Leadup to Tri Week 10- Hellsing Ultimate

[MarcFBR]

Only 10 episodes this time (or OVAs... or films.. whatever you want to call them.)

Hellsing Ultimate

Content warnings here will be obvious- Violence, language, the occasional ecchi content, and of course, violence (thought maybe I should mention that one twice.) Basically everything you were warned about as a kid.

Subbed on Hulu for free- http://www.hulu.com/hellsing-ultimate
Subbed on Funimation for free- http://www.funimation.com/shows/hellsing-ultimate/videos/episodes


People asked for something a bit darker and heavy on the action and drama. Hellsing Ultimate fits the bill. It also helps that it's extremely good.

If the shows we've done thus far were to light and fluffy for you this one will be more what you want.

Episodes are a bit longer than normal, but there aren't that many of them.

Quite a few Digimon actors from both sides of the pacific show up in this one, many in small roles. To many to reasonable list... so just a few.

On the Japanese side- If you like Ruki.. Fumiko Orisaka is one of the leads. Norio Wakamoto is a recurring character. The recently deceased Chikao Ohtsuka, best known to us as Piemon and Apokarimon plays an important roll. Ken himself (herself?) Romi Park shows up at one point. And to finish off the Japanese side we even get Hiroaki Hirata, who has played just a long list of Digimon characters... including but not limited to... the Adventure/02 Narrator, Leomon, Yamato and Takeru's dad, and young Gennai.

On the English side we have Patrick Seitz who has played a ton of characters in Fusion, most notable Starmon. And playing the lead roll we have Crispin Freeman, who played Koichi in Frontier and Thomas in Data Squad.

Plenty more on both sides, but that's a nice sampling.

If you have access to the English versions (it finished coming out on Blu-ray last year) I really suggest the dub for this one. One of those dubs that really does seem to surpass the Japanese audio (unfortunately not all the episodes are up for streaming for free in English.)

Feel free to post as you want and to make any suggestions regarding how I made the thread. Improvements can always be made.

Previous Threads
Leadup to Tri Week 1- Haganai
Leadup to Tri Weeks 2 and 3- A Certain Magical Index
Leadup to Tri Weekend Movie- Lupin The Third: Green Vs Red
Leadup to Tri Week 3(ish)- High School DxD
Leadup to Tri Week 4- Buso Renkin
Leadup to Tri Week 5- Tenchi Muyo!
Leadup to Tri Week 6- Ben-To
Leadup to Tri Week 7- Maken-Ki!
Leadup to Tri Week 8- Full Metal Panic!
Leadup to Tri Week 9- Engaged to the Unidentified


The entire show isn't on Youtube so I didn't put it in the links above, but they do have most of it, including episode 1 dubbed, which is what I've embedded here.

 

[Theigno]

Yay Hellsing... I love it just because of how over the top it is. Like it might be "dark" but in the end I wouldn't describe it as actually serious because the violence and the plot (not yet in the first OVA which is pretty tame by hellsing standards) are just so far out there that it's just impossible to take seriously.

Watching it now as a whole is a great experience for me especially because getting into them while they were still coming out was just frustrating as hell. I got air of their existence right after watching the decisively mediocre Hellsing TV anime (that kinda followed the first 2 volume's story but then just derailed), back then only the first three episodes were out. what I didn't know was how completely wrecked the release times of the OVA we're going to get. It took almost seven whole years for all 10 episodes to be released. What made it worse was that the first three were all released within a view months and then suddenly for the fourth people had to wait almost a year. And it never really got much better, as I understand there were some weird problems in the production with the series being shifted from one animation studio to another and things just kept getting delayed. You couldn't really trust whatever the Dates on the official site were saying, it was always "oh it's going to be out in like two months- Wait, it's getting delayed again!"
After experiencing that people getting worried about the tri. date and it maybe not airing in April just feels like absolutely nothing.

