Does anyone else here unironically appreciate Baoh as a flawed yet worthwhile early Araki work?
Sure it's over-explainey, the anime adaptation missed some good scenes and both could benefit from being longer, but I think it's absolutely more earnestly good than bad and some elements are downright fucking great.
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There are so many good pages and spreads.
It's the kind of shit where style becomes substance. Even if the writing can be overdone and goofy, the visual execution does a great job at getting across the emotion.
You know what other classic shonen manga/anime suffer from redundant writing? Astro Boy. Actually a ton of Tezuka shit, Black Jack & Metropolis practically have characters turning to the audience to explain the message. Hokuto no Ken is another example. And yet all are worth experiencing.
More kickass paneling
The OVA is inferior in some ways (too short to adapt everything, made the character designs blander) but still very impressive. It replicates the appeal of Araki's dramatic poses in motion; all these poses happen within maybe a second of action.
One thing the OVA did better is the design of the Baoh-infected dog sakugabooru.com
In the manga he kinda just looks like a hyena which isn't as effective in my opinion
ok I'm done talking to myself
Okay I lied. One more bump with the modern Araki cover for the DVD.
OVA was nice. Would be great if Araki revisited his older series.
After reading all of jojo, I looked into Araki's earlier works and was quite surprised by Baoh. It was way too brief and I felt like a lot of things that were going to happen, didn't happen. Can't name specifics, but that's the impression I was left with. I expected more clever uses of powers or body horror to amplify them (coming off of jojo is why I expected this mostly).
Overall: worth a read, is very short.
I miss times when all sfx were actually redrawn.
I don't lol, they're part of the original art.
Honestly, as much as I think Baoh's world and characters can be given way more depth I don't think his modern Jojolion style would fit Baoh at all. I think is a great illustration but doesn't quite capture the unique appeal of his early 80s designs which were, let's be honest here.... more varied. His modern art is great but he definitely suffers from sameface while Baoh's protag and little girl character, while reminiscent of the typical bishonen & loli archetypes, were executed in their own way.
Then you have all the Go Nagai & Ken Ishikawa-like bad guys and side characters. There's just so much design variety and varied influences in here.
Look at this Boss Borot-looking dude.
If this was to go on any longer I could see it being similar to The Guyver, but with more mythologically based ideas.
It's a terrible practice. In Japan, mangaka hand draw all of their sfx. It's also highly impractical, because it means that localization team has to extensively touch up the art or try to cover gaps with overly large text. It's slow, it compromises the art and it's just not worth it.
Or these Ken Ishikawa-looking guys that feel straight out of Getter
I agree with you about the art. I've noticed that Jojo fans tend to disparage Araki's older art style, but I personally feel that his modern art style has just as many faults with aspects such as stiffness/sameface/etc. They're just different styles, I wouldn't say one is inherently better than the other.
Or how scribbly and no-fucks-given the guys that Ikuro hijacks the motorcycle from are drawn to show how unimportant they are.
I think the OVA changed it so he just scares the guy with his ANGRY SHONEN STARE instead of outright punching him off, I guess to make him look more heroic. Kinda reminds me of the first Osu Karate Bu OVA where the protagonists piss off a rival delinquent group by bullying one of their members for spare change. Somehow over the top gore is ok in these old OVAs but the protags still gotta be very good people.
Oddly enough, less of the art in Baoh made me think "what the fuck happened with the anatomy here?" than a bunch of moments in Jojo, which is weird since I'd expect him to have had more assistants as he got more popular to do the inking, shading etc. There's a lot of deformation but it's intentional, while in Jojo the characters sometimes just shift proportions for no apparent reason (not during action but during normal static scenes).
For example, Ikuro's calves in Baoh are unnaturally long given how real world anatomy works, but they're consistently and intentionally so - straight from how Kenshiro's legs were drawn. But in the first chapter of Stone Ocean Jolyne's legs distractingly go from being long and slender to tiny midget legs in a matter of panels.
I think it's the level of detail. Being more Nagai inspired & driven by simple contrast & composition over detail made it easier for him to spend time making the anatomy consistent.
Sure, I'm not saying it's an amazing classic, it would have benefited from being longer. But it's still good and worth a read and unironically enjoyable and people's main reason for saying it's trash is the redundant writing, which is rampant in old shonens - which people rarely criticize for the same reason.
