Anime: Hellsing

Hellsing revolves around the Royal Order of Protestant Knights, currently led by Sir Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing. This organization specializes in killing vampires. When Seras Victoria, a D11 member, is dragged into a life-or-death situation against a vampire priest, she is forced to become a vampire or to end up in the soil. Alucard, a vampire who works for Integra, finishes the job against the vampire priest, and saves Seras in time, thus turning her into a vampire. Now she fights alongside Alucard. There is also an element of mystery, as there are these vampire chips that turn people into vampires. Now the Hellsing Organization needs to figure out who is responsible for these chips.

The problem with the show is that it never goes anywhere. It pretends to have a story, and the story isn’t all that great in the first place. The last episode ties no loose ends, and to be honest, plot points are dropped completely altogether. For example, the organization captures this vampire who they believe is responsible for the creation of these vampire chips. Integra mentions how she won’t kill him until he answers her questions. You see him once again in the next episode, but they never conclude what exactly went down between them. It renders the previous two episodes focusing on him pointless. Then they also have this rivalry with the Iscariot Organization, but that’s not really elaborated on well, either. The biggest problem is that these episodes aren’t just episodic “villain-of-the-week” filler; they pretend to be necessary to the plot. Plot points come up, and are dropped immediately. The show is jam packed with pointless scene after pointless scene. Nothing gets solved. The viewer will never figure out who is responsible for the chips, and before the last episode, the show practically drops that whole plot line.

In terms of enjoyment, I think that was the worst part about it. Going into this, I figured maybe the show will have a weak story, but at least the action would be good. This isn’t the case; the show has a tendency to get really dull, and actually really boring. So, we’ve got a show that has a pointless story that never goes anywhere, plus it can also get really boring. We are off to a great start!

The characters in this show are unbelievably shallow. Alucard is a character that likes to kill, however his character is never explored throughout the show really at all. He is also the definition of a Gary Stu. You thought Kirito was bad? Anytime it looks like Alucard is going to lose, he pulls out some random new power and defeats the enemy. It’s even worse than in Sword Art Online, because they at least try to explain how Kirito became stronger, while here, they give absolutely zero explanation on how Alucard keeps getting new powers and attacks. Seras is an extremely bland character with no defining personality other than her loyalty to Alucard. Episode 2 was an attempt to show Seras starting to adjust to life as a vampire. This episode, however, fails at what it is trying to do, because you never exactly get a good idea of how she was before getting turned into a vampire. So, it really doesn’t work. The only character with a decent amount of development is Integra, however her story is pretty basic. Then again, I’ll take it over every other character in this show.

The villains in this series come and go. We never find out about their motivations, their backstories, or really anything about them. They are shallow, one-dimensional, and generally have no point to the story. The last villain was simply pathetic, as they don’t even explain why he looks so freakishly weird. Me not mentioning a single name to any of the show’s villains is a testament to how forgettable they truly are. Overall, characters in this show are unbelievably shallow and bland.

It is animated by Studio Gonzo. This means that the animation gets progressively worse as the show goes on, and to be honest, it never was that great to begin with. The character designs are alright, except the skin tones are really wacky. Why is Integra gray? A gray skin tone is intended to be mutually exclusive to vampires, but to also have human characters with gray skin really confuses your audience. The backgrounds, on the other hand, are downright dreadful. They are too dark, the colors aren’t very appealing to look at, and it just looks really ugly. I do like somewhat the gothic scenery, but it isn’t well animated, and the action scenes don’t look good, either. Overall, Studio Gonzo did a poor job animating the series.

This is actually a department that this series gets right. The music is great to listen to. The opening, the ending, the background music; they are all fantastic. The placement of the music, on the other hand, is extremely poor. There are times I think music should be playing, but isn’t. Then there are other times upbeat, rock music was playing during serious moments. It was rather absurd.

The dub to this show is hit or miss, but mostly hit. The voices for the main characters are quite good, except for Seras, whose voice actually sounds more Australian to me than British, but maybe that’s just me. The background characters can get pretty horrible, as some people can pull off the British accents better than others. Crispin Freeman is great as Alucard, and I really like Steven Brand as Alexander Anderson of the Iscariot Organization. Victoria Harwood as Integra also stood out to me. The banter the characters have, though pointless, is occasionally fun to listen to. Overall, the voices for the show are pretty good.