The BluRays of the first five OVAs are also "interesting" they were released in a Box set and there was lots commercials and hype about them remastering stuff. But it wasn't really as great as they said, the thing was they did a good job with the first OVA. The upscale was good, there were a lot of redraws, a lot of redone effects, they overhauled the colours and the way the ghouls looked and some other stuff and that was what all the commercials and comparisons focussed on.
But it turned out they didn't really do anything of the sort for the other 4 episodes in the Box. The upscales for OVA two, three and four were... not completely horrible but kinda inconsistent as in the quality would vary on a shot to shot basis. Some shots would look good and the next one would look horrible with bloated blurry outlines and similar problems. For me that was almost worse than a generally bad upscale because every time the quality changed it would just immediately take me out of the experience. The fifth OVA looked pretty good but I think that had something to do with it already being produced in a higher resolution than the others. Everything from 6 onwards was done in HD directly for BluRay. (btw, the youtube video is from the BD version of OVA 1)

Other than that... god the OVAs are amazing. lots of great animation and more blood than could be shown on TV. Also one of the most faithful adaptations of a manga I've seen. I've actually started reading the manga during the times the OVAs were delayed and normally when that happens I just stick with the manga and stop giving a damn about the anime but I still watched the OVAs when they came out which is saying something about the quality.

I don't think there's too much to say about the first OVA it serves mainly as an introduction for the characters and the world... and what a weird world it is where protestants and catholics are out to kill each other in modern times. and of course Vampires being around and all. One of the main themes here and throughout the series is Seras and her conflict between being a human and being a vampire, after all she's by far the most relatable character since most others are all sorts of crazy.
And I just can't help but come back to some of the changes of the DVD vs the blu-ray version, one of them I find pretty annoying and that is the blood. The later OVAs and the reworked OVA 1 have some ridiculous blood effects when there'S a large amount of blood on screen (which tends to happen very often) the blood is filled with all kinds of strange effects that look less like shading and more like some kind of bizzare alien energy field. And blood just doesn't look that weird so I almost like the plain red of the earlier version more.

 

[MarcFBR]

Since Theigno brought it up I'll further clarify.

Hellsing Ultimate is a 10 'episode' adaption of the manga.

This is not the Hellsing TV series that Chiaka Konaka (Digimon Tamers) did series composition for and wrote all but 2 episodes.

I haven't watched all of the TV show, but his description sounds like what I recall. It derails off and is generally mediocre compared to Ultimate.

The blood effects never bothered me to be honest theigno. Ultimate always came off as purposefully ludicrous, and having the blood act strange and weird just furthers that feeling.

 

[Unknown Neo]

Yes. Hellsing Ultimate. I saw this on Adult Swim and it was very something. Violent and obscene. It was nice. A friend of mine really loved it but she loves Alucard. heh heh This is something to watch.

 

[TMS]

I watched the first two "episodes" tonight. The pace certainly is rather quick, and the main characters are drawn in pretty broad strokes as a result, but it's fun to watch, and, as Theigno said, so over-the-top ridiculous that you can't take it too seriously. I look forward to continuing it, though watching just two episodes probably took me longer than watching four episodes of any of the other shows we've done.

 

[Unknown Neo]

The episodes can be a bit long. But I forgot yesterday that they do fit in some comedy. Which is pretty funny.

 

[Theigno]

I haven't watched all of the TV show, but his description sounds like what I recall. It derails off and is generally mediocre compared to Ultimate.

One of the things about the old anime is that it's pretty much the most serious of all Hellsing stories. The manga likes to sprinkle some comic relief and exaggerated faces between the carnage and the OVAs kept that but the anime decided to go super serious and took it all out. They also concentrated more on the inner workings of the hellsing organization with some original characters but the manga doesn't really give much to work with in that regard because the whole organization just gets slaughtered in the second volume and OVA and the plot widens its scale to a bigger conflict while the TV anime never really takes off at all.

The blood effects never bothered me to be honest theigno. Ultimate always came off as purposefully ludicrous, and having the blood act strange and weird just furthers that feeling.

