Skadi

If you like your anime complete with exploding heads, melting flesh, dismemberment, and blood spilled by the liter, then look no further. BAOH is a visual orgasm of blood and violence. Of course if you also want an interesting story and characters that don’t look like they were stolen from other movies and stereotypes then you should probably not waste your time with this piece of crap. Our story starts with a young girl Sumire being chased through a train by the henchmen of an evil organization we later learn is called Doress. Apparently this group kidnaps and uses people with various supernaturaland mystic powers and also experiments on people, turning them into super powered monsters for military applications. Sumire stumbles on one of their experiments and during her escape, the man called Baoh escapes along with her. His real name is Ikuroo, and together they run from the Doress organization as they send out various assassins to kill them. It could be an interesting story but it isn’t. The plot is never adequately presented, providing only the scantest amount of back-story in between the sequences of gore. The blood and violence level is completely over the top. Unless you just love heads being exploded or bodies being cleaved and dismembered then you’re in heaven. But that’s all there is to the action. The action scenes just aren’t that interesting or exciting. Baoh seemingly comes up with a new ability whenever he needs it (conveniently named and displayed on the screen as if I cared to know) and he never uses the same one more than once. The climactic battle at the end is really...anti-climatic. The characters are boring and uninspired. Sumire and Ikuroo are given brief backgrounds but nothing that is even remotely interesting. The drama over Ikuroo being consumed by the monster he transforms into is poorly developed and might have been of interest to me. The various villains are really where this show fails miserably. Besides all of them being silly, they all look and feel like rip-offs from other sources. There’s a cyborg soldier who looks like the Terminator but most amusingly at the end is the ridiculous clichéd Native American, Walken. He has a big "W" on his belt buckle in case you forget his name. Artwork and animation is also extremely substandard. The character designs are not that good and look extremely dated or like knockoffs of other movies. Sumire is the only exception and I kind of liked the way she looked. Most of the detail went into animating gore and melting faces and other body parts. Even this isn’t that good. The musical score is typical 80s electric disco and is almost comical to listen too. In the end BAOH is an experience that should be missed by all but the most hardcore fans of gore anime. Unless you are just really feeling nostalgic for 80s anime or thought Power Rangers was good programming, I can’t recommend this title. If you want to torture yourself with something crappy watch something that at least looks good.

ViskMusic

Hello, Visk here and today I will be clearing up this misconception about how this masterpiece has been misrepresented in the other reviews here. I love Baoh. I truly do. The world seems to also. I've been told that this OVA was the basis for how alchemy worked in the critically acclaimed series FMA. I've also been told that it was also the inspiration for the T800 Robot in Terminator. In many ways this OVA is superior to the aforementioned titles but due to its short run time and lack of exposure critics nitpick just because they are worried someone else will see through their cleverruse that I've seen through. I will now tell you the truth the others are to scared to tell you. Sure it is flawed but this is a real gem compared to the shit that comes out every season nowadays. (Note: The same Mango Farmer that made Jojo wrote the source material for this.) [PART 1: THE STORY] There was once a parasite, no not the maxim one, and this said parasite was named Baoh. The parasite infects our main character's love interest. Said love interest gains the ability to become blue and that entitles gaining the ability to be baller like a Smurf or the "I'm Blue" guys. The evil people are jealous of his baller status and loli girlfriend so they set out to kill him. That is what you get at the start of this riveting story. I personally think this one of the most engaging and relatable stories I've ever had the pleasure of viewing. There is literally no way this could have gone in any other way than sheer perfection. I was told by a friend that the production of this show was done in a five year long orgy that only ended because the decade was about to end. [PART 2: THE ART & ANIMATION] For something that came out in 1989 it looks brilliant but the problem comes in when all your amazing characters are dwarfed by Col. Dordo. There just was not enough screen time for this glorious hunk of man and machine. Stan Lee also agrees with as Cyborg is pretty much a wannabe of the power that Dordo holds. Marvel makes Cyborg's enemies laughably weak compared to man that Dordo faces. He takes on the last Indian on Earth while Cyborg fights some skinny bitch boys who die in one hit. To our knowledge Baoh is invincible. Now, you are wondering why I rated it so high but the reason for that is that Dordo made it worth the money and the fights were as smooth as Bruce Willis's bald head. With that out of the way I will now continue onto the next segment. [PART 3: CHARACTERS] This show suffers from the fact that Dordo wasn't the main character. The world spoke and now we know that the only true flaw this show has is that there isn't more Dordo. It is a paradox because of the fact that Dordo exists the characters are instantly a 10/10 but the fact that he isn't the main character warrants this section a 0/10; so to be fair to the show I will give the characters a 2/10. Better luck next time Pierrot. I will end this with an overwhelming recommendation that you should watch it and then tell 5 friends to watch and repeat and repeat and repeat etc. This saved anime way before your French Killers and your Attacking Titans ever tried to. You will not regret giving this 46 minute masterpiece a shot. The end has to be one of the most memorable I have seen in any piece of media. Visk here and I'm signing out. I hope you enjoy the show.