Loss of a pioneer: RIP Carl Macek

The bad news came to me via Cartoon Brew: Jerry Beck broke the news that his former partner in Streamline Video, Carl Macek, had died of a sudden heart attack. This occurred Saturday, April 17th.

Carl Macek was one of the first people in Hollywood who realized that the cartoons Japan made for their domestic consumption had great potential for American audiences. He took several Japanese series, wrote new stories, and redubbed them to create Robotech. Scoff if you must, but Robotech was the first taste of anime for some people. He also brought seminal classics Akira and Tonari no Totoro (My Neighbor Totoro) to America, with little compromise. I still think the Streamline dub of Totoro is wonderful, perhaps better than the Disney/Pixar dub.

Macek didn't restrict his involvement in the animation industry to creating America-friendly versions of anime, he also helped the four original "Big Shots" of Spumco sell Ren and Stimpy to Nickelodeon. True, there were unintended consequences to that as well. But Macek's role in the initial big splash of R&S was apparently crucial.

Macek was a rarity: a geek making a living from being geeky. Something we all aspire to. And he died too soon. 58 years is too young.

Of Manga and '80s music videos

If you are of a "certain age" you remember the beginnings of MTV. Lots of kewl videos. Some of them made with animation techniques. Not much else.

One of the more memorable videos of that period was "Take On Me" by one-hit-wonders A-Ha. Lousy freaking song. Babe-o-licious male lead singer. Lots of electronics. Anyway: the video used rotoscoping to render part of the performance as if it was a sketchy manga. People didn't entirely know what they were looking at: they assumed it was a Western-style comic book. But this was perhaps the first exposure a lot of people had to manga aesthetics.

Anyway, this comes to mind because someone did a hilarious parody version of the video. Here, take a look at it:



Speed Racer aka Mach Go Go Go! immediately comes to mind, as does the kind of layouts you see in manga. The fact that the rotoscoping was done in black and white kind of adds to the manga feel of the whole thing. I really do think this was the first time that someone did anything manga tinged in music video. I'm prolly full of beans here but I thought it was first.

Don't mind me...just a middle aged animation nerd getting nostalgic.

Here, here's another flashback, from Richard X Heyman. Sayonara.