From: dan@wookumz.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Dan Parmenter)
Subject: Re: Robotech: Love it, Leave it, or Get out of the Way.
Organization: /home/fsg/dan/.organization
	<DAN.92Nov9120012@wookumz.gnu.ai.mit.edu> <BxGq3C.1pM@ais.org>
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 19:05:52 GMT

In article <BxGq3C.1pM@ais.org> plucky@ais.org (Chris Adamson) writes:

	   One thing that really tires me about the Macross/Robotech
   dispute is that there's precious little discussion of the content or
   the art of either series.  Instead, we get the usual litany of
   complaints that Robotech is bastardized or mangled or (and this one
   seems the most common) that the program MISREPRESENTS Japanese
   animation.

My issues with the show are more abstract.  The problem I have with
Robotech is that Macek et al changed the shows period.  It would have
been easier and would have made more sense aesthetically, to simply
translate the three shows separately and treat it as an anthology,
like Force Five (now before anyone jumps down my throat about
perceived problems with FF, al I'm raising is their format - a 5 show
anthology).

	   Kids, Macek's job was not to create a tribute to anime, so that
   we unworthy Americans could worship the genre from afar.  His job was to
   create -- admittedly at minimal expense -- an entertaining television
   program.

It would hav ebeen cheaper to just translate the stories directly.

	   Would the next person to jump into this thread please defend
   your evangelism of one (or both) programs based on some sort of
   aesthetic argument -- e.g. the qualities of the direction, writing,
   artistry, editing, etc. of the show -- rather than simply assuming
   that we all agree Macross is some sort of Aristolean cave-painting and
   Robotech is a ill-construed shadow of that ideal form?

See, I don't even particularly LIKE Macross.  I'm using it as an
example of what I view as a more genral problem - effectively
translating Japanese cartoons for the American market.  In my opinion,
Robotech was bad for many reasons, chief among them, a complete
disregard for the separateness of the shows they were adapting.  I
also believe that similar problems killed the viability of Voltron and
Captain Harlock/Queen Millienia (at least those 
shows were vaguely related, but it was still a hatchet job).

My basic assertion: If one is goingg to adapt a Japanese cartoon,
adapt it.  Translate the story, keep the music, leave in as much as
you can get away with.  That's so much simpler than what Robotech did,
which was to adapt three existing stories to THEIR needs, chucked a
lot of the score and left things our left and right.  

I'll use the exampleeee I used before.  How would you all feel if some
foreign company decided to market Calvin & Hobbes, Peanuts and Miss
Peach as a single comic strip?  I mean, they're all about these little
kids with big heads, so nobody will know the difference if we just
tell everyone that "oh yeah, Calvin is actually Charlie Brown's
brother and Linus is actually in love with Miss Peach, not Miss
Othmar".  That's about what they did with Robotech - they claimed that
the lead or leads in Southern Cross were the child or children of
characters in Macross.  Ridiculous.  What next, a novel for the
foreign market that combines those two classics of the English
language, Huckleberry Finn and Great Expectations!  Wiuth an
additional chapter specially written by Carl Macek for the foreign
market detailing Pip and Huck's adventures on the Mississippi!  

Macek and his ilk treat Japanese cartoon shows not as serious works,
but as raw stock footage to be used however they see fit.  I'm not
claiming that Macross is some great work of art, Japan's finest
contribution to world culture since Yukio Mishima and that it deserves
to be seen in museums by audiences of serious black-clad types smoking
clove cigarettes while reflecting on the existential angst of Lynn
Minmei.  I'm claiming that it's a show that deserved to be treated as
an autonomous unit, and that the best way to translate it would have
been to just translate it straight.  


The worst part of Macek's attitude is that instead of openingg
people's eyes to the variety and imagination of Japanese cartoons, he
makes it seem like they're just a bunch of generic-looking cartoons
that you can string togther in any old way 'cos gee, they all look
alike anyway.  

- Dan, the animation critic/ranter-at-large
 
--
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| Dan Parmenter       |"I'm waiting for a time, when I can do without these  |
| dan@gnu.ai.mit.edu  | things that make me feel this way all of the time"   |
|                     |                            - Spiritualized           |
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