It's also a bit annoying just because of the lack of consistency. Like the original first OVA had very plain blood, the second to fourth introduced a bit shinier blood but with more texture (I still liked that amount) but the fifth made the shading flatter again while six and seven got a bit more texture but it was more simple gradients than any kind of pattern. Then eight to 10 just went super crazy with the patterns and the redone OVA 1 is somewhere in between. I might over-dramatize this a bit but the blood tends to fill a large portion of the screen quite frequently so I just can't help but notice.


Anyway... the second OVA has to be my personal favourite. It has just a bit of minimal exposition at the beginning and then jumps straight into the action. It's also just the setting in general I love the design of the corridors of the hellsing manor and how they are lit and how well it contrasts with Alucard's spacious cellar. And in general we see for the first time Walter and Alucard show off how dangerous they are. This is also the first episode that shows how much Kouta Hirano loves his oversized guns. For example I find it kinda hilarious how they specifically point out that the Jackal only holds six bullets but Alucard is so baddass he can just fire it for how long he wants and only reloads when he seems to feel like it. Poor Seras seems to be the only character who actually needs to reload. The villains for this time are also quite entertaining Jan who's just super psychotic and commands the ghouls and Luke who has pretty much super speed. The scene where he cuts through the Hellsing soldiers early in the OVA is one of my favourites but one thing to note about it is that this scene wasn't actually in the Manga at all. Seems they wanted to give a demonstration of his powers before he faces Alucard and gets wrecked (in that scene we also see that he doesn't have a reflection, this might be another trait of him being implied to be a vampire manufactured by Millenium or it might just have been a plot hole that slipped in when the OVA added the scene).
As mentioned before I really love Walter's scenes. Who would have thought that old man could just dodge machine gun fire and just massacre so many ghouls with his wire gloves. Btw, for all the violence in this episode the scene which features Jan's piercing getting ripped out is the only one that manages to make me cringe sometimes because it's the only injury that's on a scale that's actually relatable for me.
During the Luke vs Alucard fight the BluRay version of this episodes got one of its only major changes in that they removed a plothole that was present in the DVD version. Alucard begins his fight with his Casull gun but when he gets serious he switches to the jackal which because of it's special anti vampire properties (and general OPness that makes its bullets look more like energy attacks than anything else) keeps Luke from regenerating like he did at the beginning of the fight. However the DVD version had Alucard start the fight with the Jackal (which would normally mean that shouldn't have survived that first head shot). Luckily the animators noticed that error so in the BD version he uses the Casull like he did in the manga.
But of course technically Alucard doesn't really need guns to win. It's pretty obvious from the beginning that he's pretty much playing around and while look does his high speed acrobatics Alucard doesn't even care about dodging any Bullets. And then he releases his controls restrictions and things just get crazy. (keep in mind he didn't even release all of them in this fight) from this point on with Alucard's true power revealed the series becomes less about the question if Alucard will win his fight and more about how stylishly he will slaughter everything that gets in his path and luckily he just keeps topping himself throughout the series.
...And of course at the end of this episode we find out who was responsible for all the vampire attacks: the Nazis of course.


