Baoh Raihousha

An innocent young man, Ikuroo, has a parasite known as Baoh implanted in his brain by an evil organization, Doress. The parasite makes him nearly immortal and gives him the ability to transform into a really powerful beastie when he's in trouble.

Doress intends to use him in some sort of ploy for financial success, world domination, or something along those lines, but when they're transporting him on a train, a young psychic girl, Sumire (who's being held by the organization due to her abilities), sets him free and the two escape together.

Of course, Dr. Kasuminome is the mad scientist behind the whole Baoh thing, and he isn't about to let his test subject get away and he has considerable resources (including some superpowered lackeys, as well as a small army) at his disposal.

(Source: AnimeDB)

Hashizawa, Ikurou Main

Hori, Hideyuki Japanese

Sumire Main

Hidaka, Noriko Japanese

Dr. Kasuminome Main

Nagai, Ichiro Japanese

Walken Supporting

Yara, Yuusaku Japanese

Dordo Supporting

Ikeda, Shuuichi Japanese

Sophine Supporting

Inoue, You Japanese

Matsuura, Noriyoshi Sound Director

Yokoyama, Hiroyuki Episode Director

Terada, Kenji Script

Machida, Yoshito Theme Song Performance

Reviews

Mar 10, 2025

NerdicWarrior

Recommended

Before Jojo's Bizarre Adventure there was Baoh.
Published in Weekly Shonen Jump from October 1984 to February 1985, Baoh is one of Hirohiko Araki's many pre-Jojo works and was the first to display his signiture amount of ultra violence and gore.
The OVA produced by Studio Pierrot and distributed by Toho (yes THAT Toho) in 1989 is your typical OVA that's ment to serve as a blatant advertisement for the manga it's based on.
Not to say that such OVAs are all terrible. In fact, the Baoh OVA is actually quite good.

Ikuro Hashizawa, a seventeen year old young man is turned into a human bio-weapon after the evil ... Doress Organisation infects him with a parasitic worm like creature named Baoh, which allows him to turn into a more monstrous form with superhuman strength and other abilities such as emitting corrosive substances and electrical discharge.
Ikuro manages to escape one night with a young psychic girl named Sumire and the two live on the run. The evil scientist who infected Ikuro with the Baoh parasite, Dr Kasuminome naturally isn't pleased that the product of his experiment is now roaming free and dispatches various assassins to seek and destroy Ikuro to cover his and the orginisation's tracks.

The OVA would receive praise from Hirohiko Araki as it faithfully adapted his original manga if making a few changes and omittions from the source material and felt that it was very well made.
He did however have some grievances as he felt that adapting the manga in it's entirety into a single OVA was a bit of a waste and would have preferred if it was adapted into two parts.
And to be fair to Araki, his grievances aren't wrong as the OVA does feel like it's trying to cram as much of it's source material into 48 minutes and even feels rushed at times, which is pretty much the standard for direct to video anime that is basically made to advertise the manga it's adapting.
Inspite of it's short comings, the OVA does have a lot of good things going for it.
The story is intriguing with two very likeable lead characters that we are made to care for right from the get go while the villains who hunt them are unscrupulous to the point of being outright detestable making them the perfect baddies we love to hate while rooting for the heroes and the art style, character designs and animation are beautiful to look at.

Baoh may not be a perfect anime by any means but it's definitely a well made and well written little film that I recommend seeing, especially if you're a fan of Jojo and are interested in some of Hirohiko Araki's other works or if you're a fan of ultra violent action titles like Guyver.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Aug 28, 2022

NoahRules

Mixed Feelings

TL;DR
only watch BAOH if you want an action-packed 80s anime with little focus on story/characters.

BAOH is one of Araki's first ever works and it shows. it's clear that Araki was still getting the hand of writing stories and characters but at the same time, you can tell Araki really knew how to make a good action scene, hell I'd say that some action scenes here are better than some in JoJo given how the action scenes in BAOH are a lot more fast-paced and flashy.

I'd recommend the anime over the manga, the anime does skip some scenes which would be a problem but like I ... said the story isn't really what you should be looking for in this anime.

Despite everything I've said I think BAOH has a good concept, sure the idea of the main character having a parasite that he can't fully control has been done before, but I'd like to see modern Araki try something with that concept, or Araki should let another author try and write a revival/continuation for BAOH, like what he did with Cool Shock Old B.T

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Dec 16, 2024

FAKEANIMEGIRL

Not Recommended

(Check out my profile for a link to my site containing more up-to-date reviews and bonus media!)

Oh yeah. This. This is a thing I watched. What the fuck is it, right? It's actually a Hirohiko Araki adaptation of a manga before he wrote JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. The OVA is about 45 minutes and the manga itself spans a multi-generational, genre-hopping, epic two volumes so I assume the OVA is full and faithful. With that in mind, we have reason to be disappointed here. There is little of the eccentric creativity or style to remind you of anything Araki. The only reason you'd have to expect ... he was involved is that dogs are beat and shot in the first five minutes.

In Baoh, a teenager after an accident is turned into a bio-weapon by a secret organization. Another captive of the organization, a little girl with psychic powers, inadvertently frees the guy as she tries to escape. It turns out a parasite inside of Ikurou gives him the ability to turn into a primal creature uncannily similar to Beast from X-Men that has super strength, sharp claws, and can generate electricity. Ikurou and Sumire escape together and are on the lam from the Doress organization, and soon have to take the fight to them.

Baoh is a barren story and setting. It feels like the foundation for something that should've grown more extravagant and detailed, like a pilot manga. Whether this was one or not, even the basic concept doesn't feel fresh. Transforming bio-weapon mutant is a cliche in and of itself, and Baoh's standard abilities never grow to anything beyond what they seem at a glance. The action scenes, of which there are many, lack the pieces necessary to make compelling set pieces or combat. Baoh dispatches all of his rivals with total ease and almost purely brute force, allowing for that B-movie kind of violent 90s OVA with a ton of exploding heads and gore. Even when it comes to being weird and unnecessarily violent, the appeal of a lot of these pulp OVAs, Baoh is fairly tame and the exploding head trick is about all it has to show. The antagonists have no goal other than to bury their Baoh experiment and use it to gain world influence, and certain characters having psychic abilities is never explained or related to the Baoh project in any way. This little girl has visions she can use to foresee events, and that's all there is to it. We know nothing about our heroes other than they don't want to be captured by Doress, which is completely expected.

Production values are fine. It looks better than your average series, but not by much. I noticed some reused head shots and still backgrounds which are the kind of thing I normally hope to not see in an OVA (or anywhere), but motion is fluid and I didn't spot any obvious low frame rates. Background music is a lot of that completely stock squeal "tense" ambiance and electro rock 'n roll when Baoh goes on the attack. In conclusion, I don't think there's any reason to recommend this. It doesn't conform to people's expectations of Araki, the violence isn't that extreme even if you're a "gorehound", and it doesn't have much of that camp appeal due to how straightforward and natural of a story it is.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: All Anime Series

by SHIZA_KAISER

15 Entries · 1 Restacks

Complete Anime Adaptations (part 1)

by Yuriko_Sakai

50 Entries · 233 Restacks

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by lainnvx

50 Entries · 27 Restacks

	Poll: Baoh Episode 1 Discussion Zepwich - Jan 30, 2011	32 replies	by Rainz555 »» Aug 10, 2024 11:35 PM
	Read the manga first busterbeam - Sep 28, 2017	0 replies	by busterbeam »» Sep 28, 2017 2:50 PM