Relic

8-Bit Star wrote:[color=blue]
> Carl Macek's dubs were actually pretty good, and I do not
> understand why, in this post-4Kids day and age, Macek is
> still occassionally held up as the quintessential example
> of the "Bad Dub."
>
> Reasons Macek's dubs were good:
>
> 1. Macek was a fan, not just some guy who got in for the
> money. He usually understood what the creators were
> going for, and usually did a durn good job translating that
> message.
>
> 2. His translations, while not necesarily as word-for-word
> "accurate" as some would've liked, were at least natural-
> sounding when spoken by humans. There are rarely any
> instances in a Macek dub where I think "no human being
> would say that."
>
> 3. The voice actors he chose, usually, could actually ACT...
> unlike 99.9% of the anime VAs out there.
>
> 4. When Macek made a change, there was a reason for it.
> It was never totally pointless like in most dubs.
>
> 5. He was good at matching voices to the characters. You
> never had the "five-year-old girl who sounds forty" syndrome
> like you do with some other people.
>
> 6. When a Macek production replaced the Japanese music
> with American music, the American music was usually just
> as good (both in matching the show and in just plain being
> good) as the original Japanese music... and in a few cases,
> was actually better (in my opinion).
>
> And that's my case.[/color]

To be honest, I've never had a problem with most (not all) of Macek's
dubs (Jean from Nadia certainly being a hoary exception). As for
Robotech being crunched and changed, well, we could have had the option
of not having it at all (since at 36 episodes he wouldn't have been able
to sell it to the networks). And if that had happened, well, a whole
generation of potential anime fans would possibly have been lost, and
instead of anime growing in popularity in America during the 90s
we'd just possibly be still at the local meet, synopsis in hand,
following what is on the screen instead of relaxing at home (or having
the meet at your home) watching the show on your much better TV.

Of course, that's simply conjecture ^_^.

I wouldn't say that his dubs were the greatest (though I really
enjoyed Castle of Cagliostro), but for the most part, they weren't
horrible either (again, Jean from Nadia being the exception ^_^).

Wonder what he's doing now. Last I saw, he worked on the first 25 or so
eps of Bleach...