Lind_L_Tailor

Hellsing, as many of you may know, is an anime about Vampires. But unlike most contemporary vampire-based media, Hellsing seems to be aware that Vampires are, in fact, demonic creatures from the depths of hell, and certainly acts like it. But wait! It deviates from that blueprint in a weird way. How? By making said depths-of-hell Vampire the protagonist, the cleverly named Alucard, who is the most badass thing since...

...Yeah, I got nothing.

Anyway, the plot follows the titular organization Hellsing as they attempt to wipe out all vampires, employing the talents of their "domesticated vampire" Alucard to help do so. However, the vampire population has been on the rise, as someone has been using computer chips to create artificial vampires. Plotline ensues.

What follows is Alucard kicking the living shit out of every vampire that has the misfortune of crossing his path, with next to no-one he can call his equal. While Hellsing has been accused of being shallow, with little to no character development (Integra Hellsing is the only one who truly gets any), if you went into Hellsing expecting complexity and depth then you're obviously not doing it right, as Hellsing is nothing but a total festival or raining blood and body parts, with a little... OK, a lot of obligatory swearing thrown in, courtesy of Jan Valentine, a character incapable of going a sentence without swearing. But all of this adds to the cheesy gothic brilliance that is Hellsing. I mean, no show that features the line "While you're there you can lick the Devil's ass!" should be taken seriously, and it's all the better for it.

...For the first six episodes, anyway.

Now, you'll often see an anime slip away from the plot of the manga towards the end, generally because the manga hasn't finished and they're running out of budget. Whilst these are always bad things, they can sometimes be excusable. In Hellsing's case, however, they follow the manga for all of six episodes, before they go off onto a completely irrelevant story with utterly boring, 2-dimensional characters that abandons all the prior plot threads about the computer chips that make people into vampires FOR MORE THAN HALF THE FUCKING SERIES.

To top it off, they left Alexander Anderson, Alucard's Protestant-hating Vampire-slaying Catholic rival, out of the ending. All he makes in a single shot appearance, where he does nothing. I guess that was to show that they hadn't forgotten he existed, they just didn't care.

Still, the last seven episodes are worth watching, I guess, but they aren't anywhere near as good as the first six. And even then, Hellsing Ultimate, a series of OVA remakes, is being released peice by peice, and has been gradually making up for the dissappointment.

At any rate, the artwork is of superb standard, something that Ultimate falls short on, and the voice acting is fantastic, with everyone (bar Alucard) wearing their best British accents. With the exception of Seras mumbling a lot, they all stick out as fantastic, and seeing as how Alucard was Crispin Freeman's breakthrough role, I think that speaks for itself.

Final Words: Fucking amazing for the first six episodes, promptly goes downhill afterwards but still good.

Animation/Graphics: 10/10
Story/Plot: 7/10
Music/Background: 9/10
Voice Acting: 10/10

Overall: 7/10

For Fans Of: 3x3 Eyes, Nightwalker