Reviews

Hellsing provides evidence to the validity of emphasizing art, soundtrack, characterization, and visual storytelling over an approach centered around hard worldbuilding, and more direct exposition. Both methods are valid and can be executed well, but Hellsing takes a more challenging approach to it's interpretation of an unfinished manga. With so much time spent fleshing out characters, exploring the unique style of the work, and introducing one of the most consistently impressive anime soundtracks out there, there's many gaps in the storytelling like lore that needs further exploration, missing pages of origin stories, and central characters that become irrelevant shockingly fast. This is unfortunately (most likely) due to the animes short run time, which is caused by it's completion before the Hellsing manga was done. Since there was not as much context to work with many gaps were filled in with fairly decent (unremarkable) explanations which leaves an unfortunate conclusion to some genuinely captivating characters, and plotlines. Besides the art and music Hellsing takes a pleasing view of the multifaceted conflict of monsters existing in an aggressively human world. The rights and wrongs of being, as opposed to doing, the concept of choice within selection of authority. To summarize: Hellsing is a thematically/interpersonally leaning anime with great sound and art, but falls flat with it's poor approach to developing a conclusion to an unfinished manga. I would recommend to anyone captivated by dark fantasy, religion, and military, but also to most anime watchers in general since it's only 13 episodes.