I wasn’t expecting Hellsing to be particularly good, but this show is the definition of pointless and shallow. There’s not very much redeeming about it, and in terms of content, it is actually somewhat offensive. I don’t recommend you check this out, as you don’t need to watch this in order to know what’s going on in Hellsing Ultimate. So, just skip this and check out Ultimate instead.

Critic’s Log - Earthdate: October 13, 2013. Review #59: Hellsing

The Horror genre. It often has disturbing and disgusting imagery, It can be used effectively if it scares the viewer, but there are times when horror contains a level of schlock along with it. Case and Point… Hellsing!

Alucard, an anti-hero vampire turns the police girl, Seras Victoria, these two vampires are employed by the vampire-extermination group of England, the Hellsing Organization. Slowly but surely, through their active duty, they find a new breed of vampires beginning to arise.

To be technical, this is a Studio Gonzo production. and Bloody hell, it is a damn mess. The show does look decent at first, but that’s just the icing of this blood cake. The character designs are okay but the backgrounds and design look awful. Studio Gonzo is known for its criticisms and boy, this show is one of those poorly made Gonzo productions. Hellsing’s animation is pretty inconsistent at times as well and it really looks bad, Unlike its successor.

The music by Yasushi Ishii is actually listenable with the show, but it’s not extremely memorable to say the least. The jazzy tunes really are a nice touch on the show. It’s a nice soundtrack to listen to without the show. The opening theme is pretty catchy, and the closing theme is an interesting choice. The closing theme “Shine” is by Mr. Big, An American rock band. I never heard of this song or this band until I saw Hellsing. I don’t think this band was big, and this song may have not gotten high recognition, so… why was this song picked as the closing theme? I will say that it may be hard to see this closing theme as a fitting choice. The lyrics may have been why the song was picked, but the tone may feel out of place. This may be a questionable call on Studio Gonzo, but the song’s okay I guess.



The Japanese cast is pretty damn good in this show. Jouji Nakata is terrific as Alucard. Fumiko Orikasa is pretty good as Seras Victoria, Yoshiko Sakakibara is great as Integra. Motomu Kiyokawa is also pretty good as Walter, and the late Nachi Nozawa is alright as Anderson. Kazuya Nakai as Jan Valentine, and Takehito Koyasu as Luke Valentine. In regard to the English dub. I will say just one thing before I go over the English Dub cast. If you are an Anime purist. Consider watching this anime dubbed if possible. There was one advantage that the English Dub took that the Japanese cast were unable to do. and that is giving the characters a British accent. It isn’t perfect but bloody hell! The dub deserves the praise and the credit for it. Crispin Freeman nails Alucard and this is undoubtedly the most badass role he ever got. Like Nakata-san, He gives Alucard that cool badass voice, and even manages to give him a scary side that most of us viewers can’t deny the badassery that Alucard has. K.T. Gray was an interesting choice and she doesn’t do much anime roles to begin with. She is also terrific as Seras Victoria. Victoria Harwood is bloody fantastic as Sir Integra Wingates Hellsing and she even has a badass moment herself. Ralph Lister is fantastic as Walter and is one hell of a butler, and Steven Brand is pretty good even if he gave Anderson a scottish tone which was actually an interesting choice in the dub. Worthy voices in the dub are Josh Philips as Jan Valentine, Patrick Seitz as Luke Valentine. The dub is fantastic and worth listening to. The only flaw with the dub is that there is some fake british accent roles that is easily noticeable. but the ADR direction proves that Taliesen Jaffe knows how to make the voices match.

One of the big problems with Hellsing are the characters. The development is shot to hell halfway through. Alucard hardly ever develops even though his past was a bit interesting. Seras Victoria is a bit interesting but her development is small in this show, Integra on the other hand has some development going on (until near the end). The Super Valentine Brothers get a pass. Luke is cool until he gets his ass handed to him and Jan was a fun foul-mouthed mother******. They did serve a purpose in the plot in the manga and this show’s successor. But in this version, they are sort of just there. But they were memorable. The one character that is so damn shallow is Incognito. He is very cliched and is a very lame villain.The fact that he has a master (who was never revealed in the show), and he has only one henchman by the name of Paul Wilson (who is also a bit shallow as well) does make him a bit lame. Incognito is just a poorly-written character who is only exclusive to this anime.

