From: joshm@crash.cts.com (Josh Mercer)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.animation
Subject: Re: Robotech: Love it, Leave it, or Get out of the Way.
Date: 9 Nov 92 23:49:42 GMT
Organization: CTS Network Services (crash, ctsnet), El Cajon, CA

In <DAN.92Nov9120012@wookumz.gnu.ai.mit.edu> dan@wookumz.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Dan Parmenter) writes:

>In article <joshm.720944744@crash.cts.com> joshm@crash.cts.com 
>(Josh Mercer) writes:

>   Eventually, I learned how everything fit together, between Robotech, 
>   the original Japanese series that comprised it, Robotech The Movie, Macross
>   the movie, and the ill-fated Sentinels.  Now I'm an anime fan, though 
>   I seem to like fewer shows than many other anime fans do.  But just because
>   Robotech WAS a hatchet job (though hardly on the level of say, BoTP) doesn't
>   mean I feel the need to bash it endlessly and those who still like it--
>   partly because I still do.  I don't even pretened to think that Robotech
>   is a pure translation or even especially well done anymore, but I _do_  
>   still enjoy it for its merits: it was a good, entertaining show that
>   got me into anime.  And that's that.  Come on, anime fans.  Robotech got
>   a lot of you into anime too.  For what it was, a show on AMERICAN tv 
>   (not Japanese tv, guys...try to remember that) in a timeslot meant for
>   CHILDREN that showed you what "good" (or, at least, complex) storytelling
>   could be achieved with animation, it deserves better than to be treated
>   as the spawn of hell that single-handedly "ruined" anime for people.  It
>   did more for anime than virtually any TV show shown here.  It grew anime
>   fandom a thousand-fold.

>@#$%^!

>Robotech didn't get ME into Japanese animation.  In fact, it didn't get
>YOU into Japanaese animation either, Starblazers did.  That it got a
>lot of people into Japanimation is indisputable - the question is
>whether this was entirely a good thing.  To my mind, part of the
>problem with Robotech is that it set a standard for shoddiness that
>other shows (most notably Captain Harlock/Queen Millenia) latched
>onto.  

No, Robotech DID get me into anime.  Star Blazers gave me an interest
in well-plotted, serial cartoons but at the tender age of ten I sure wasn't
aware of the animation industry in japan and I certainly wasn't 

going out to c/fo meetings and watching Wings of Oneamis.

And why are more fans "not entirely a good thing"?  Without the recent 
explosion of anime fans, there wouldn't be a market for the several
companies who are now subtitling and and distributing anime here, in its
uncut form.
Robotech set the standard for shoddiness? Hardly.  The shoddiness has been
around for twenty-odd years in the USA.  Compare Robotech to say, oh, 
Battle of the Planets.  And maybe I just live in a hopelessly backwater
area (southern california) but it seems to me that the Harlock/QM hybrid
thing wasn't widely shown: I didn't even know of it until a year or two
after getting into anime.  In any case, though, what else has been around
that has been so shoddy?  Macron 1?...and?


>Sure it got a lot of people interested in Japanese animation.  So
>what?  "Anime fandom" today is a perfect example of "too little, too
>late".  Animation is on the decline in Japan, the technical quality
>may be going up, but the story quality has fallen way off.  In the
>seventies there were far more animated television shows with a far
>broader range of interests represented.  So now we have a larger
>"anime fandom", but virtually nothing of interest to celebrate.  You
>couldn't pay me enough to go to "Anime-Con" and hang out with hundreds
>of rabid Dirty Bubble Gum Z or whatever the fuck is popular thes days
>fans. 

I wouldn't deny that for a moment.  The anime industry IS in very bad shape,
with hardly any tv shows at all and fewer and fewer worthwhile OAVs each
year.  But whose fault is that?