Baoh: Unedited Audio and Recording Notes (Patreon)

Manga Details

• Author: Araki
• Author’s other works: Cool Shock BT, JoJo
• Run dates: May 1984 to February 1985
• Chapters/Volumes: Ran for 17 chapters, collected in 2 volumes as 9 chapters
• Was adopted into an OVA 4 years after it ended, likely because of JoJos success

About the Manga

• Plot
  • Baoh is so cool he has the power to shoot acid. He was created by performing evil science experiments on a 17 year old boy named Ikuro Hashizawa and looks like Star Platinum with some schmutz over his right eye. The evil scientist who did it is named Dr. Hazyeye and he’s working for an evil science company called the Judas Laboratory because Araki has never understood the concept of subtlety at any point in his life.
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  • Ikuro is being held in a sci-fi containment tank that’s being transported somewhere via train. Also on the train is Violet, a 9 year old little girl with MK Ultra-style psychic powers which she uses to escape from her room. As she’s pursued by a guard she releases some dogs which get kicked in order to remind you who wrote this series. Violet releases Ikuro who transforms into Baoh and kills Hazyeye’s assistant, escaping from the train with Violet. Violet’s guard is killed for allowing their escape and she washes up on the shore a couple days later.
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  • The two are pursued by a guy who looks like Crocodile Dundee. He doesn’t say his name but he has a helpful name tag on his jacket that says “scarface”. Baoh kills him with acid. Violet cheats at horse racing because they’re broke while Dr. Hazyeye reveals that Baoh is actually a parasite living inside of Ikuro’s body which gives the host immense powers. However, in about 110 days the Baoh Larva inside of Ikuro will transform, lay eggs inside of him, and when they hatch they’ll infect the world. Thankfully the series ended way before that happened. Araki demonstrates all of this by killing a dog.
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  • Meanwhile Ikuro and Violet find an abandoned house but are attacked by the Judas laboratory, and Baoh just fucking pulls a dude’s head off. The duo are then confronted by a fancy mummy who has a trained mutated mandril named Martin that can throw spikes and shoot poison gas and a grappling hook out of his mouth. Baoh pulls out and destroys Martin’s engine (?)
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  • Ikuro and Violet come upon an old man and his wife who take care of them and let them stay at their house. Unfortunately a dude named Colonel Dorudo shows up and uses a “brainwashing machine” inside of his robot arm to make the old man want to kill everyone in the house including himself. Baoh defeats him and tears off half his face so that he looks like a Terminator. He escapes by transforming into a hang glider and kidnapping Violet. Hazyeye still tells him he sucks at his job for not killing Ikuro.
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• Ikuro gets on a motorcycle and decides to rescue Violet from the Judas labs, but first he has to save a girl about to get run over on the train tracks like this is a 1920s silent movie.
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• Dorudo gets sick of being called bad at his job so he attaches a sniper rifle to his arm and shoots at Ikuro WHO BLOCKS THE BULLET USING HIS FUCKING MOTORCYCLE AS A SHIELD HELL YEAH
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• A giant dude appears at the Judas labs. His name is Walken because Araki hadn’t yet decided on the kind of references he would make, and he’s like the strongest psychic ever. The first thing he does is execute Dorudo for being bad at his job.
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  • Baoh goes to rescue Violet from the evil laboratory but is stopped by Walken. Baoh sends a broken knife through Walken’s brain but it only makes him more dangerous by knocking off his headphones. Dr. Hazyeye activates the base’s OSHA-required self-destruct sequence. Without his tunes, Walken’s raw psychic energy becomes unleashed, unintentionally killing the scientists who are trying to escape like it’s Black Mesa.
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  • Baoh leads Walken into a cavern under the lab where he tells Violet to escape. Baoh then plugs a damn laser cannon into his own damn wrist and uses it to cut Walken apart. The lab explodes, taking Hazyeye and presumably Baoh with it.
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  • Violet lives with the old couple who raise her like their own daughter. She says that using her psychic powers she knows that Ikuro is still alive and just sleeping at the bottom of a lake, but we won’t see him again until Araki decides to release the sequel series: Ba-old.
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• Characters
  • Violet
    • Very clever
    • Like BT
    • Has a sixth sense
    • Uses MK Ultra Powers to cheat at horse racing
  • Professor Hazyeye
    • Scientist man
    • Doesn’t do much but explain science experiments
    • Wants to medically and militarily dominate the world
  • Ikuro Hashizawa
    • Biological weapon
    • Supernatural - can dodge bullets
    • Has a human and monster form
    • Has a Baoh worm in him
    • Plays the banjo
    • Has PTSD from falling in a cold lake as a young child exactly like It’s a Wonderful Life. Like exactly. I guarantee you Araki had just watched that movie.
    • The Baoh Skin Sabre has Space Ripper Stingy Eyes energy.
    • Says “baroo” like how vampires say “wryy”
  • Natsuo
    • I think it’s a racoon? I legit don’t have any idea where this character came from
  • Walken
    • Strongest psi warrior!

