anime may not have become introduced to these works if it weren't for him.

My condolences to Mr. Macek's family.

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