The big bloody mess with Hellsing is the plot. It’s decent until you get halfway. Once you are in the second half. The show goes downhill fast. There are plot holes in this show and there are also unresolved plot elements that really hurt the show. I know I have used the word “Bloody” a bit in this review but… The plot is a bloody mess. Even more messier than the other factors I went through. If you think the animation was bad… The plot was worse. Like I said, it is decent until halfway. It does build up to something, but once the halfway part kicks in. There are more things going on and once it’s almost over, it forgets what the show was going over in the first place. There was this “Freak Chip” subplot that was never resolved. Yeah! That’s how bad it got. Don’t expect a decent ending either as it also adds to the disappointment. But here’s something that I will admit… I sort of think it has some appeal. This anime is a mess, but if you are used to Horror B movies, you might not have much of a problem with this anime since it looks like a low-budget Anime. This anime is also an adaptation of Kouta Hirano’s manga of the same name, so this anime may be seen as a commercial for his manga. If you’re into Horror that has some schlock in it, go right ahead and bite into this one. If you don’t like it. that is understandable. It wouldn’t hurt to view this as a guilty pleasure.



Hellsing was available by Geneon until they went under. It was out of print until Funimation came along and rescued it. Hellsing is available by Geneon. The manga by Kouta Hirano is available by Dark Horse Comics. the first four volumes of Hellsing Ultimate were available by Geneon and then they went under until it was rescued by Funimation. the rest of Hellsing Ultimate is available by Funimation.

With all that said, Hellsing is a bloody mess with it’s poorly written plot and hardly developed characters, but even though the animation is inconsistent and not all that great. It wasn’t as messy as the characters and plot. The music is surprisingly the only good feature that doesn’t really suck. This is a kind of anime that you would get if you know what a B movie is mixed with horror.

I give Hellsing a 4.6 out of 10, it is NOT REALLY GOOD!

Feel free to leave a comment, now if you’ll excuse me. I got some work to do.

Awesome fight scenes to powerful guitar rips. Interesting and mysterious characters, and good animation. This anime has one of the best soundtracks which I have ever heard, and the sense of darkness and action were accentuated by the various tunes.

My only knocks on this series has to do with the rather abrubt ending of the series (to be continued with an OVA) and the lack of background information for some of the side characters. Overall, though the story is interesting and the character conflicts and backstories are interesting. Also, when it diverges from the manga a few episodes into the anime, the anime goes downhill (the entire Incognito part of the series wasn't too great).

Alucard and Seras provide for an interesting pair as the relationship between the two grows and Seras becomes more vampire-like and deals with the ramifications of becoming a creature of the night and having to drink blood and be immortal.

The dynamic between Alucard and his own master, Sir Integral Wingates Hellsing, is also interesting and the contrast between Alucard's evil and smug yet amused personality and Hellsing's cold and distant personality provides more depth to both characters.

Side characters like Hellsing's Butler Walter and Father Anderson also enhance the series and make for interesting side plots; however, once again the characters arn't as developed as they are in the manga, and we find out little about either of their backgrounds during the anime series.

Due to the action scenes and fast pace of the series combined with the few number of episodes makes this series one of the most easily rewatchable animes that I have ever watched, and is easily worth a buy.

While I did enjoy this series very much, I would reccomend the "Hellsing Ultimate OVAs" and the Hellsing manga itself over this series.

Animation - I don't think it's bad. The characters are well drawn and I really enjoy Alucard's metamorphoses.

Sound - The sound is very good. I really liked the opening theme and some of the jazzy songs that were played in some episodes

Story - The story is terrible. It starts off well. When I saw the first episode I thought: "Damn, it is really spooky. It is really GOOD!". It was a great deception to me. The series get worst from episode to episode and the two last ones are really TERRIBLE. The story is too vague and doesn't make much sense. In the end, I thought Hellsing was another commercial anime, done for people who only want some nice heroes and vilains and people killing each other just because they fell like doing it...

Characters - Arucard is one of the coolest characters ever. Seras Victoria is not bad at all, though it could be much better. The other ones are just mediocre.

