Anime: Hellsing (2006)

SPOILERS ALERT!! All my reviews have spoilers!

I don't even know if people can understand the major difference between the first Hellsing and the Ultimate one. I've saw both and let me tell you, I would score the first one as a bad anime. It was so poor! I couldn't even like any character at all!
So this was a journey from disappointment to delightful when in 2006 they released the 10 Ovas that finally followed the original manga script, and forged this animation as a vampire series like never seen!
Some people say that Ultimate is a bath of blood and no real story is told - I don't think this is quite true! And to be honest, I think they matched very well the supernatural theme with the war.
The story is about an organization called Hellsing (protestant) in charge of taking care of the supernatural creatures that appear in England protecting the country and the Queen. The weapon used for destruction of these monsters is a monster itself - the vampire Alucard (Dracula if you read it backwards). Along with him there's a butler called Walter, who's a master with web threads, and a draculina Seras Victoria, created by Alucard, that is amazing with weapons (she was a cop). All of them work directly to the head of the organization, Integra Hellsing.
Being a protestant order they'll have some conflicts with the Vatican order section XIII, Iscariot, but the true enemy reveals to be Millenium, some kind of Nazi organization that want to destroy the monster Hellsing created - Alucard.
There's a very important question that bounce a lot in the story - is to determinate which bounds make us humans or monsters. You see, Alucard is not a hero, not an anti-hero; he's a madmen following orders like most of the villains in the story. So the story is memorable and likable because of the craziness that resides in each character. They are all amazing, with a great passion, all very determinate to achieve their goals.
Alucard is completely mad, but you feel like falling in love with his craziness because of the coolness he uses to show is psychedelic way of being. His amused smile; his mad glances; the killing and the blood that makes him vibrant and joyful, it's so insane that there are moments that you feel that Alucard can be more evil than the villains. Oh and let's not forget that finally he doesn't have those stupid sunglasses on every time which I never liked. There was no sense using then in the middle of the night!
Integra is often compared to Margaret Thatcher, as an iron lady, but I prefer to compare her to Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen, whom also needed to fight a lot of battles for religious purposes being a protestant.
Seras Victoria had a huge transformation in this Hellsing. I absolutely hated her in the other version, she was annoying, very fragile and conscious, afraid of being a vampire, and finally here, she has the respect from fans that she needed. Although she's the one that gives some balance to the story line, she's way cooler and decisive in here and the fan service is not exaggerated as before.
The villains work as big, as bright and bold as its protagonists.
The artwork is fantastic with a really good combination of dark scenes with the mist, very expressive. The shades and the light are used in the right place, and blood is sprayed all over the scenes. Other awesome thing is the sound - the music with the Orchestra score matches marvelously the atmosphere and dialogues, although you also get some English and Japanese scores.
I don't recommend the English dub at all!
One thing that they done very well was to keep the original cast from the first version. I couldn't think of a better cast, and Alucard never sounded so good!
Of course I find some issues and that's why I can't consider it a masterpiece. The story continues to keep some mysteries unrevealed that I thought were going to be explored in the 3 specials (The Dawn) but they don't, actually they are a complete waste to the story!
I'm talking about the reason why Alucard became a servant of Hellsing's organization; as well what's going to happen to the organization after Integra's death - let's not forget that two powerful vampires will be free...
Those are not reasons for you to exclude this anime, this is pure entertainment at a top level!

PROPER MINDSET
Hellsing Ultimate is one of the top action anime ever made. It also ranks as the slowest release anime ever made, since it took 7 years just to create 10 OVAs and not because the manga story was incomplete. It was closer to making sure it would look as awesome as possible, yet even this way it has some really bad quality drops from time to time.

THE STAFF
- Hellsing was originally an action/occult manga, drawn by Hirano Kouta. It became a cult very fast and received a partial adaptation in 2001. It deviated from the manga midway, which disappointed many, so in 2006 a more faithful version was created.
- The animation is a collaboration of many studios, although the major work was done by the king of anime series, Madhouse itself. It ranks as one of their better works in terms of presentation but pales before what they did with Red Line.
- Direction is done by different people along the years, and they all had interesting titles in their roster. The first 4 OVAs where done by the same guy who did Haibane Renmei, so you see a lot of attention given to how the characters feel and think. OVAs 5 to 7 are done by the one who did Claymore, so the feeling of the show changed to something that is far slower in pacing and is based on people standing still and terrified for long periods of time. The rest of the OVAs were directed by minor names, so they sort of feel duller than the earlier ones.

PRODUCTION VALUES
Coming from Madhouse and being of OVA format with almost a year worth of production each, it is expected to look fantastic. To the most part it excels in all sections, from detailed backgrounds, to smooth character motions, vivid facial expressions, great use of lightning / shading, over the top action and bloodshed, exceptional voice acting, and blood-boiling soundtrack. I would in theory give it a perfect score here but the bitter truth is it has lots of quality drops. Especially the various comedic scenes where everybody turns to a silly cartoon are just tasteless and out of place.

