Baoh le Visiteur
Baoh le Visiteur (バオー来訪者, Baō Raihōsha) est un manga d'action/science-fiction écrit et dessiné par Hirohiko Araki. L'histoire a été publiée originellement dans le magazine Weekly Shonen Jump en 17 chapitres d'octobre 1984 à février 1985. En septembre 1985, l'histoire a été compilée en deux tomes tankōbon en neuf grands chapitres, publié republié en version bunkoban en un tome, le 16 juin 2000.[1]
Ce manga a été licencié en anglais et publié mensuellement par VIZ Media en 1990. Ayant été un échec commercial, ce n'est qu'en 1995 que la série a été compilée en tome.[2] Une adaptation en OAV de la série réalisée par le Studio Pierrot a été distribué en DVD le 16 septembre 1989.
L'histoire est celle d'Ikuro Hashizawa, un jeune garçon de dix-sept ans dans lequel on a implanté un parasite qui lui confère bon nombre de pouvoirs surhumains. Il peut se transformer en "Baoh", un monstre à la force incroyable, au toucher acide, pouvant se régénérer et émettre de l'électricité. Il s'échappe de l'organisation malfaisante "Dress" avec une jeune fille psychique nommée Sumire, et ils se battent alors contre les assassins que Dress envoie contre lui.
Résumé
Prologue
Un jour, on retrouve le corps déchiqueté d'une femme sur une plage du Nord-Est de l'île de Rikuchu au Japon. On explique que la femme était une passagère dans un certain train il y a plusieurs jours.
Ce train est la propriété de l'Organisation Secrète Dress (秘密組織ドレス, Himitsu Soshiki Doresu), une organisation gouvernementale secrète qui créé des armes spéciales. Un des membres de Dress, le Dr. Kasuminome (霞の目博士, Kasuminome-hakase) supervisait le transport de l'une de ses dernière création : l'arme biologique surnommée Baoh (バオー, Baō) qu'il gardait endormi dans un réservoir d'eau. Pendant ce temps, une petite fille avec des pouvoirs psychique nommée Sumire (スミレ), que Dress avait kidnappée pour étudier ses pouvoir, s'échappa de sa cellule. Durant sa tentative d'évasion, Sumira libéra aussi Baoh, qui se révéla être un jeune homme aux pouvoirs surhumains. Baoh et Sumire purent s'échapper du train. Le Dr. Kasuminome s'inquièta alors du terrible danger de laisser Baoh rôder en liberté.
Ikuro en cavale
Ayant peur que Baoh ne devienne hors de contrôle, Kasuminome appelle un assassin pour tuer ce dernier. Plus tard, le garçon et Sumire essaient de faire connaissance. Ils sont attaqués par l'assassin en question qui est nommé N.22. N.22 poignarde Ikuro, et les deux héros volent une moto avant de s'enfuir. L'assassin les poursuit. Le garçon, qui s'appelle en fait Ikuro Hashizawa (橋沢 育朗, Hashizawa Ikurō), est amnésique et ne souvient plus de sa vie ou de comment il a obtenu ses pouvoirs. N.22 retrouve Ikuro dans une station à essence et lui coupe la gorge. C'est alors qu'il se transforme en "Baoh", faisant fondre N.22 rien qu'en le touchant, avant de se retransformer en humain.
Plus tard, un escadron de la mort est déployé pour chasser Ikuro et Sumire. Pour leur part, les deux sont occupés à parier sur des courses de chevaux pour gagner de l'argent. Pendant ce temps, Dr. Kasuminome présente à ses sponsors le "Baoh", un parasite qui confère une force surnaturelle et plusieurs autres capacités aux organismes, les renforçant avec le temps mais les rendant aussi plus sanguinaires. Pour démontrer son potentiel, il oppose un petit chien avec le parasite Baoh à un tigre, un combat que le Baoh remporte. Si Ikuro devait remplir son potentiel en tant que Baoh, il ferait des ravages dans le monde et transmettrait son parasite à d'autres organismes. Pendant ce temps, Ikuro et Sumire se sont installés dans un bâtiment abandonné, Ikuro sentant que quelque chose en lui est en train de changer. L'escadron de la mort attaque le duo, mais Ikuro se transforme à nouveau en Baoh, les décimant en un instant. A son insu, un autre assassin observe et analyse les capacité du Baoh.
Baoh sent l'assassin, qui se révèle être un dresseur commandant un mandrill géant lourdement modifié nommé Martin. Grâce à sa force et aux nombreuses armes cachées dans son corps, Martin rivalise aisément avec Baoh. Sumire, ayant senti que l'humanité d'Ikuro est toujours intacte à l'intérieur de Baoh, tente d'empêcher l'assassin de contrôler Martin, mais elle est blessée dans sa tentative d'arrêter le combat. Enragé, Baoh finit par vaincre Martin et tue à la fois la bête et son maître, puis guérit et se retransforme en Ikuro.
