Anime Reel – Anime & Manga TV News

Happy trails.

Sad news hit the anime community last night. Streamline Pictures co-founder Carl Macek passed away on Saturday following a heart attack. He was best known as the producer of Robotech, and was also a script writer for the English adaptations of such anime as My Neighbor Totoro, The Castle of Cagliostro, Naruto, and Bleach. He was 58 years old.

Carl Macek was a controversial figure in the anime fan community for decades, known both as a skillful storyteller who managed to weave three disparate anime (Macross, Southern Cross, and Mospeada) into a fairly cohesive whole and a hack who butchered Captain Harlock and Queen Milennia into an incoherent mess. Regardless of where you stand on the matter, the fact is that he was responsible for two generations of kids learning to love anime, and for that, he will be missed.

I had the pleasure of meeting Carl at AOD 2010 a couple of months ago, and he was a gracious guest with the soul of a storyteller. I was very impressed by his knowledge and his willingness to share it, and all of us on staff looked forward to hearing more tales from behind the scenes of all the anime we loved as kids. We’ll never hear them now, and we’re all sadder for it.

Rest well, old man.

(edit: Carl Macek was born in 1951, making him 58 years old at time of death and not 51.)