You do not "gotta hand it" to Robotech. Literally the rest of the world was getting imported anime all throughout the 70s and 80s. Sure they might not have been the most faithful dubs but they weren't homunculi trying to pass themselves off as domestic creations. - ThreadSky

charmaycry.bsky.social • 5 days ago

You do not "gotta hand it" to Robotech. Literally the rest of the world was getting imported anime all throughout the 70s and 80s. Sure they might not have been the most faithful dubs but they weren't homunculi trying to pass themselves off as domestic creations.

Comments

nuclearcherries.bsky.social•4 days ago

It's like, Pokémon still would have bought anime over for the children in the 90s. Sailor Moon would still have set the world on fire and distributors would still have picked up the "violent cartoons for adults!!!" for distribution towards adults.
Robotech did nothing but butcher a fantastic series

planpark.bsky.social•4 days ago

The entire world experienced the 90s anime boom. The world also experienced a 70s/80s anime boom, except for the Anglosphere which had like 2 or 3 shows be moderately successful. Not even close to how big Heidi or Candy Candy was to the rest of the globe.

bluebaronbbb.bsky.social•4 days ago

Idk... Looks like the seizure situation spooked distributers of that era...

icesawg.bsky.social•4 days ago

For us Americans?

shinprincipal.bsky.social•4 days ago

Americans: sure we killed ur kid and buried it in the pet cemetery but at least now annoying 40 year olds know about it*

*not actually it

shrikedan.bsky.social•4 days ago

Like sure, it does/did have it’s place in western anime fandom history as one of the first major anime hits over here. But nowadays, it’s pretty much become like Power Rangers where more people nowadays like the source material more so than the amalgamated adaptation.

end-sky.bsky.social•4 days ago

The legacy of Power Rangers is a whole basket of eggs in its own right, but it seems to be generally slanted a lot more negative now. Why do you think that is?

bluebaronbbb.bsky.social•4 days ago

Gives tokusatsu a bad image in the US for new viewers it seems.

icesawg.bsky.social•4 days ago

Like Ultraman Tiga.

vince-vodka.bsky.social•4 days ago

In all seriousness, it is really insane how Americans back then thought they needed to Americanized a Japanese show (or 3 for this case) to be marketable in there. And the fact that we see other entertainment companies doing the same thing shows a the negative consequences of such phenomenon.

vince-vodka.bsky.social•4 days ago

We got WEP making Voltron and Saber Rider, we got Saban making Power Rangers, Masked Rider and Macron 1, literally all of 4kids dubs... hell, even speaking of stuff outside of TV shows, Revelations Persona exists!

lanceboyle94.bsky.social•4 days ago

VR Troopers is still the "ultimate" of Saban's examples because they took three different shows (all about a decade old by that point) and tried to make a show out of that.

Unsurprisingly it didn't last very long after they realized they ran out of material. lol

planpark.bsky.social•4 days ago

In fairness different countries had various levels of modifications when importing shows, but it id uniquely American/Canadian to replace the OST/Background Music of the shows leading to the phenomenon of the "Faulconer" score being a thing that's preferred only by Loud Americans.

doctorbutler.bsky.social•4 days ago

Nah, the Faulconer Soundtrack kicks ass.

oceanblue-art.bsky.social•4 days ago

You know maybe the world is a better place without that weird Saban Moon show existing

bluebaronbbb.bsky.social•4 days ago

Don't forget starstorm and guardians of the cosmos

bluebaronbbb.bsky.social•4 days ago

It was a different time sadly

vince-vodka.bsky.social•4 days ago

I gotta hand it to Robotech... hand them these nuts!

meterangelel.bsky.social•4 days ago

I can't believe we still have to have this convo in 2025.

zeether.bsky.social•4 days ago

Star Blazers did a better job of respecting the source material.

charmaycry.bsky.social•4 days ago

It also came first and established American anime fandom first

zeether.bsky.social•4 days ago

The fact that the credits show the original JP staff while Robotech's go out of their way to obfuscate all that...really makes you think!!

planeswalkure.bsky.social•4 days ago

Hand it to Robotech? Of course!

Hand them this slap right here right in the kisser

*audience laughter*

screwy.bsky.social•4 days ago

me "handing it" to Harmony Gold

sergorndragon.bsky.social•3 days ago

Over here (France) we'd been getting anime long before Robotech was a thing. In alternate reality where Robotech never happened, it's not unlikely we would have gotten the original Macross insead at some point.

vf5ss.bsky.social•4 days ago

And as I understand it, it did poorly in reruns because the jig was up once people knew the shows didn't actually connect in a meaningful way. That's why Captain Harlock got combined with Queen Millennia by intercutting the two shows more directly. Same thing with Macron-1.

nazoomfie.bsky.social•4 days ago

i see you saw the same post i did. anyway go off.

reapthegirlwind.bsky.social•4 days ago

every time i least expect it, robotech jumpscare

theafroburgerman.bsky.social•4 days ago

That's why I say Macross instead of Robotech.