This was such a horribly boring anime I wanted to fucking gouge my eyes out. But I only watched the entire damn series for a friend of mine who actually *likes* this horrible anime. Ah well. I can't take back all the time I spent in watching this ruin.

Anyway, what makes this series bad is everything. The character development was poor, the storyline was so pathetically retarded. I can't get over how fucking stupid it all was. I don't even know what to say. What can you say about a boring anime except that it was boring. And usually made no sense. It tried to go in too many directions and when it did, it just turned out a mess.

Well, watch it if you like stupid crap and vampires. I guess. And blonde chicks with huge titties. That's all this anime is good for.

The lure of a vampire series, which is hugely popular and has earned rave reviews all around, was too much for me to resist. That was what got me started on Hellsing. Of course, what I was looking for in the series was more than just blood, gore, pretty guns and submissive female servant vampires, I was looking for emotion. Indeed, Hellsing rewarded me as it delved deeper than what I expected from such a short series.

First of all, the confusion and conflicting emotions of Victoria, formerly part of the British police but more recently newly created vampire; the emotional turmoil of losing her entire squad to the undead and her subsequent decision to start drinking blood were all fitted in rather flawlessly throughout the series.

The fact that Hellsing made me doubt whether immortal life was something that I should yearn for just goes to show how strongly, but at the same time sublimely, the show developed its plot. I felt that an especially thought provoking scene was one where a “little” girl vampire explained the pain of a social life stuck as a child forever. The idea and concept of servant and master is also another talking point of this series as is the involvement of the government and the Vatican. However, there was much too little development on these potentially interesting topics.



Animation

The character designs and drawing were functional however not ground breaking. I personally liked the designs for the main characters Alucard and Celes Victoria. The maroon over coat and hat and the shades somehow fitted the image of a vampire perfectly. Victoria in her military getup and often lugging a huge weapon around was simply adorable.

The dark scenes help to accentuate the horror aspect of the show and build up the atmosphere for the series excellently. Fighting scenes and animation were generally good and the rather significant amount of blood and gore might be a plus point for some, though I personally am quite indifferent to that. However, I felt Intergra and her butler had effective but forgettable character designs. Enemy designs, especially the last enemy, weren’t too memorable either.


Sound

The sound complemented the visuals very well and often picked up pace towards the fighting scenes; perfect for a horror-thriller style show. Voice acting was generally well done for the original Japanese version. The opening and endings were good and fitted the theme of the show well. However, the demanding side of me says that the opening/ending of series “Elfen Lied” was even better in portraying the atmosphere and I’m sure it would have been perfect for Hellsing too.


Story

The show had a few smaller stories leading up to the final battle, which I felt was a little disappointing and perhaps too soon. The smaller stories helped to develop the various main characters; Intergra’s determination was depicted very well in one of them. The flashbacks helped to drive the story along and were purposeful enough. The creation of vampires using chips is also a twist to the usual vampire series. The pace of the series was neither too fast nor too slow, however, I feel that the story might have ended a little too prematurely and I hadn’t really grasped Alucard’s motives or really understood the purpose of the Vatican in the story. The ending, like many other series leaves the story open to interpretation and for a new season, which so far hasn’t come.

Somehow, at certain parts of the series, important details seem to be glossed over and I find myself wondering what is happening and where I am even though the show proceeded in chronological order. Perhaps I just wasn’t shrewd or intelligent enough to get it.


Characters

The series made the effort to keep me in suspense over Alucard, his powers and his motives. However, near the end and thanks to some flashbacks, there is some amount of character development and explanation for Alucard. Considering the length of the series, I felt that a major success was the development of Celes Victoria which somehow endeared her to me and gave the series a human touch, something important in a series filled with vampires.

Again, I feel that given more time, the development of the other characters like Integra could prove to be interesting. However, the series ends before that can happen.


Value / Enjoyment

If you haven’t got much time on your hands or you like a good vampire series which delves a little deeper than just blood sucking and killing, Hellsing is the show for you. There is a little something for everyone, with blood and gore, awesome looking weapons (Alucard’s gun), emotions and thought-provoking ideas. However, don’t expect too much either as the length of the series often causes it to brush and gloss over things.