False Prophet wrote: ↑Wed Dec 19, 2018 10:37 pm
Even then Robotech was hated? How much then?
Eh... I wouldn't say "hated" so much as "scorned" or "dismissed".
You have to understand,
Robotech made its debut only a few years before the demand for accurate dubs of anime series began to overtake the entrenched industry practice of localizing anime via rewriting. Some of those localization-by-rewrite titles like
Voltron,
StarBlazers, and
Speed Racer had been extremely well-received, and the fact that the shows were originally Japanese did not go unnoticed. The knowledge that these shows had been edited both for localization and for content, partly to make them more appropriate for children, created interest in the uncensored versions of the shows they'd seen as young children. It didn't help that these localization-by-rewrite titles tended to be somewhat... irreverent... with the content of the original shows and by 1989 were starting to prove less profitable as a growing audience for anime started to feel a bit patronized by the rewriters apparent belief that content from another culture would cause their heads to explode. One of the more notorious rewrites that bombed right out of the gate is Harmony Gold's "lost" dub of
Dragon Ball, which was so poorly received because of heavy-handed rewriting that changed the names of all the characters (like calling Korrin "Whiskers the Wonder Cat") and edited out the "extreme" violence.
By the time 1992 rolled around, interest in accurate dubbing had grown to the point where distributors had started to take the demand seriously. Rewrites had become "uncool", and were increasingly seen as disrespecting the original Japanese creators, the material itself, and/or the audience watching it.
So, as
Macross was taking its first tentative steps into western markets under its own name,
Robotech was catching increasing amounts of flak for being a rewrite series. This is largely because Carl Macek, his new company Streamline Pictures, and Harmony Gold refused to just let it die despite its increasing unpopularity. At the same time that US Renditions was releasing an accurate (by the standards of the time) dub of
Macross II: Lovers Again with the hobby media gushing about how popular the franchise was in Japan, Macek's Streamline Pictures was grappling with an attempt to resuscitate
Robotech by releasing it on VHS. In a rare moment of self-awareness, Macek had tried to meet the growing no-rewrites movement halfway with the "
Robotech Perfect Collection" VHS release that included both the
Robotech versions of episodes and the original Japanese versions with subtitles. Streamline's staff did a crap job with the subtitles and
Robotech and Macek had long ago worn out their welcome, so when it came out opposite
Macross II: Lovers Again,
Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki,
Porco Rosso,
Yu Yu Hakusho, and other 1992 releases that was less front page news and more "a single paragraph in the reviews page". One review I remember reading basically boiled down to "How great it is that we finally have these shows in their original format! Also,
Robotech is on the tapes on the off chance anyone gives a sh*t." It was this period where Macek's habits while directing dubs of several fairly big-ticket properties for Streamline earned him the nickname "The Antichrist of Anime" that stayed with him until his death in 2010.
So, really,
Robotech wasn't really hated the way it is now that it's actively blocking
Macross licensing outside of Japan... it was just sort of dismissed as a product of "the way things used to be", like when that one elderly relative that everybody seems to have busts out the old-timey casual racism at a family gathering all roll their eys and try to gently remind them that you can't talk like that anymore in polite society.
Robotech was pretty much self-hating, as the fandom tore itself apart over whether the TV series, novels, or comic book adaptations were the "true"
Robotech throughout the late 80's and into the fandom's first flirtations with the internet in the 90's. They didn't really become hated by other fandoms until Harmony Gold started to actively "protect"
Robotech by stopping
Macross imports and suing other franchises for increasingly spurious reasons after the franchise officially went online in 2001.
False Prophet wrote: ↑Wed Dec 19, 2018 10:37 pm
Did you guys have the definition of "antifans" and "hatedoms" within the anime community back then?
I'm not sure the concept was quite so well-defined as it is now, but the idea was definitely there. When I was a kid the hobbyist community around where I lived liked to call them "bashers" (and, later, "haters"). There wasn't really a sense that they were an organized thing like an anti-fandom, just that they were assholes who liked to verbally beat on whatever you happened to love.
There wasn't even really the modern sense that that kind of person is inherently hypocritical... they were just seen as a course hazard for fandom.