crossange.bsky.social•5 days ago

I Mean I Do Wanna Hand It to Robotech
This is It

tudsworthington.bsky.social•4 days ago

Even if you fully, heart of hearts, believe Macek was important, visionary, what have you, for wanting to export a show AND hit syndication targets; that was half a lifetime ago. Carl has been worm food for a decade. You can let it go. HG doesn't need a monopoly on somebody else's art.

wattsynchron.bsky.social•4 days ago

I mean it's not like Macross is some creator owned thing. Someone already has a monopoly on somebody else's art they just have a monopoly on some other company's art.

tudsworthington.bsky.social•4 days ago

Worse, Sony fucking Pictures enables this presumably because it means Disney can't just have every Macross show streaming on Hulu (Disney+ internationally) because we're at the point of fighting corporate proxy wars over 45 year old cartoons. I can't think of any other reason.

shrikedan.bsky.social•4 days ago

Like at least with Power Rangers, we were still able to get some seasons of Super Sentai on DVD over here. Meanwhile, Harmony Gold they’re holding hostage the OG Macross cause they can’t let go of the past.

bluebaronbbb.bsky.social•4 days ago

And then Hasbro ruined US Sentai releases

tomboypepsilove.bsky.social•4 days ago

Can't stress enough how through so much of the world anime was just "cartoons" for the longest time

They were obviously different than the usual American stuff but not enough for people to care, my parents grew up on Mazinger and Heidi lol

planpark.bsky.social•4 days ago

Looking back through some older print media in my country, they were still calling hits like Ranma 1/2 and Yu Yu Hakusho as just cartoons. All changed in the very late 90s to early 2000s.

taewyth.bsky.social•1 day ago

Here's a neat video about weeb electronic fanzines for the Amiga, that briefly touch upon how anime were clearly a thing in europe already, and how it had been so for a long time before the magazines shown in the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNINJTXZL7U

basedbigbg.bsky.social•4 days ago

While not nearly the same extreme this is also sort of how I feel about the weird nostalgic reappraisal 4kids has been getting lately. They had an amazingly talented voice cast (RIP Maddie Blaustein the GOAT) but there's no denying that a lot of their edits were straight up just xenophobia.

basedbigbg.bsky.social•4 days ago

Somewhere there is a timeline where Funimation never got One Piece from them, so you can only imagine how radically different its perception in the US would have been.

zumpitup.bsky.social•4 days ago

Even after Funi got One Piece, it took a long time for it to get the same amount of love from US fans as Dragon Ball.There was a period where Toonami took One Piece off their block because it was getting enough viewers.

bluebaronbbb.bsky.social•4 days ago

Toonami took it off twice 😬

planpark.bsky.social•4 days ago

Tbh, censorship, name changes, OP/ED changes were still common in various countries. What's unique though with US & Canadian dubbing of anime though is the replacement of BGMs/Scores. Only the US & Canada did that. Other territories did not do that, except when they were forced to use the US dub

icesawg.bsky.social•4 days ago

Because we’re seeing 2000s nostalgia already?

charmaycry.bsky.social•5 days ago

Robotech's existence was an American-made solution to an American-made problem. A lot of you would do well to stop treating America as the center of everything when it comes to entertainment industries.

charmaycry.bsky.social•5 days ago

Americans were just too racist to accept anime in the 80s. This sentiment continues on even decades after. There is nothing noble about Robotech making anime palatable to American audiences by obfuscating its origin.

triblast28.bsky.social•5 days ago

Like the only thing that you can give it is well, making the fandom bigger at the time, not even starting it, cause well Star Blazers created the modern anime fandom

dr-bread.bsky.social•3 days ago

Wrong to blame audiences for this. Media execs are always trying to eliminate exposure to other cultures from the western media diet.

oceanblue-art.bsky.social•4 days ago

I'd never even heard of Robotech until a few years ago, y'all are delusional if you think Robotech was responsible for contemporary Western otakudom and not Pokemon or Dragonball

powerfulhag.bsky.social•20 hours ago

pokemon and dragonball hit the western world like a good decade after robotech was sold to american children, that's kind of the thing. the American otaku community already existd through the 80s and 90s after the nerds who loved robotech branched out and got into anime in the early 90s.

powerfulhag.bsky.social•20 hours ago

There was a big timelag between something in Japan reaching the West, and the 'big' properties we know like Pokemon and DBZ hit children in the late 90s despite being established before then. Meanwhile anime in the west was focused on more adult content being cherrypicked for distribution.

powerfulhag.bsky.social•20 hours ago

Obviously this is an American/English-speaking focus and ignore that a lot of stuff that was brought over earlier than the 80s-90s and stuff in other countries, but that is what OP is pointing out as the issue. Robotech was the frontline of the anime boom in America which is why its a problem-

taewyth.bsky.social•1 day ago

I'm not even sure that we can hand it to Pokemon or Dragonball (maybe in the US, idk), to me that honour should go to Grendizer and basically 70s anime in general.

I say this because in europe you had disk magazines about these, basically anime fansites before the internet (with fanart and stuff).

oceanblue-art.bsky.social•1 day ago

Oh right, I forgot that a lot of this is country-specific

bluebaronbbb.bsky.social•4 days ago

Isn't that show the reason Macross was held hostage for decades from seeing the light in the US??

charmaycry.bsky.social•4 days ago

yep

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