SCRIPT
Ok, in all honesty you are going to watch this for the cool factor, the explosions, the trench coats, the round sunglasses, and the tits. If you expect something deeper than that, you won’t find it here. The anime is tagged as seinen only because it has too much violence and swearing to be shown on mainstream television but that does not make it mature in the slightest. Every single character in it is a poser idiot who loves to offer snotty one-liners and chop anything in his path to pieces; end of story.

At the same time that is its main appeal. Those ridiculous wide smiles, darkness hiding the faces and leaving sunglasses shinning, big guns, bigger explosions, and even bigger muscularity contests based on who owns whom with superpowers. It is also about the kitsch factor of watching a really stupid story being presented in a glorious way and always aware that is stupid so you can have fun at that too. So yeah, you get Vatican vampire hunters fighting Nazi vampires in London. It is as ridiculous as it sounds and it never attempts to be any deeper than that.

And no, I am not going to give it a good score for being honest at what it is; face value doesn’t fly with me. I prefer stories with rich context tactics in battles, and common sense; something this show lacks completely. Seriously, it is almost entirely pointless violence and poor attempts at fleshing out the characters.

CAST
The protagonist is Alucard. No relation to the one from Castlevania although the anagram of Dracula and his overall appearance is the same. He is basically a god-level vampire in the services of the Hellsing Organization (more references to the original book) and is sent around to kill other vampires. NAZI VAMPIRES that is. This dude is overpowered as hell since he can regenerate from practically any wound and own his opponents with totally hax skills before he sadistically kills them and eats them. He is cool but also boring for the same reason, since there is no real threat to the most part; he can just own everybody. Later on it becomes more interesting after it is proven even he has a few weaknesses but even then it just takes him more time to recover and nothing else.

Speaking of recovering, he is sort of trapped for a long period of time, so he is absent from the field. This is the chance the vampires awaited to make their move and that is where we see the focus being shifted to the secondary characters. Their roles became far more important for awhile; we see them coping on their own, an element which I liked a lot since it offers characterization and importance to more than one god-level character. Integra, Ceres, Anderson, and The Major really shine thanks to the absence of the super nova that is Alucard. They all act in pretty much the same way and they practically don’t develop throughout the series, but as I said their personalities are really vivid and cool to like them right away.

In all honesty though, I sort of lost interest in them in the last third. They had very little to show, their motivations were shallow, and they didn’t even make much sense all the time. They were fun for awhile but waiting several years just for the peanuts they had to show, plus the completely overblown dramatization they had without ever having much depth to back it up, just didn’t help to keep them cool all the way to the end.

LEGACY
It is definitely enjoyable and unforgettable but lacks depth, so it will not be appreciated by many A types. Other than that, good dumb fun.

SUGGESTION LIST
Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure
Vampire Hunter D

And now for some excused scorings.

This anime was a huge disappointment. Initially I thought that the opening was just a quick re-cap to get you back up to speed but I eventually realized that the whole anime was simply a poor retelling of what had gone before. Since there is nothing new in this anime there are really no spoilers.

<b>Animation:</b>
My wife's first reaction was "Is this a fanart anime?" The characters are recognizable but are not identical to the anime characters from Hellsing. In fact, the worst part of the artwork is that the faces fail to remain consistant from scene to scene. It's easy to make an outfit look the same but the actual faces had terrible consistancy.

One of the things I really hate about the look of this anime is the indescriminant use of CG. When the characters are drawn and the background is drawn why use CG blood? And the pull-away of Ceres on the rooftop is so obviously just a drawn skin on a 3D model in a 3D city it looks like crap. I know that more and more we are seeing cars and helicopters being CG in anime but this kind of mixture ALWAYS looks bad. The original Hellsing anime was able to draw almost everything, even the hard parts, so what's the deal here? Laziness?

<b>Sound:</b>
Well this was a real let down. I can forgive lip-flaps with no words when it's a dub, but this was subbed so there was no excuse for it. At one point it looks like Alucard says something but there is nothing spoken.

Soundtrack was poor by comparison to the original.

<b>Story:</b>
OK, so they started back at the beginning of the story. Great, except that they managed to cut out almost anything of interest. This is simply one fight after another. They don't even do anything interesting in the fights, they don't have time. In 50 min (42 min without credits I'm guessing) they handle Alucard's fight with Integra's Uncle, the fight with the priest in Chedder, Integra yelling at a cop, the fight with the couple who want to become immortal (the teenagers who, in Hellsing were on a motorcycle) and a fight with Paladine Anderson. There was really no room for story. At least they did mention in passing that the Vampire problem seemed to be growing.

Of course many of us were expecting the story to be a continuation of what went before. Like the 2hour miniseries that tied up the end of Farscape. I want to know who Incogneto's Human Master is, who tried to kill Integra, who controls the FREAK chips and, most of all, whether Integra says yes to Alucard's offer in the last seconds of the last episode. There is no indication that Hellsing Ultimate is even the same story so don't hold your breath.

<b>Character</b>
None. There was really no character development or relationship development at all. It was as though these people who looked LIKE the characters from Hellsing had their personalities removed. There is nothing in this story to make you care at all about anyone. In the original Hellsing Anime you learn more about Alucard, Ceres, Integra and their relationships in the first 20 min than you're likely to see in this entire OVA series (especially since it's only scheduled for 2 episodes). Heck, they even changed Ceres' hair colour just in case you might recognize her or something (since her face is a different shape).