Moving on to the third OVA... this one starts a bit slower with a relatively bloodless first half before going crazy in the second. Part of that is because even though the OVAs adapt about a single Volume of material per episode they sometimes get a bit out of synch. The introduction of the Wild Geese mercenaries was originally part of the second manga volume but with the second ova focusing more on the action it was shifted to the beginning of the third. There also was a scene about the mercenaries training in the manga that was cut from the episode but animated as part of the ending of OVA 7. In general the endings of the episodes are always worth watching right to the end although they tend to be a bit spoilery in some cases.
Other significant things in the first half include the introduction of Enrico Maxwell as well as more information about the Nazi organization. I have to say that even for an fanatic nut-job Maxwell seemed a bit too... happy in the way he tells Integra how the Vatican helped the Nazis. good thing the Pope doesn't seem to be quite as ecstatic about the past. And we got Alucard and Anderson almost starting another fight and their face-off alone was epic enough to produce dramatic fog and wind even though they are inside.
Things start getting serious after Alucard and Seras head to Rio (and a poor hotel attendand gets hypnotized with a "sex-beam"). The first massacre of the SWAT team really makes a point about how Alucard will never hold back even against humans but Integra still confirms her orders in the most epic fashion imaginable. I'm still a bit pissed that to this day the epic music featured during the elevator action sequence (and during the manor invasion in OVA2) was never officially released on any soundtrack...
I guess one of the weaknesses of Hellsing is how many of the individual villains never get much of a background. They just pop up, display some cool power and then get murdered, in most cases by Alucard. Tubalcain Alhambra is a good example of that. He might have his playing cards that are magically as sharp as swords, pack the punch of a rocket launcher and are solid enough to deflect high caliber bullets but other than that he's just... not much of a character really.
But he sure dies entertainingly as it tends to happen in Hellsing. Other than that the leader of the Nazis, the Major (he, the doctor as well as the captain never got official names) gets a bigger speaking role this time and we get a first glimpse of his madness. But of course will things will get even crazier as the plot progresses.

 

[TMS]

I watched episodes 3 and 4 tonight. For the most part my thoughts on the series resemble Theigno's. I'm watching the English dub version, by the way, since Marc recommended it. Considering English is the language many of the characters would actually be speaking, it makes a certain amount of sense, and I'm sure it made Jan more entertaining than he would have been otherwise. Episode 2 on the whole was pretty great, and I too rank Walter among my favorite characters. There's something cool about butlers. Though it is a little odd to see him in action considering that he's apparently a normal human.

Seems they wanted to give a demonstration of his powers before he faces Alucard and gets wrecked (in that scene we also see that he doesn't have a reflection, this might be another trait of him being implied to be a vampire manufactured by Millenium or it might just have been a plot hole that slipped in when the OVA added the scene).

It could have been a mistake, since we know that Seras still has a reflection. As pointed out in episode 3 the vampires in the series don't follow all the "rules," in spite of Integra's referring the mercenaries to Bram Stoker. One thing that does match the novel is the non-lethality of daylight.

from this point on with Alucard's true power revealed the series becomes less about the question if Alucard will win his fight and more about how stylishly he will slaughter everything that gets in his path

That was my assessment. Given his apparent invincibility, much of the tension has to come from his interactions with his coworkers and victims. Rip Van Winkle at least had the good sense to lose her shit the moment he showed up, though it made for a rather disappointing fight. Also, episode 3 didn't drag as badly for me as the end of episode 4 did. I feel like Van Winkle's death and the Major's subsequent speech didn't have to take that long. Oddly enough, episode 4 reminded me of Digimon in several places. I realized how much Alucard's shadow form resembles Shademon, and got a Quartzmon vibe from the scene where he had all those arms raised in the air. They also bring up The Freeshooter, the main source of inspiration for Zamielmon.

About the ending credits, I'm glad that I caught in the second episode that they were different every time. I had skipped over episode 1's credits, since usually I just watch the ED of my last episode of the night. Episode 3's credits led to some minor confusion for me, though. When I first caught a glimpse of Schroedinger my thought was, "Why does Seras have cat ears?"

 

[Theigno]

The fourth OVA is the first where the actual Nazi vampires truly come into the foreground. It was also the last OVA to be localized in germany which might or might not have something to do with that...
Alucards little fist fight with Anderson at the beginning was quite hilarious especially with the way it was animated, but we'll have to wait a while until we'll see them in an actual confrontation.
This episode also formally introduced Schrödinger who has some interesting powers but I think they are pretty much wasted. He never does any fighting despite him having the potential to be a pretty dangerous assassin that could appear from anywhere and can fail as many times as he wants. The instances in which his powers will come in important are rather... weird but I guess I'll get to that when it happens.
I found Rip van Winkle's death really hard to watch when I saw this episode for the first time years ago. Because yeah it was just quite drawn out and also somewhat... rapey. However I really liked her as a villain, she had an interesting musical theme so many of her scenes also share that. On a side note her voice actress' german pronunciation isn't too bad either. I haven't seen the english dub so I can't say if it's the same there. Alucard's assault on the ship had actual scenes of "Der Freischütz" in the background.
She didn't appear to be much of a threat to Alucard though (of course the larger plan only was to trap him on the ship), although in theory it was good thinking on her side to not try and use just her bullets to kill him but more as method to make him fall of she ship into the ocean which as we've heard previously would be bad for a vampire. Although I have to think that even if he went over the edge Alucard would have probably had some trick to not fall into the water I mean we've seen him float in the first OVA and he can also walk up walls...
I didn't really mind the majors speech too much. I liked how his behavior and gestures got more and more theatrical as things went on it just showed how crazy he actually is, to the point that he even loves the parts of war where he loses.

