... aka: Baoh
... aka: Baoh the Caller
... aka: Baoh: The Visitor
... aka: Biological Weapon "Baoh"
Directed by:
Hiroyuki Yokoyama
Hirohiko Araki's manga of the same name, which was published by Weekly Shōnen Jump / Shueisha's Jump Comics from October 1984 until February 1985, is the basis for this 48-minute OVA. Unlike some of Araki's other work, namely his extremely popular JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, which began in 1987, is still going strong today over 30 years later and has spawned a huge media empire that includes comics, videos, TV shows, movies (including a live-action theatrical release in 2017 directed by Takashi Miike), video games, novels, clothing, CDs and much more, Baoh was a short-lived property that spawned just this one video and little else. The main character did at least end up in the later JoJo video game All Star Battle.
The Doress Organization are conducting unorthodox, top secret scientific experiments on animals and humans alike aboard a train. One of their test subjects, a 9-year-old orphan girl named Sumire, escapes into another compartment, where project head Dr. Kasuminome and other scientists are involved in another experiment. The chaos leads to a leak in a water tank, which unleashes a muscular male test subject. The test subject, Sumire and Sumire's faithful little pet critter called Nottsuo, who's like a cross between a cat, a fox and a monkey and was part of yet another experiment, all manage to escape and are next seen homeless and in Tokyo.
The organization was interested in young Sumire (who was gladly handed over to them by the nuns at her orphanage) due to her powerful psychic abilities. She's able to see into the future, can break codes and sense whenever danger is near. The male test subject is Ikuro Hashizawa; a 17-year-old who had almost died in a car crash that also killed his parents. His body was then retrieved by Doress and he became the subject of their most ambitious project yet: Creating a nearly-unstoppable super soldier to give them military dominance over the rest of the world. Ikuro has had a parasitic worm-like creature ("Baoh," short for "Biological Armament On Help") that was created during a process of "accelerated evolution," implanted in his brain, which has given him a host of cool powers. For starters, he's super strong and can crush bones with his bare hands. Next, he is equipped with a protective shield over his skin, plus the ability to repair any injuries he's sustained, even those that would otherwise be fatal. And he has many other abilities as well!
With Ikuro out in the world, Doress puts out an order to kill him on sight and then burn his corpse, plus gives an OK to also eliminate Sumire if she happens to get in the way. An assassin named Number 22 is dispatched to destroy him. While he manages to stab Ikuro and slash his throat, Ikuro's regenerative abilities kick in and he's able to use another of his special powers that allows him to leak some acidic fluids from his palms, which he uses to melt the assassin's face clean off! Others are sent out to destroy them, including an entire team of highly-trained killers, a cyborg sniper with a perfect aim and a Native American super-psychic who introduces himself ("I am Walken, a warrior who thrives on carnage and destruction!") and is even kind enough to announce each of his powers before using them ("Molecular Seismic Wave! Hahahaha!") Eventually, Sumire is kidnapped, which forces Ikuro to break into the bad guy's compound to save her.
This is not a particularly well-written or well-plotted anime, but it makes up for that somewhat with a swift pace, good animation and, its greatest drawing card, extreme levels of bloody butchery! The gory violence, especially when it's directed toward test subject animals, can be a bit unsettling. During one scene, a Baoh-enhanced dog and a normal tiger are put in the same room as a demonstration for potential backers, which finds the animals clawing, biting and disemboweling one another until eyeballs and brains are oozing out onto the floor. The dog is then shot through the head and the Baoh parasite pops out of the mangled mutt's eye socket and gets torched, which is the only way to actually kill the creature.
Not that the violence directed toward the human characters is any less gruesome! We get hands and heads ripped right off, fingers cut off, heads pierced with shards of metal, impalements with stalactites, people set on fire and blown up and much more. Another of Ikuro's abilities is "Reskin Harden Sabre Phenomenon," which enables two razor-sharp blades to emerge from his arms, which he uses to slash, decapitate and slice heads in two; both side-to-side AND top-to-bottom. How's that for variety? There's also the "Shooting Bees' Sting Phenomenon," which gives him the ability to shoot deadly porcupine quills from his hair, and the "Break Dark Thunder Phenomenon," which gives him the option to create an extremely-powerful electric charge capable of making heads and bodies explode.
Despite being made primarily for the video market, this actually had a limited theatrical release in Japan several months before it debuted on home video. The manga was translated for U.S. consumption in 1990 and was followed by an English-dubbed release of this OVA in 1995 by AnimEigo (available on both VHS and laserdisc), followed by a DVD release in 2002 from the same company. It was also released in French, German and Italian language versions.
★★1/2
No comments:
Post a Comment