Hellsing

Hellsing, an organization specializing in dealing with supernatural threats, is called in to eliminate a vampire that is turning the villagers of Cheddar into ghouls. To put an end to this, the leader of the organization, Sir Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing, dispatches her most formidable asset: a powerful vampire known as Alucard.

Armed with only a single handgun, Alucard wreaks havoc on the monsters plaguing Cheddar. However, a young police officer, Seras Victoria, gets caught up in the chaos and becomes mortally wounded as a result. Taking pity on the girl, Alucard gives her a choice: die as a human or live on as a vampire. Seras accepts his offer and begins a new life as a member of Hellsing.

Though it was her decision, Seras struggles with the fact that she is no longer human. Nevertheless, she must embrace being a creature of the night soon if she wants to survive on the front lines in the fight between humans and the supernatural.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Background

Hellsing was based on Kouta Hirano’s manga of the same name. The anime utilizes the same characters but the story strongly deviates from the manga, which was still ongoing at the time of the anime’s creation.

Episode Videos

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Related Anime

Adaptation:	Hellsing
Alternative version:	Hellsing Ultimate
Other:	Hellsing: Psalm of the Darkness

More characters

Characters & Voice Actors

Alucard

Main

Nakata, Jouji
Japanese

Victoria, Seras

Main

Orikasa, Fumiko
Japanese

Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing, Integra

Main

Sakakibara, Yoshiko
Japanese

Anderson, Alexander

Supporting

Nozawa, Nachi
Japanese

Dornez, Walter C.

Supporting

Kiyokawa, Motomu
Japanese

Valentine, Jan

Supporting

Nakai, Kazuya
Japanese

Maxwell, Enrico

Supporting

Tanaka, Hideyuki
Japanese

Valentine, Luke

Supporting

Koyasu, Takehito
Japanese

Helena

Supporting

Hiramatsu, Akiko
Japanese

Incognito

Supporting

Yamazaki, Takumi
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Iida, Umanosuke

Director

Tsuruoka, Youta

Sound Director

Ono, Manabu

Episode Director

Kamitsubo, Ryouki

Episode Director, Storyboard

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Opening Theme

"Logos Naki World" (A World Without Logos) by Yasushi Ishii

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Ending Theme

"Shine" by Mr. Big

More reviews

Reviews

Sep 9, 2009

thekindamad

Mixed Feelings

Hellsing is my favorite manga of all time. It combines a fun story, memorable characters, quirky humor, stylish art, and unrelenting gore and brutality all into one little paper back graphic novel.
So naturally, you'd think that the manga would make an awesome anime. Well, Chiaki J. Konaka and Umanosuke Iida thought so too and took it upon themselves to make an anime based off the popular series. In many ways, they succeeded. But they also failed...

The anime was released in 2001, long before the manga series would be complete. So they were forced to come up with their own story, completely unrelated to the ... manga (save for a few key plot points). This potentially is a pretty cool idea and allows room for originality, but the story in the anime is very hit and miss. There were times I was really enjoying the series and other times that I was flat out bored. I felt that the story just dragged and was often times pointless.
The story also lacks a key element that makes Hellsing so great, and that's the humor. This anime takes itself very seriously, but it loses heart doing so.
I've heard many times from fellow fans that the anime is just poor a fanfiction, and I can't say I disagree.

The animation is just plain ugly, even by TV anime standards. The characters are all poorly drawn, the colors are bland and ugly, and animation is smooth but suffers from choppiness. Visually, this is a lifeless anime. And that's all I can really say about it.

The soundtrack and voice acting is the anime's highlight. The soundtrack is nothing short of wonderful. The jazz tracks really set you in the mood for the series and I'd go as far as saying that the actual album is worth they buy. The voice acting was also very good. Crispin Freeman, K. T. Gray, Victoria Harwood, Steven Brand, Ralph Lister, and the rest of the cast did such an excellent job voicing their characters.

All the characters themselves were great, but the one character that truly stands out in the series is Seras. Her character is really fleshed out and you got to know her alot more then you did in the manga. Alucard was great, but he really becomes more of a prop in the background then anything else. The shows villain 'Incognito' was just... blah. He was kinda cool, but can't hold a candle to the manga's villain 'The Major'.

Overall, this is just simply an okay anime. Nothing rememberable or even exciting. It's not bad really, but it isn't great either. And to be perfectly blunt, this fails to live up to Kouta Hirano's vision. In recent years, they've rebooted the series with 'Hellsing Ultimate', an OVA series that is almost panel by panel like the manga's. I highly recommend you go see the OVA's, those did everything that the TV series couldn't.
If you consider yourself a Hellsing fan, then by all means go see this series. But if you're just entering the Hellsing universe, then I recommend you stay clear of this and go straight onto 'Hellsing Ultimate'.

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Oct 21, 2008

Maur

Mixed Feelings

DISCLAIMER:
If you are a "Hellsing fanboy", ignore this review as it will probably fill you with murderous rage. That being said... Hellsing is the kind of series not meant to be taken seriously, at all. If you like stories about vampires and find random violence cool and fun then this may be right up your alley. If you enjoy effortless entertainment with no real depth and no thought required, then stop here and just skip my review. However if you know what kind of anime you like, and are curious to see if Hellsing may or may not be for you, the following criticisms may ...

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Jun 24, 2009

JesuOtaku_

Not Recommended

Spoiler

On the technical side of things, Hellsing has major major issues. Gonzo is famous for prioritizing its projects from lavish budgets to zippo budget. Guess which one Hellsing got? Character designs are hideous outside of the main cast, backgrounds are so bland and unappealing that it’s almost impossible to tell where you are at any given moment, I could go on but just know that Hellsing is often painful to watch, color choice being its largest detriment. The palette in Hellsing produces a plastic, bile-colored result with skin tones on some characters that makes humans look less vivid than the undead.