For me the fifth OVA was the low-point of the series. Walter had a few good scenes and the actual Nazi attack sequence was pretty intense (I wouldn't have thought that they would keep the scene with the baby but they did) but much of the episode really lacked the ludicrous nature of the other episodes with much of it just being centered on Integra and Penwood. Seras was almost completely absent and Alucard got only two appearances first in the prologue that, with the exception of a few lines of relevant foreshadowing) was pretty much only confusing and pointless and even Alucard just got fed up with it, and right at the end when he sets his ghost ship in motion. There were also no epic one on one fights this time, Walter's encounter with the captain wasn't shown except for the first moments and the fight scene of the Iscariot agents and Anderson against the Nazi soldiers was a bit too one-sided to have much tension.
However there is something interesting about one of the two characters from Iscariot that were introduced in this episode, Heinkel (the blonde one) and Yumie (that samurai nun). Heinkel especially is a bit weird in that no one seems to be sure what gender he or she is. One thing about Hellsing is that many characters were borrowed from Kouta Hirano's earlier works (most of them Hentai btw) Yumie and Heinkel originate from his first non-hentai manga short mini series released a short time before Hellsing started called "Crossfire" that's set within the Iscariot organization but it's not really sure if it's supposed to be canon for Hellsing or not (probably not because Yumie doesn't seem to have a split personality in Hellsing). In this manga Heinkel is obviously a woman (with very large breasts at that). However when Heinkel and Yumi showed up in Hellsing Heinkel stopped having breasts and fans weren't sure if she was supposed to be a man this time and there was never any indication of any gender in the manga.
Because of this many fans were looking forward to Heinkel appearing in the OVA with a speaking role (he/she had a small appearance in OVA 4 but didn't say anything) because in that case the gender of the VA might clarify the character's gender. But funnily that didn't really happen. Heinkel got a female voice actress in the japanese version however said voice actress is going for a male sounding voice so in the end that didn't solve anything.

OVA 6 did in my opinion a better job of keeping up the pace although most of it was pure buildup for what is to come. We have Maxwell mobilizing his army of KKK lookalikes (and shows that he's not necessarily willing to actually save anyone in London) for his big attack (during OVA 8) while Zorin Blitz begins her attack on the Hellsing HQ. Seras has found her own way around needing to reload her Harkonnen cannon by carrying two giant ammunition boxes that enable her to fire two cannons in semi automatic mode and the ensuing shootout with the Zeppelins is quite epic. The wild geese also show that they can manage taking down quite a few vampires from afar with special mines and Zorin showcases her Illusion magic in pretty spectacular fashion. But in the end I guess everyone knew that the HQ would not be able to be held that easily. You don't just shoot all Nazis down from long range and they will get in eventually, setting the stage for the ludicrous close quarters massacre that is OVA 7....

 

[TMS]

Watched episodes 5 and 6 tonight. We don't see much of Alucard (and apparently don't see much of him in episode 7 either), but considering he curb-stomps every opponent that's probably necessary for plot and character development. I was a little surprised by episode 5. I really hadn't expected the show to develop Penwood as a character, but I didn't really mind that they did. Now I wonder if we'll see any more of the credit trio's surviving member.

