I had rather missed this but on 11th July 2023
Michael Bakewell died. A lot of the obituaries have concentrated on his BBC work, where he was one of the most prolific Producers on the "Theatre 625" series on BBC2 in the 1960s (apparently he produced 55 of the 115 total episodes, at least according to imdb), including producing an adaptation of Franz Kafka's Amerika, and a run of Harold Pinter productions - A Slight Ache, A Night Out and The Basement (all of which are collected on the BFI's
"Pinter at the BBC" DVD set), which occurred during the period that Pinter was having an affair with Bakewell's wife, the Journalist Joan Bakewell, which became the subject of Pinter's play (and later film with Jeremy Irons)
Betrayal.
Into the 1970s he was the Dubbing Director for the seminal (and probably unbroadcastable now!) English language dubs of two bought in live action series from Japan, turning them into cult classics in the process, with
The Water Margin (aka Suikoden), and
Monkey, both of which bizarrely feature Miriam Margolyes amongst the voice cast!
When he moved into radio he had probably his most notable success, adapting with Brian Sibley
The Lord of the Rings for the BBC into an epic
26 episode radio series, with Ian Holm as Frodo. Which was for the longest time the most complete adaptation out of the books until the Peter Jackson films arrived.
However the thing that brought him to my attention at this moment is the
obituary by Jonathan Clements in Issue 235 of Neo Magazine, who pointed out that Bakewell was also "one of British anime's forgotten figures", as after Monkey he moved into becoming a Dubbing Director for many English language dubs of anime for Manga Video. This includes some utter classics of the medium, such as Project A-Ko, the Crying Freeman series, the Dark Myth (which is in no way the "trash" that Clements labels it as), the two
Devil Man OVAs, the Angel Cop series, A.D. Police, Dominion Tank Police, Mad Bull 34 (aka the Japanese take on Lethal Weapon! And which kinda
is worthy of Clements' dismissive "trash" label, but in a wonderful way! The same could be said of Junk Boy too!), Genocyber,
Judge, the anime adaptation of Battle Angel: Alita and so many others.
Plus most of the Yoshiaki Kawajiri works including A Wind Named Amnesia, Wicked City and Demon City, Goku: Midnight Eye and the series that I keep mentioning is the one English language dub I entirely endorse and would favour over the original Japanese track, the dub for the
Cyber City OEDO 808 series.
And the dubs for the Katushiro Otomo film Roujin Z, as well as dubs of two Masmune Shirow works: the 1988 Appleseed film, and the first Patlabor: The Mobile Police film.
He even did the two episodes of the
Tokyo Babylon series (which, as with Cyber City, I cannot really imagine experiencing in anything other than their English dubbed versions) and ended that period of his career in 1996 with the dub for
X, which is set in the same universe as Tokyo Babylon was, but is much darker in tone (very much the Lord of the Rings to Tokyo Babylon's Hobbit!)
So if you have heard any of those in their UK/Manga Video English language dubbed versions (which was often the only form in which they were released in the UK in the 1990s - only Ghost In The Shell and Akira were given the honour of receiving separate subtitled releases by Manga Video during that period, whilst everything else was dubbed across the board. Incidentally that's what made the much smaller and niche boutique labels such as Kiseki Films and Western Connection so vitally important for the UK anime scene at the time, because they released mostly subtitled editions of their titles on VHS) Bakewell was the Dubbing Director for them. When he stepped back in 1996 following the bowel cancer diagnosis noted in the Guardian and Clements obit, that led to the end of an era, as Manga Video stopped producing their own dubs to save money and instead started to just buy in the English dubs from the US for a while before they themselves (in face of fans much preferring the original audio if available) pretty much stopped producing English dubs altogether in favour of just subtitles. Unless it was a series particularly targeted at kids such as the Pokemon or Digimon series, and feature film spin-offs.
From that point the US took over the scene (one notable example from the time is the compilation film of the Armitage III series that got a US theatrical release and had its English dub
re-dubbed with Elizabeth Berkeley just coming off of Showgirls and Kiefer Sutherland voicing the main roles) with English language dubs of anime coming back notably once in the late 90s with the specially produced by Miramax dub of Princess Mononoke, which was a kind of dry run for what Disney would end up doing with all of the Miyazaki films from Spirited Away in 2002 onwards, in getting Hollywood actors in to dub anime, albeit only anything Studio Ghibli-related.
I just remembered that it was Moreno as the new ‘Doc’, not Rivera. Watching the remake now. Fairly flat despite the glorious music (Kushner wrote this?). And yes, Chita’s cameo in Chicago is oddly memorable - no dancing, but a one or two liner appearance as a prison inmate, right? The original Velma Kelly, too. Thanks.
