Baoh: The Visitor


 * This article is about the series. For this series' protagonist, see Ikuro Hashizawa.

Baoh: The Visitor (バオー来訪者) is a manga written and illustrated by Hirohiko Araki; originally serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump from 1984 to 1985, and later compiled into two tankōbon volumes.

The manga was licensed in English and released in monthly chapters by VIZ Media in 1990. Financially unsuccessful, it was not until 1995 that they released it in tankōbon format.

Prologue
The story begins on the following incident: one day, the mangled corpse of a woman washes up on a northeastern shore of Honshū, in Nikuru. The dead woman is revealed to have been on a certain train several days earlier.

On said train, of the, a covert government group responsible for creating secret weapons, escorts one of his latest creations, Baoh (バオー), kept dormant in a tank. Meanwhile, a little psychic girl named Sumire (スミレ), who was kidnapped to be studied, escapes from her room and during her escape releases Baoh, revealed to be a young man with superhuman abilities. Baoh and Sumire subsequently escape the train, Kasuminome worried that he might have unleashed a terrible weapon.

Ikuro on the run
Fearful, Kasuminome immediately calls for an assassin to kill Baoh. Later, the boy and Sumire try to bond with each other, but a knife wielding assassin named N.22 stabs the former, forcing the duo to steal a motorbike and flee. The assassin reports his failure, and is ordered to gather more of his comrades to finish off Baoh before his power fully awakens. It is revealed that the boy, named Ikuro Hashizawa (橋沢 育朗), is amnesiac and doesn't remember how he obtained his uncanny strength and regeneration. N.22 soon attempts a second murder, slicing Ikuro's throat, but it only awakens Baoh, who dissolves N.22 before turning back into a human.

Later, a death squad is already searching for Ikuro and Surime, who are busy betting on horse races to acquire money. Meanwhile, Kasuminome explains to his sponsors how deadly the Baoh, a parasite granting supernatural strength and several other abilties to even the weakest organisms the longer it stays inside of them. To demonstrate its potential, he pits a little Baoh dog against a tiger, a battle which Baoh wins. If Ikuro were to fully develop into a Baoh, he would wreck havoc upon the world and turn everything into a Baoh. Meanwhile, Ikuro and Sumire have settled inside an abandoned building, Ikuro sensing that something inside of him is changing. The death squad attacks the duo, but Ikuro transforms again into Baoh, decimating the squad. Unbeknownst to him, he is observed by another assassin.

Baoh senses the assassin, who reveals himself as a beastmaster commanding a heavily modfied giant mandrill named Martin. Due to its strength and many weapons hidden inside his body, Martin is more than a match for Baoh. Sumire, having sensed that Ikuro's humanity is still intact inside of Baoh, tries to stop the assassin from controlling Martin, only to be hurt. Enraged, Baoh finally overpowers Martin and kills both the beast and his master, healing and turning back into Ikuro.

Sumire taken hostage
Walking through the mountains, Ikuro explains to Surime that after a deadly car collision, Ikuro and his parents were heavily injured and taken to the hospital six months ago. Unfortunately, the doctor was linked to Doress, looking for guinea pigs at the time. Kasuminome callously killed Ikuro's parents under his eyes and took him away to inject the Baoh parasite inside of him. Fortunately, an old couple living in the area give them shelter and food. But, during a moment the old man is isolated, another cyborg assassin emerges, hypnotizing the old man into waiting for midnight and shoot Ikuro in the head with his hunting rifle.

The cyborg named watches the house until the clock strikes midnight. The old man wakes up and tries to shoot Ikuro, who transforms into Baoh but senses that the old man is not his true enemy. Jumping through the roof, Baoh confronts Dorudo who disables all of his sensory organs through chemicals released by a swarm of bats. Thankfully, the old man, who has come to his senses and guided by Surime, shoots down the bats while taking a bullet. Baoh confronts Dorudo, who is heavily wounded, but reveals his heavily modified body. He kidnaps Sumire to use her as bait and escapes with a deltaplane to one of the Doress' headquarters near Sanriku. Ikuro is determined to free Sumire, but risks unleashing the beast inside of him for good.

Going away on a motorcycle given by the couple, Ikuro deems it necessary to learn to control his power first to have a chance to save Sumire. Meanwhile, Kasuminome chastises Dorudo for his perceived failure and the danger of letting Baoh time to grow stronger. Meanwhile, Ikuro is forced to save a trapped girl from a speeding train and is pushed into managing to activate his acid touch without fully transforming. Humiliated by his hierarchy, Dorudo goes out to snipe Ikuro, but his attempt is foiled thanks to Ikuro activating his super senses and strength to evade the bullets. Meanwhile, Sumire is experimented on, but the scientists cannot make her cooperate. Sumire then sees a hulking man, and is terrified. Walken is one of the most dangerous men in the world, gifted with extraordinary psychic powers and demonstrating it by willing a coffee cup into boiling.

Ikuro at the Doress facility
Taken back to the headquarters, Dorudo is executed by Walken for his failure and is atomized into dust. To lure Baoh, Kasuminome purposefully tortures Sumire whose distress is detected by the weapon. Ikuro is already scaling the seaside cliff leading to a vulnerable side of the facility and, turning into Baoh, rampages through the security staff as well as survives death traps to reach Sumire's room. He is stopped by Walken, whose ability to destroy anything with a thought makes him invincible and his every attacks deadly. Nonetheless, Baoh manages to stab inside Walken's brain by launching one of his arm blades and he finally reaches Sumire.

He is welcomed by a flurry of laser beams, and the attack unfazes Baoh but wounds Sumire. Seeing the monster becoming berserk, Kasuminome prepares to blow up the facility. Meanwhile, Baoh heals the girl with his blood. Walken has woken up, still alive despite his injury, and seeks Baoh for revenge. Having destroyed a restraining headgear, Baoh merely stopped Walken from stopping his psychic powers to destroy everything around him. As Sumire awakens, Walken finds them and destroys the floor. All of them, as well as Kasuminome who tried to escape in a pod, find themselves in a cavern. Telling Sumire to flee, he uses one of the lasers to kill Walken for good as also fatally wounds the scientist. The facility then blows up.

Some time later, Sumire walks by the sea. She has been taken in by the old couple and lives a happy life while Doress is forgotten about. Looking at the water, she senses that Ikuro is dormant but alive at the bottom of the sea and predicts that he will return when she is seventeen, meeting with her again.

Volumes
=Baoh (OVA)=

The series was adapted into a single-episode original video animation (OVA) by Studio Pierrot in 1989; licensed for an English DVD release by AnimEigo in 2000, delayed until finally released in 2002.

Cast
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Trivia

 * Baoh was Araki's first series to display his signature amount of over-the-top gore.
 * In episode 10 of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: The Animation, Joseph is seen in a flashback reading Baoh (the same scene in the manga used Superman); the title, however, is written as "Baooh", with two O's.
 * Baoh (Ikuro Hashizawa) appears as a DLC guest fighter in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle.
 * During the ending sequence of the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable song, "I Want You", a copy of Baoh can be spotted on Rohan Kishibe's bookshelf.