Something that does get on my nerves a little about this show is how every scene seems to be dragged out longer than it needs to be. The dialogue, for example, seems to be consist more of characters giving speeches than having normal conversations.

By the way, I wonder if Zorin's name is a reference to Max Zorin, the villain from the James Bond movie A View to a Kill. The movie's climactic battle revolves around the blimp Zorin was planning to watch the destruction of San Francisco from.

Because yeah it was just quite drawn out and also somewhat... rapey.

Well, that was the subtext behind Dracula.

Heinkel especially is a bit weird in that no one seems to be sure what gender he or she is.

It seems the English dub (or at least Integra) considers Heinkel female.

We have Maxwell mobilizing his army of KKK lookalikes (and shows that he's not necessarily willing to actually save anyone in London) for his big attack

More awful Catholics. Takes me back to A Certain Magical Index.

Also, where are those people who were asking for a darker series this week? It's still just me and Theigno doing all the commenting.

 

[Theigno]

we're getting near the climax now...

OVA 7 has to be the point in the series where Hellsing reaches it's peak in terms of sheer carnage. People are shot, bitten and sliced to pieces everything is covered in blood and the massacre just doesn't seem to stop during almost the entire length of episode, only the side that's getting massacred changes towards the end. In a weird way the Wild Geese mercenaries getting ripped apart by the nazis as thoroughly as they are because there won't be enough left of them to turn into ghouls...
The series seems to realize that after this battle it's not really possible to go much further in terms of brutality so the following parts of the story don't even try to top it and focus more on the epic scale of the battle for London instead of just blood.
Seras finally gets her big development and power upgrade in this episode but before that the scenes of her getting maimed and her remembering her past (which had already been foreshadowed a bit in OVA 1) have to be some of the most graphic things I've seen in an Anime and it made her tearing through the Nazis and shredding Zorin's face off in her Vampire form even more satisfying to watch after that. The other character that was carrying much of the episode was Pip Bernadotte who kept his cool even in the most desperate situations and it was also interesting how we get glimpses of his backstory (that was largely unexplained in the original manga) during the ending.

As mentioned before OVA 8 went all for epicness. And it does it pretty well although I think it's not really as effective as it could have been. Maxwells reconquista and the scenes of Alucard's "river of death" are mainly shown in very wide, zoomed out shots that give a sense of the scale but at the same time also make everything seem kinda distant and not as intense as the previous battles or the original Nazi assualt in OVA 5. In the manga many of these wider scenes were also accompanied by panels showing the gory close up details but only very few of them were kept in the OVA which was kind of a surprise (also some shots of the cel shaded zombies looked rather cheap). But still it's quite a spectacle nonetheless. When Maxwell orders the execution of simply everybody while rambling in his glass container there's not really much difference between him and the Major.
And Alucard turns out to be Dracula who would have guessed that? At this point it feels fitting to mention that in some of the earlier materials for Hellsing (especially in the TV anime if I remember correctly) Alucard's name was spelled as "Arucard" in the english version. Of course the people who did said english versions were aware that it wasn't right but it is said that back then they just couldn't convince the Japanese in charge of the licensing stuff to change it; they kept insisting that "Arucard" was the correct spelling "because it is Dracura backwards"...
Anyway... after Alucard has his zombie army murder almost everybody else it's time for his big fight with Anderson and well, Norio Wakamoto sure hams it up during those scenes even more than he did in his others. I really liked the sense of symmetry when he transforms into "God's monster". And this time Alucard actually has some problems dealing with him which is a nice change of pace and makes for a good cliffhanger.
A note about the ending... this was quite a special one as far as the OVA is concerned as the ending song was done by the composer (I forgot his name) who did the soundtrack for the old Hellsing TV series and it was one of the only parts most people actually liked about it (altough I never really knew why). But for me it just felt kinda displaced because it just didn't fit the musical style of the OVAs very well...