The folksy rock-metal music ... is unique, but I don’t care for how it’s used, or should I say, not used. Rather than support the action, the music always acts as an afterthought in Hellsing, playing far too quietly to be appreciated or punching up to blare and only achieving the effect of a drowning radio. It’s a great soundtrack that is poorly used.

The dub of Hellsing has an obligation to the English language that the Japanese does not: British accents, a double-edged sword with Integra and Walter on the sharp side, far too many awful extras on the dull side and K.T. Gray’s unstable Victoria licking the blade as she struggles to act a bland part in a voice that’s not her own and just pulls through. The Iscariot Organization offers a respite from all the limey lingo with Castilian Enrico Maxwell and the very best of all: paladin Alexander Anderson, a character who needed far more scenes if only so we could hear more of that great scottish brogue. For the most part it’s a very enjoyable listen with just a few forced cringes that come with a bunch of Americans trying to sound European. Then there’s Alucard. You can’t go wrong in either language because both Jouji Nakata and Crispin Freeman are wickedly fantastic. Anytime Alucard opens his mouth, you just have to shut up and LISTEN, it’s so spellbinding.

So, what do I really think of the wildly popular cult hit Hellsing? I could almost shout “what a waste!” and save myself some breath but seeing as this show is so well loved, I’ll have to explain my low opinion of this sleaze-fest in great detail. Very well. It’s one thing for a show to be episodic, to not have a plot. It’s quite another for a show to pretend it has a plot and string us along a lot of very confusing sideroads to end up admitting it has no idea where the hellsing it was ever going and doesn’t care to finish. Villains appear and disappear at random with little to no motivation or explanation of why they’re a threat and what they have to do with the “main plot” of who is creating the freak chip and why. Not that it matters. "Spoiler alert": They never find out who’s creating the freak chip, and even though we spend hours on it, the stupid things don’t ultimately mean anything. I rarely understood why any characters did anything, and I never cared.

The only reason I stuck with the show is because of the script. The dialogue in the show is wonderfully witty, and hearing all the brits banter scene by scene is incredibly rewarding until you realize every fun conversation has nothing to do with any overall direction.

But some shows get by on rich character development or unique concepts at the expense of a strong plot, the tried-and-true Bebop approach. This isn’t one of those, either. Victoria is one of the most boring and completely undeveloped protagonists in any anime. She follows her master’s orders and has long talks with people who could be interesting but often just get killed after they explain things. There’s no exploration of her struggle with her vampire nature or her apparent loneliness. She’s hopelessly boring, but hey, at least she’s hot, or so I’m told. Every other character is just as vapid, except a lot of them aren’t sexy or anything. The final boss is particularly bad, and has all the personality of a picket fence. The big exception to this is Integra herself, a complicated and valiantly strong woman, but she just isn’t enough by herself to give this show any substance.

So, maybe this show isn’t supposed to have a plot or develop characters, or you know, have any depth. Maybe it’s just a great horror title. No. Good horror frightens people, often relying on the audience’s imagination. Bad horror just grosses people out with too much information. Hellsing is gory, repulsive, sometimes twisted, but never frightening. Fullmetal Alchemist, a show accessible for young teens, has at least ten moments that are scarier than anything in Hellsing, many of them near-bloodless but may still keep you up for hours with the lights on. Hellsing is mature viewers only, gratuitous, and woefully unimaginative by comparison.

I’ve almost sucked this show’s juices dry, but it’s left with one appeal: the cool factor. Okay. It has that. It’s cool. It’s cool seeing a vampire in a longcoat pummel ghouls to ash and cackle about it. It’s cool seeing a bunch of catholics send a scripture-pitching Scotsman after him, too. But at the expense of all the garbage floating through this ailing anime’s system, simply being cool is no saving grace, in fact, it’s almost insulting. Hellsing is a pile of sensationalistic hyper-violence with excessive swearing and ridiculously ignorant sacrilege and the fact that people shout “It’s cool! Lighten up!” makes me balk at rewarding it for anything at all. Maybe the show is fun in a sick kind of way, but I see no merit in bad storytelling, bad technical execution, and yes, offensive content. Standards vary for every individual, but I’m the kind of person who will never watch Saw or Grindhouse and I am still sorry I bought into the hype to watch Hellsing, the cool kid at school who deserves no honest praise for being a real douche at heart.

All in all, Hellsing is a wild and wooly idea that sucks more than it bites. No amount of stylish costuming, good voice acting, and Scottish assassins can disguise an incomprehensible plotline, cardboard characters, and poor attempts at cheap thrills. Then, to make matters worse, you have painfully poor production values. It’s not a popular opinion, but I believe it has some credence. If you must indulge Hellsing, skip this and check out the OVA.

*THIS IS A PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT OF MY VIDEO REVIEW WHICH CAN BE FOUND HERE:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3iyCgX4m-U

Thanks for reading!

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Hellsing

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Characters & Voice Actors

Alucard

Victoria, Seras

Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing, Integra

Anderson, Alexander

Dornez, Walter C.

Valentine, Jan

Maxwell, Enrico

Valentine, Luke

Helena

Incognito

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Hellsing

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Information

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Available At

Resources

Streaming Platforms

Synopsis

Background

Episode Videos

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Characters & Voice Actors

Staff

Opening Theme

Ending Theme

Reviews

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