I think it may have been some weird tradition of the time, maybe influence from American comics where Superman & co never shut up about what they were thinking or doing. Ishinomori's writing in Cyborg 009 or Sabu & Ichi could be very subtle but then the first Kamen Rider manga was full of cheesy-ass monologues so it felt like a weird era-specific choice.
Same with Astro Boy never shutting the fuck up, talking to himself even as he was trying to stealthily make his way through a heavily guarded military base. Or side characters in Hokuto no Ken remarking shit like "THERE IS A WHITE AURA SURROUNDING RAOH" or "I CAN SEE KEN AND RAOH FIGHTING AS CHILDREN" even as the visuals were showing you the same thing.
It's a flaw but it's not one that's not rampant in old manga/anime and really I think it's more of an excuse people made to hate on it for being violent and not "intellectual" enough. Same with a lot of "worst ever" old OVAs.
I think the best of that kind of narration I've seen in an old-school manga though was on one of Baoh's biggest influences, Violence Jack. Nagai said that "a manga that only tells its story through words is not interesting" and you can tell he worked with that idea from a young age. The Jack narrator came in when the input of a narrator would've enforced the atmosphere to give the events a legendary, almost biblical feel.
By the way, Walken's design is literally "Native American Violence Jack".
They really toned down his design in the OVA... actually they toned down everyone to make them look more "detailed, semi-realistic 80s OVA"-like. I fucking love the animation in the OVA and the actual drawing skill of the animators is amazing, but the designs are a downgrade.
yes I know this samefagging is starting to sound like "Sup Forums is not your blog" shit, I just want people to give it a shot. It's only 2 volumes/45 minutes anyway
Baoh is good as fuck, easily the best of Araki's pre-JoJo works. I usually like to wax analytical and go on about its strong points, especially in contrast to his later works, but I think you've already done most of that for me.
Good thread, OP.
On the other hand, I don't think you've focused on the change in writing between the OVA and manga, and you did kind of gloss over the ACTUAL big point of contention in the bike scene.
Ikuro's characterization in the manga is completely unrecognizable from the OVA. In the OVA, he's much more of a punk-ass, stern shounen man, despite being less willing to run up and punch a dude for his bike. On the other hand, Manga Ikuro punches a dude for his bike, and profusely apologizes for it. He's the kind of guy who heads into a convenience store and sees a doll and decides to pick it up for the girl he's hanging out with.
In general, manga Ikuro is a really sweet, pretty goofy boy which lends more to the dichotomy between him and Baoh. In the OVA, you wouldn't even be able to tell they have different personalities altogether and it's not just Ikuro with no inhibitions if it wasn't outright explained to you.
This has always been a change very much so for the worse, I feel. Not only do we miss out on any of the classic expressions of Manga Ikuro, but it makes the climax where Baoh displays empathy and care for another being less powerful.
That's.... a fucking spot on observation. Picking up the doll was a really nice bit of subtle characterization and I had a huge brain fart by glancing over it. I'll make sure to bring it up when I end up reviewing it.
God damn busterbeam is autistic
Baoh reminds me of Guyver sometimes, I'm not sure what it is about it that does.
A lot of this shit looks better than early Phantom Blood honestly
lol you knew it was Busterbeam/Diebuster, too?
Phantom Blood is the most underrated Jojo, prove me wrong.
I'm surprised he threw the line in the middle of the two page spread. They don't normally do that, right?
I read Baoh like 5 years ago now and I wasn't really into Go Nagai works back then. That's a nice catch, thank you.
I actually do think Phantom Blood had some very awkward art at times, probably because of the increased detail I mentioned earlier. I still love it though, some very iconic drawings and I fucking loved the story.
The only significant crit I have storywise is that the training was too rushed. Otherwise it's compact and gets the job done in the best and most emotionally impacting way possible.
Yeah, I unironically think Baoh is really cool and is an interesting story.
>STZTAST
nugh!
Why is Ikuro so handsome?
Reminder that ikuro was the best character in asb
I fucking love his theme song along with the idea of giving him the narrator from the manga. It's such a fucking loving tribute.
Isn't he below average tier?