Sumire taken hostage
Walking through the mountains, Ikuro explains to Sumire 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 Dress, 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. Back to the present, an old couple living in the area gives Ikuro and Sumire 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 Dordo (ドルド, Dorudo) 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 Dordo 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 Sumire, shoots down the bats while taking a bullet. Baoh confronts Dordo, who is heavily wounded, but reveals his heavily modified body. He kidnaps Sumire to use her as bait and escapes with a delta plane to one of the Dress' 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 Dordo 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, Dordo 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, Walken (ウォーケン, Wōken) 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 Dress facility
Taken back to the headquarters, Dordo 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 attack 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 does not faze Baoh but wounds Sumire. Seeing that Baoh is cornered, 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. As the headgear restricting his psychic powers was destroyed by Baoh's attack, the full strength of Walken's abilities causes an earthquake inside the facility. 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, Baoh uses one of the lasers to kill Walken for good, unintentionally fatally wounding Kasuminome in the process. The facility then self-destructs, causing the cavern to collapse.
Some time later, Sumire walks by the sea. She has been taken in by the old couple and lives a happy life while the incident at the research facility is covered up by the press. 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 and reunite with her.
Liste des Personnages
Tomes
| Volume 1: Baoh, the Invincible Body | Release Date: | ISBN: | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| (無敵の肉体バオー Muteki no Nikutai Baō) |  September 10, 1985
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978-4-08-851029-3
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| Tankōbon Titles | Weekly Shonen Jump Titles | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Volume 2: Demon Walken | Release Date: | ISBN: | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| (魔人ウォーケン Majin Wōken) | November 8, 1985
|
978-4-08-851030-9
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| Tankōbon Titles | Weekly Shonen Jump Titles | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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Adaptations
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.
Note d'Auteur
Volume 1
Author's Note
You could mess with other people and go to different places...... I'm sure you'd be able to enjoy yourself forever without ever getting tired, which is why I'd like everyone to check out "Baoh the Visitor". It's a cool story, but also a sad one at the same time.
Volume 2
Author's Note
The eyes of Sting (the musician), Madonna, Nastassja Kinski, Joe Asakura, and Kamui are full of mystery and that's why I love them. They're all very attractive!
Post-scriptum
Baoh the Visitor AfterwordHowever, at the time Baoh began serialization in 1984, courier services had barely been established in Sendai, so my work schedule was already constrained. I didn't want to move to Tokyo in the summer because of the hot and humid weather, as well as the small size of the place (still not used to it), but someone encouraged me to do it. And now, looking back, I can only say that I'm glad I moved here. I'm only human, after all. Being able to gather information and new ideas from various people through their own experiences, it shocked me to see and hear things in a different light and has been the ultimate learning experience. There were books on sale by painters and designers I had never seen, and I became obsessed with food I had never eaten before. I really liked the painters Frank Frazetta, Enki Bilal, and Antonio Lopez. I was surprised by the beauty and fashion sense of designer stores like Missoni and Versace. I also watched MTV shows late at night, getting to see performances of Madonna and African American rap music for the first time.
“How can I develop my own art style?”
This was a challenge that I had been working on since my previous work, Cool Shock B.T. I dragged that challenge along with me to Tokyo, and thought “I have a lot of work to do”, in terms of research and studying. The idea for Baoh the Visitor came to me while I was working in Sendai. Since I had depicted an “intellectual conflict” in Cool Shock B.T., I considered creating a setting and protagonist based on the theme of “one’s body” for my next work. I wanted to write a story about the topic of creating biological weapons using cloning and genetic engineering techniques, as done in 1984. The abilities used by the protagonist must be sufficiently biological and logical, even if they are exaggerated.
I also depicted the story's progression to be like the rhythm of rock music. That's what it felt like to me, anyways. Ever since I arrived, the city of Tokyo overflowed with the feeling of being alive, similar to what you'd see on MTV or something like “GYAAN”, “BARUBARUBARU”, and “DOBBAAN”. As the serialization began and the story progressed, after continuously talking and drawing about it, I began to feel that while genes seem to be a strange and wonderful concept, there is something sad about them at the same time. Perhaps, something like fate could be written within genes.
“Is there a chance you will continue Baoh the Visitor?”
I was asked this about ten years after its conclusion. However, I think it's best to keep the ending of Baoh as it was here. The heroine, a young girl, grows up with a sense of hope for the future. I drew this last chapter with a similar optimism and designed it as an "ode to life", which I think was inherited by my next work two years later, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. In regards to that art style challenge I had during my Cool Shock B.T. days, I wonder if I'll continue to study and train my skills till the very end? I'm hopeful for the future.