I guess before watching OVA 9 would be a good time to watch "Hellsing: The dawn" which is a "supplemental" that is about the operation in 1945 warsaw where Walter and Alucard encounter the Nazis for the first time and wipe out their operation for the first time (as mentioned in the third and fourth episode). It's not too important from a story perspective but it just makes a few things during the last two OVAs make a little bit more sense.
However "the dawn" has a bit of a weird release history... it was a mange mini series that only had about five chapters before stopping without any kind of real ending and for a while people weren't really sure if it was supposed to be finished or if it just was on hiatus. This mini series was then animated in three parts (each about 10 minutes) that were included as bonus material with OVA 8 through 10. However the animated adaption ends even earlier than the manga because for some reason they skipped animating the last chapter and instead ended the third part of "the dawn" with a 3 minute animation based on "Drifters", the mange Kouta Hirano started after finishing Hellsing, which was pretty confusing since there's not really much of an transition, it's just one second you are watching the dawn and in the next it's suddenly drifters almost as if you got some old VCR and someone just recorded another movie over the one you actually wanted to watch.

Something that does get on my nerves a little about this show is how every scene seems to be dragged out longer than it needs to be. The dialogue, for example, seems to be consist more of characters giving speeches than having normal conversations.

Yeah people spend alot time just talking or posing...that might just be the OVAs going a bit too far with being true to the source, they cut and shift things only minimally but keep almost everything and it's kinda... having a lot of speech bubbles in a manga feels not as "obstructive" as having the characters never really shutting up while stuff is going on, Anderson and the Iscariot just reciting stuff during their fight in OVA 5 felt somewehat weird.

Well, that was the subtext behind Dracula.

I've never actually read the original Dracula story... there's something about Gothic literature that just puts me of from reading it but I'm not sure what it is exactly.

It seems the English dub (or at least Integra) considers Heinkel female.

That's interesting... there was another argument for Heinkels gender from the OVA, the ending sequence for OVA 9 is pretty much a tribute for the female characters in Hellsing... and Heinkel isn't part of it, so that was another thing where people said "he's probably male this time"

Also, where are those people who were asking for a darker series this week? It's still just me and Theigno doing all the commenting.

Maybe they are all scared of Vampires?

 

[D-Tamer]

I thought about skipping this one cuz I already watched it, and then I got bored and watched episode 2 and 3 (I didn't watch episode 1 so I will be going by what I remember). Hellsing is one of my favorite anime series ever. It never holds back, and it tries to be the most over the top as it can get.

Episode 1 starts with a captured police girl that gets saved by our lord and savior Alucard and then he turns her into a vampire (for shits and giggles I guess). The story is about the Hellsing organization that fights vampires, and the Nazis are the main villains. We also get introduced to Alexander Anderson who thinks he killed our lord but the full has yet to see his full power. So yeah Alucard can't die and that's what I like about him. You never know when or how he will strike, all you know is when someone confronts Alucard they will die.

Episode 2 and 3- Episode 2 has a group trying to brake in the Hellsing manor and kill everything that moves. Mostly just violence in this one but damn was it good. This is where we also see the Hellsing butler kicking ass for the first time. Oh and I loved the coffin scene. Episode 3 has more plot. We get to see Alexander again just for the lols, more information on millenium,and Alucad fights Gambit (I know he has a name but that's what I'm gonna call him). What I like about this episode is that they show how big of a monster Alucard is. The way he killed the humans and gambit was just... damn.

Also I didn't know that Konaka did the anime series. The more you know.

Also, where are those people who were asking for a darker series this week? It's still just me and Theigno doing all the commenting.

Probably the length of the episodes scared them of (that or it was just too extreme for them).

 

[Unknown Neo]

And I've already seen the episodes last year. I just forgot about most of it. Plus some of the things I could say might be offensive. Mostly cracks about villains.

 

[TMS]

Finished the series. It's always sad to come to the ending of a show like this and know that the whole story's over. RIP to Alexander and Walter (I agree with Alucard; elderly Walter is the best Walter). And you know, it's funny, but with the exception of Alucard's eventual restoration, the Major ended up pretty much getting everything he wanted. As a whole, the series was overly gruesome in places (episode 7 comes to mind), but for the most part I enjoyed it. I will say, though, that I'm looking forward to getting back to anime where watching two episodes doesn't take me two hours.