What made Hellsing such a strong story was the character interactions, the personalities of the people in the story. All good storywriters tell us that the fighting, the science, the fantasy is the backdrop for good characters. Hellsing Ultimate is not good storywriting.

<b>Value and Enjoyment</b> I'm going to go and try to burn the memory of this out of my mine now. I won't be watching this again and certainly won't buy the disc when it becomes available.

Since the first Hellsing anime series finished and promises of a new manga-based OVA was announced, I've been anxiously awaiting seeing Millenium and the various other plot developments cut from the original series at the time of production. I'm glad to say that OVA 1 seems to be a promising start to the new series.

Animation 9: Looks straight out of the manga in many ways. Integra and Ceres' character designs are the most improved, with Integra's trademark sexiness back and Ceres in her proper yellow uniform from the manga. Some of the smiles are a little odd looking and bother me for some reason, but that's the only complaint I have with the rest of the animation being top-notch.

Sound 9: All the seiyuus from the original TV series are back with the exception of Anderson, and they play their characters differently and better this time around. Sakikibara (Integra) adds a certain element to her voice that lets you know she knows she's sexy looking, Ceres keeps a funny edge on her voice while showing real character, and Jouji Nakata reprises his role by adding a bit more humor to Alucard than in the TV series. In short everyone loosened up appropriately for this new show. The music isn't particularly astounding, but fits the show well with a operatic ending.

Story 8: Straight out of volume 1 of the manga with a few additions (such as Ceres' dream sequence with is very funny and true to Kohta Hirano's tendency to interrupt action sequences with random silliness) but the whole story seems rushed, which is forgivable considering those watching likely know the story inside and out (I watched the raw but as able to follow it nearly word for word just from the manga) and it seems like the staff is rushing through these so they can get to what everyone wants to see, which is Millenium's vampires.

Character 8: This is volume 1, so characters are mostly only introduced, but we do get a sense of their basic personalities that serves its purpose. Ceres is still inexperienced and shows it, conflicted about losing her humanity and getting used to new surroundings, Alucard is... himself, and Integra is shown to be the charismatic and confident leader and fighter she is. More will come in later volumes, but the introductions were well done in the first volume.

Value 9: Very rewarding first installment for those who've been waiting that really got the blood flowing *har har*

Enjoyment 9: It was enjoyable to see the new style of animation that appropriately leaves you wanting more.

This is a review of Hellsing Ultimate. I'd also like to stress that this is based soley on the first ova so far. First I'd like to explain that this is pretty much a remake of the first one, but it doesn't get cut off at the end like the first series was. Also it is vastly more true to the manga than the first was.

Animation
The animation in this series is sweet. It is very well drawn and also has a nice stylish look about it. It is very dark, but it also has a lot of color to add to the variety. The fight scenes are done very well, with cool effects and smooth animations. There are some bullet time moments and a little bit of CG thrown in too. I would have given animation a 10 except some of the CG guns could have been blended into the normal hand-drawn better. Besides that little complaint it is great.

Sound
I like Alucard's voice in this series more, it seems to appeal to me well. Also Integra's voice is a bit different too, adding a nice touch of feminity to her. The music is also very cool too, I felt myself getting pumped up by the battle tracks. Cool sounds on the guns and pretty good voice work. It even has some english being spoken by a japanese person, which sounds pretty funny. High-quality sound work overall.

Story
The story is straight out of the manga this time around. It even has the cheesy little scenes that were missing in the first anime series. I like this, it is more true to the authors vision. For those not familiar with it, it centers around the Hellsing group, is responsible for destroying the undead. Their vampire hunter is a vampire himself, Alucard. The story follows Alucard as he does his masters bidding and gets led through a series of vampire occurances. A mysterious threat is behind it all and the Hellsing groups job is to find out who it is and stop them. The story moves along well and has some nice surprises. If I had a complaint, it would be that it is a bit cliched.

Character
Alucard is definately one of my favorite characters. When I saw the first one I really liked him, but I like his character even more in this one. He seems more smug and more like he should be. His vampire underling, Seras, is also a pretty classic character. She starts out as a lowly vampire with no idea of what she is doing, but by the end of the ova she is ass-kickin with the best of them. She feels conflicting emotions about what she is becoming and this adds to her depth. The Hellsing group's director, also is a very cool character, because she is a woman in a place of leadership and that is a rare thing. I really like the way she acts and how she takes charge. The supporting characters and enemies are done well too, with you loving or hating them as needed.

Value
If the show has low scores in anything, then its gonna be value. If you have seen the first series, then this first OVA will be a rehash for you. Albeit it is done better and does have some extra things, but it essentially still the same show. If you saw and liked the first one, then I would recommend checking this out even though you have experienced the hellsing story before.

Enjoyment
I love vampire flicks, so this show was a fantastic find for me. Also I am a big fan of the Hellsing manga and I was especially satisfied by how well it paralled the manga. If you need some cool vampire action, then check this one out.