Hellsing - Reviews

I loved this story. The animation was lack luster in areas where they tried to cut corners but most of the battle animation was good, characters were good & the story was good. I need to hunt down the rest of the Hellsing saga.

This was my first foray in the Hellsing franchise. I'm not sure what to make of it.

There are three aspects to the story in Hellsing:

1. The Hellsing organization is investigating/battling hordes of "fake" vampires that have appeared. Where are these fakes coming from?
2. Alucard is a powerful vampire employed by the Hellsing organization. Who is he? Why does he serve the Hellsing organization? What is his relationship with the leader, Integra Hellsing?
3. Seras Victoria is turned into vampire by Alucard and recruited into the Hellsing organization. What will happen to her? How will she adjust?

While these are interesting premises, few of the questions I have above are actually answered. Part of this is because the story telling is just...bad. They give little background on any of the characters, they fail to develop believable motivations, and they spend lots of time on dull and unimportant details. I was confused about the Vatican and why they were getting in Hellsing's way...and then they never show up again. In fact, I never understood any of the enemies very well. Many of the abilities of the different antagonists come out of nowhere, and the flashy fights lose a bit of interest because there are seemingly no rules or limitations.

The other part of the problem is that show exists to show off Alucard, which means every episode follows a formula: everyone else gets in trouble and Alucard steps in at the last moment to save the day. Now, Alucard is a great character to be fair. He is so powerful and sadistic that he taunts and belittles his enemies, allowing them to attack him just to see what they're capable of. He's mysterious and has a seemingly endless number of different abilities. He's by far the biggest draw of the series, and what kept me watching.

But when you have great character like Alucard, whyyy do you not show more of him? How does every episode spend 90% of its time following Seras Victoria yet still failing to develop her character? I was frustrated at how much time I wasted waiting for Victoria to accept/embrace some of her new vampire abilities and make a difference. Victoria spends multiple episodes learning to use a big-ass rifle, and then uses it like twice after that. Why is she not just blasting through hordes of enemies with that thing??? So there's a huge time investment into Victoria, with little payoff, and in the meantime we don't get to see enough of Alucard either.

The series does get good toward the end though. Integra actually turns into a great character. We get a flashback to see how Integra and Alucard met and some insight into their relationship. We get insight into her motivation to lead the Hellsing organization. The last few episodes have a great conflict and the final battle is pretty epic, revealing some of Alucard's true power.

Overall, the good stuff is few and far between here. It has a lot of style and I liked the music overall. Alucard is a character worth seeing though, with some great fight scenes, and the ending of the series is actually great. But the story is so disorganized and the characters so underdeveloped. You have to wade through a lot of filler crap to get to the good stuff.

The story falls off 6 episodes in and it clearly was due to manga adaption but holy shit Alucard is incredible, dude looks absolutely fucking insane for the entire series, from the stop sign red eyes under the sunset colored sunglasses, to the gigantic fucking fangs twisted into a garish smile, to the humongous colt 45 tucked at all times, he combines that gunslinging maniac allure of Revy with the smoothness and imposing nature of Dracula from Dracula 2000, its truly incredible work 

alucard and seras are still kind of relics of their time as characters, with Alucards personality being just one liners and vampire dissapearing, his appeal is really his looks and actions, and especially Seras, she really is just very yell prone eye candy, (big tits bigger guns), but her struggle with humanity is at least a solid foil to the inhuman monstrosity that is Alucard

Hard agree with other reviews saying the OVA series is better - it is. I would just go ahead and skip this series, and watch the OVA series instead. Its a whole other interpretation of the manga, and in my opinion way better. 

When I was a teen I was obsessed with this anime - but now I watch it and...yo its really bad. The one redeeming element is of course Alucard. His red outfit? Hilarious. Frilly sleeves on those broad shoulders? Guy is an absolute deviant. But - at least that's true to the manga, and I like the way the frills flutter about when he moves around, so there's that. Not to be that person but, compared to the manga (which I still enjoy) the characters are annoying and the art style is jankey. Someone tell me why they make Integra so cranky and foul? She's a badass, its such a shame. This anime is so full of cringy vamp stereotypes it hurts (did a vampire write this?). 

Hey teenage self - this anime is not worth your adoration, do not pine for main, and pls do not go to that costume party dressed as Alucard but in purple (hey, it's all they had at the shop) - you will thank me later. 

Best part of the anime is the opening song World Without Logos. 

This anime is minimalistic horror, and I mean that as offensively as possible. I get the whole 'the idea is the worst part' and how a big part of this anime is the creeping eerie feeling, but you get used to that pretty quick and then it just feels slow. I spent the whole time wishing for more character development, just wishing for more in general to be honest. Don't get me wrong, I'm a pretty big fan of shows with pure entertainment value, and nothing really to say, but this isn't even all that entertaining. 

Yes this anime can get pretty violent, but hey, at least something is happening. In my opinion this should have been a dedicated slasher anime. This series is the ultimate 'scrolling on my phone with anime in the background' type of thing. Missed some of the subtitles? Makes absolutely zero difference. Look up occasionally to see some bloodshed and boobs (10/10 aspect of this anime). Enjoy!

I think that this is a fairly good anime. It has a fairly good story line to it. Sometimes I wish that they would go into a little more detail with the story line but it is still fairly good as it is. The animation in this anime I think needs some work in some areas like with some of the character details needs some more details to them. The scenary details are good in some areas but other areas, I think, need a few more details added to it, but it still has some good animation with some of the characters. I like some of the music that plays through out the anime espically diring the fighting scences. I like most of the voices for the characters. I also think that this anime has some pretty awesome characters to it and also some not so awesome characters. Over all I think that this is a pretty good anime to watch if you like vapire animes.