THE DEATH OF CARL MACEK: Franklin Harris gives us his appreciation. Growing up I'm pretty sure I had no idea--though maybe I suspected--that Robotech was cobbled together from entirely different Japanese shows. And we'll probably never see its like again--we have too much information now to credibly splice unrelated continuities into something new. There's nothing mysterious about Japanese animation anymore, since we have so much of it, which is part of Franklin's point. And the distribution channels for foreign culture in general are obviously much, much better established. Robotech is the last of its kind. (Voltron also put together two different shows--lion Voltron and vehicle Voltron--but the continuities were kept separate, they were just two teams operating at the same time in different parts of the universe. Robotech turned its three shows into a generational saga.)

Macek also founded Streamline, which released Akira with the beautiful, superior original dub. One that was less true in meaning but more true in feeling. Wish we still had dubs like that in anime, instead of the similar-sounding casts we have (which I know is for budget reasons, it's easier to hire poor actors in Vancouver than established Hollywood voices.) Bringing Robotech and Akira to America is a heck of a resume.