Carl Macek

Carl Macek is an American writer and anime producer of the 1980s and 1990s.

Carl Macek came to public attention in 1985 as the executive producer of the groundbreaking animated TV series Robotech which he produced for Harmony Gold USA. Robotech is perhaps the title most responsible for igniting anime fandom in North America and internationally. Macek intended to produce a sequel to Robotech, Robtech II: The Sentinels, but this project was aborted due to a number of circumstances. While at Harmony Gold, Macek also produced the little known, rarely seen Captain Harlock and the Queen of a Thousand Years (which combines the stories of Space Pirate Captain Harlock and Queen Millennia).

Macek went on to found Streamline Pictures in 1988. Joining him were writers who had worked with him on Robotech, most notably, Steve Kramer, Tom Wyner, Greg Snegoff and Ardwight Chamberlain, each of whom are also accomplished voice actors. Streamline Pictures is the first American company to successfully deal in the regular production of imported Japanese animation. Among the titles released by Streamline are Lensman, Robot Carnival, Doomed Megalopolis, Twilight of the Cockroaches, Crying Freeman, Wicked City, and the original English dub versions of Hayao Miyazaki's Laputa: Castle in the Sky, Akira, Lupin III: Castle of Cagliostro, and Lupin III: Mystery of Mamo.

Carl Macek became one of the most controversial figures during the first and second waves of anime fandom. Many consider him one of the early pioneers of the genre outsider of Japan. Streamline Pictures dubbed anime were among the first to be available on home video as well as broadcast on cable. Streamline also released a wide variety of anime titles that were different from each other. There is, however, a large portion of the anime fandom that still regards Carl Macek as having bastardized the original Japanese versions of many of these titles. In particular, Robotech which consists of three originally unrelated anime rewritten to tell an ongoing saga (Macross, Southern Cross, Mospeada). For this, he was regarded by many as the Anime Antichrist. So intense was this hatred that some anime fans have reportedly sent him death threats and blacklisted him from appearing at anime conventions. Also, worth noting is that Carl Macek and Streamline Pictures released only dubbed anime and remains the only major anime distributor ever to do so. He believed that in order for anime to reach a general audience, it had to be dubbed. A significant portion of the anime fandom purports to watch exclusively subtitled anime and many actively boycotted Streamline.

In all fairness, Robotech was created the way it was in order to meet a 65+ episode requirement that satisfied TV syndication guidelines of the time. And in many of the titles, Macek changed dialogue to remove what he called "ethnic gesture". Many of the earlier titles were science fiction or some other genre where the setting was ethnically neutral and these slight changes did not significantly affect the integrity of the script. Compared to earlier years, anime's ethnicity has now become a major selling point. Of note is the large number of fans who intentionally gravitate to anime that display more "Japanesey" themes as well as their use of spoken and written Japlish amongst each other.

The process of heavily revising translated anime scripts to appeal to a Western audience has been derisively nicknamed the "macekre" (by analogy to massacre).

Streamline Pictures was purchased by Orion Pictures in the early 90s and is now defunct.

Carl Macek is also the author of Heavy Metal, Animation for the 80s and Robotech Art III: The Sentinels in which he chronicles in detail the conception and background of the aborted animated series.

Carl Macek has also worked as a script writer for the animated series C.O.P.S and was the executive consultant for the animated film Heavy Metal Fakk2 (Heavy Metal 2000).

He was once interviewed on Point of View by Derwood Rowell for the American Channel 11 network.