There are a few things that I'm left wondering about. The Major turned out to be a machine, and the Captain a werewolf, but I'm not sure how the Doctor (who was apparently mortal) and Schroedinger survived unchanged from World War II. It was also never explained just where the latter's powers came from, or whether he was unique or part of a class of monster. I was also a little surprised that Seras never fully regenerated her arm, but there may have been some rule at play there that I'm overlooking.

By the way, when I posted earlier I missed another connection between the Zorin Blitz and Max Zorin. Both owed their existence to Nazi human experimentation.

I guess before watching OVA 9 would be a good time to watch "Hellsing: The dawn" which is a "supplemental" that is about the operation in 1945 warsaw where Walter and Alucard encounter the Nazis for the first time and wipe out their operation for the first time (as mentioned in the third and fourth episode). It's not too important from a story perspective but it just makes a few things during the last two OVAs make a little bit more sense.

This was as far as I read in your post before downloading The Dawn, since I wanted to avoid spoilers for episode 9. I was thoroughly confused upon coming to the end of it.

I've never actually read the original Dracula story... there's something about Gothic literature that just puts me of from reading it but I'm not sure what it is exactly.

Though I understand your meaning, I don't really think of Dracula as Gothic literature. It has some of the trappings, but I generally associate "Gothic" with earlier works, like Horace Walpole's bungling attempt at horror with The Castle of Otranto (which we do at least owe for the start of the genre and thus the start of horror writing as a legitimate art form) and the glorified Scooby-Doo episodes of Ann Radcliffe.

That's interesting... there was another argument for Heinkels gender from the OVA, the ending sequence for OVA 9 is pretty much a tribute for the female characters in Hellsing... and Heinkel isn't part of it, so that was another thing where people said "he's probably male this time"

Yeah, my guess is that Heinkel was intended to be male. That interpretation could possibly be taken as true for the dub as well. There's only one line, Integra's comment about "Miss Burn-Them-All," to go on, and it could simply have been a dig or a mistake on Integra's part (which is perhaps ironic, since she's a little androgynous herself).

 

[FranGP]

I'm still at Episode 8, which I plan on watching tonight.

First of all, it's been many years since I watched the anime. It was cool at that time because... yay, vampires who don't glitter. But the plot was awful. I haven't read the manga, thou, so I can't compare.

And here I am, watching Hellsing Ultimate. After the first episode (more like, after the first five minutes) I'm amazed by the amount of blood and violence, and I find the art a bit disturbing. I don't dislike it, but I'm not used to it. Humans only have about 5L of blood inside them, yet in Hellsing universe you seem to have an infinite amount of it -it doesn't mind if you're human or a netherworld creature.

The CGI scenes and the detailed guns are definitely a pro. I liked those a lot, and yet they don't abuse. Also, the addition of comic relief is a great improvement after the carnage and the not-so-frequent sexual scenes -Seras Victoria trying to be raped... Welp, she is highly sexual.

Talking about Victoria, I don't like how they treat her -generally speaking. She has some great moments, like that one where she licks Integra Hellsing's finger, but her refusing to drink blood is, imo, a loss. Alas, this might be manga-related.

Alucard is overpowered as hell, but if I recall right it is justified. I hope he will reveal what his name states for in further episodes. His skills, his voice and his madness all fulfill my expectations.

The rest of the cast, with the exception of Andersen and the butler, are awful. You're supposed to be an anti-vampire force, yet you get wiped by newborn vampires. What are you doing with all that funding?

And the story itself... Well, it lacks some development. It is all about killing and spilling blood, with a few hints about the past -which is what gets the most of my interest. Of course, now that I am at the Vampires Nazi part-who said Dead Snow was a bad premise?- it is getting better.

I might have ranted a lot back there, but I'm enjoying the show a lot. I hope I can finish it by Friday