Maxtro said:
Honestly I was never much into Robotech or Macross. I watched it when the dubs aired though I don't remember what network that was. I don't know enough about Carl Macek to comment on him.
I thought the first wave of anime was Speed Racer, Voltron and Thunderhawks (not really sure about the name they all wore some kind of bird suits).
When I said hardly necessary, I meant that Sailormoon and Dragon Ball were so hugely popular in Japan that they would have reached the western world regardless if Robotech existed or not. The other show that I forgot to mention is Gundam Wing which also brought in a bunch of new fans.
BTW I'm not trying to say Robotech was a bad series or anything like that.
I have no doubt that anime would have eventually reached our shores but it would have happened in a completely different way. And given how the 90s was so different from the 80s, it would have had to face a lot of obstacles. First of all, it would have had to compete with Bruce Timms DCAU, Cartoon Network, Southpark, and a revived Disney. It would have also had to deal with the rampant political correctness that was born in the 90s. Not to mention the current moral crusades against perversion and indecency (two things that anime has been unfairly and excessively criticized for).
If anime hit our shores ten years later than it did, it would be mostly sanitized, kiddy fare such as Pokemon, Yugi-oh, and the watered down Sailor Moon and DragonballBZ that we did get anyway, never mind the fact that that SM and DBZ weren't exactly the most intellectual shows to begin with. Fans would not get to see a significant number of classics and we would most likely be denied access to the best of the past and present in anime, as is always the case when an industry goes only for "hot", "trendy" or "flavor of the week". I'm almost certain that mature anime (such as the aforementioned Crying Freeman) would not get exposure over here in the U.S. due to the unnerving militant puritanical mentality that has recently emerged.
BTW, with Thunderhawks, you might be thinking about Battle of the Planets or G-Force (not the one with the hamsters). What makes Robotech different from Speed Racer, Voltron, and most of what came before is the fact that Robotech preserved all of the mature themes and violence and didn't butcher the show and talk down to it's viewers just because it's only a cartoon.