Why it failed

• The paneling is a bit rudimentary, I have issues knowing what happened like the locked door scene
• This has a lot of tell don’t show like the dogs getting out of the cage, why not show her releasing the hounds
• Having an exposition dump at the start is a shame
• Man this series is kind of confusing and the plot seems fairly generic
• I feel this series lacks some of araki’s weirdness, yea it’s violent and absurd but it doesn’t have the weird science stuff I expect after chapter 1
• This has some bad pacing issues, we really don’t see any character development or the MC learning to use his powers, it’s weird but maybe a training arc would have been helpful
• Violet kinda loses purpose in the story midway through and becomes a plot device

What it did well

• This is metal as fuck
• Female protag is clever
• Boah’s intro seems to be handled much better as he’s shown what his powers are vs an exposition of his abilities
• I like the little character moments
• I think how they followed Baoh to the gas station was cute
• It’s interesting how the MC is a legit risk to the outside world, though the series didn’t really show it well enough
• This legit is part 0 of JoJo and has a stronger relationship to 3 than ½ as it almost feels like stands
• I like that Baoh has an electric attack which can counter a matter disintegration ability
• This art is fantastic. I don’t give a fuck about the proportions or whatever, Araki’s weird angular art style is so expressive. It’s borderline cubist at points. It’s sometimes impossible to follow though.
• Body horror is a common trope in manga but nobody does body horror like Araki. The man is a fucking body horror god.

Where it could have gone

• This series needed more connective tissue, the characters just kind of exist in the moment and we’re very limited in understanding the main characters
• This is hard to say because literally JoJo fixes all the issues with this series over time, I feel part 2 and 5 have the most connective tissue
• I’d have liked a stronger connection to the water stasis and the bfoy’s trauma about falling into ice
• Give Violet more agency, like perhaps better have her handle the non fighting parts of the story, they kinda don’t show some of the strategizing of how they’ll survive which would have been her time to shine
• I’d have liked some sort of goal for the series, like maybe they know they need to cure Baoh?

Misc Thoughts

• It’s interesting how it uses the BT art style - especially the way eyes are drawn
• I like Violet was drawing a 4 when they talked about the hit and run
• Facts from MaxyBee
  • Baoh was replaced by Mister Lion, a series I know almost nothing about, because it was a huge failure by a little-known author
  • Viz ran Baoh as individual comic issues (as was the style at the time) in 1990 that sold terribly. It did so bad that Viz held off on translating JoJo until 2005
  • Baoh is a playable fighter in JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle, both in its original release and recent remaster
  • Elements of Baoh’s design and powers have been used in JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure for Star Platinum and Kars respectively
  • Yes, Walken is named after Christopher Walken
    • Oh araki
• So Baoh would have died if they hadn’t sent the spiders?
• Holy shit I can’t believe araki actually killed that mom and son.
• This is so 80’s I can’t believe it.

Final Verdict

• Six Word summary
  • Community
    • Tucker:  What if JoJo a pillar man?
    • Ego: I'd rather baoh reading jojo rn
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  • David: It’s JoJo’s Extremely Violent Adventure
  • Jordan: “to dogs: Omae wa mou shindeiru”
  • Guest: “Boah ride motorcyles and looks cool”
• Flop or not
  • It’s a flop, this series really shows where araki was learning things but I just found it to be violence with underwritten characters
  • Lmao read the infamous Doom comic Knee Deep in the Dead
  • I love this series too much to bring myself to call it a flop, it rules. It has a bunch of issues but they’re the same issues as parts 1 and 2 of jojo, and just like with those, Araki is able to be so weird and specific that the series is still somehow compelling. For instance, the story clearly runs out of steam after the train (lol) and when violet gets kidnapped it turns into filler, but the filler is so fucking wild and crazy that I don’t care. That said, I have to admit that this series would not be as good to me if I wasn’t already familiar with Araki’s work. If we were somehow recording this in 1995 then I might call it a flop but in 2022 it’s impossible to read this outside of that context. Who the hell is going to read Baoh today who doesn’t already know JJBA?
    • If you aren’t interested in this then you should read FotNS or Part 2
• Is this the best/worst series we’ve talked about
  • How do you even compare this series to anything?