I can't find the full-color artwork used as the frontispiece in this book because the manuscript was lost (I think it was possibly when Shueisha's building was being rebuilt). That's why I decided to include the version from the cover of the Jump magazine. It's because the raw artwork no longer exists...Galerie
- Weekly Jump October 22 1984.jpg
Weekly Shonen Jump October 22, 1984
Volume 1, Raw Cover
Volume 2, Raw Cover
Baoh: The Visitor Spine Illustration
Fanroad Magazine 1986
Fanroad Magazine 1986, Raw Cover
Issue #1 of Viz Media's release of Baoh: The Visitor
Issue #2 of Viz Media's release of Baoh: The Visitor
Issue #3 of Viz Media's release of Baoh: The Visitor
Issue #4 of Viz Media's release of Baoh: The Visitor
Issue #5 of Viz Media's release of Baoh: The Visitor
Issue #6 of Viz Media's release of Baoh: The Visitor
Issue #7 of Viz Media's release of Baoh: The Visitor
Issue #8 of Viz Media's release of Baoh: The Visitor
Volume 1 Cover (US)
Volume 2 Cover (US)
Original Paperback Release Volume 1 Cover (IT)
Original Paperback Release Volume 2 Cover (IT)
Original Paperback Release Volume 3 Cover (IT)
Bunkoban Re-Release through the "Bizarre Universe of Hirohiko Araki" Collection (IT)
Bunkoban Re-Release cover through the "Bizarre Universe of Hirohiko Araki" Collection (IT)
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Issue #1 (1992-1993 Original SP Release)
Issue #2 (1992-1993 Original Release)
Issue #3 (1992-1993 Original SP Release)
Issue #4 (1992-1993 Original SP Release)
Issue #5 (1992-1993 Original SP Release)
Issue #6 (1992-1993 Original SP Release)
Issue #7 (1992-1993 Original SP Release)
Issue #8 (1992-1993 Original SP Release)
Volume 1 Cover of the newer 2019 SP Release
VHS Tape Cover (JP)
Cover Artwork for Baoh Anime Video
DVD Cover (JP)
LaserDisc Cover (JP)
CD Soundtrack Jacket Cover
CD Soundtrack Jacket, Raw Cover
VHS Tape Cover (US)
DVD Cover (US)
LaserDisc Cover (US)
Cover art of the Italian release of Baoh: The Visitor on DVD
VHS Postcard #1
VHS Postcard #2
VHS Postcard #3
Jump Remix Edition featuring Baoh and Cool Shock B.T
Hirohiko Araki Biography Summary from the back of issue #1
Back of Issue #1 of Viz Media's Baoh: The Visitor
Back of Issue #2 of Viz Media's Baoh: The Visitor
Back of Issue #3 of Viz Media's Baoh: The Visitor
Back of Issue #4 of Viz Media's Baoh: The Visitor
Back of Issue #5 of Viz Media's Baoh: The Visitor
Back of Issue #6 of Viz Media's Baoh: The Visitor
Back of Issue #7 of Viz Media's Baoh: The Visitor
Back of Issue #8 of Viz Media's Baoh: The Visitor
Viz Media's Send off in the final issue of Baoh: The Visitor
Trivia
- Selon Araki, le terme "Baoh" est dérivé du préfixe "bio" comme Biotechnology, qui était un sujet à la mode au moment où il a écrit et publié Baoh.[3]
- Viz voulait publier JoJo's Bizarre Adventure aux Etats-Unis dès les années 90[4] mais ce plan a été retardé lorsque Baoh a été un échec commercial.[2]
- Hiroyuki Takei, le mangaka auteur de Shaman King, a dit que Baoh le Visiteur était l'une de ses séries préférées avec JoJo's Bizarre Adventure quand il était jeune.[5]
Caméos
La série "Baoh le Visiteur" est mentionné plusieurs fois dans des séries ultérieure et autres médias associés.
- Dans Episode 10 de JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: The Animation, on peut voir dans un flashback Joseph un magazine ressemblant à Baoh (dans le manga, le titre était Superman). Le titre est écrit "Baooh" avec deux O's.
- Baoh (Ikuro Hashizawa) apparait en tant que personnage jouable en DLC dans JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle.
- Dans l'Episode 1 de JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders, Baoh peut être aperçu sur la couverture du Weekly Shonen Jump que Jotaro Kujo lit dans sa cellule.
- Durant le générique de fin de JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable, "I Want You", un exemplaire de "Baoh" peut être aperçu sur l'étagère de Rohan Kishibe.
- Baoh apparait dans le jeu vidéo JoJo's Pitter-Patter Pop! dans l'arrière plan de la Cellule Confortable.
Joseph reading Baoh
Jotaro reading Baoh
Baoh on Rohan's bookshelf
Baoh decoration in Pitter Patter Pop
