Impressions of Hellsing

A 13-episode series released by Pioneer
First two volumes are already out, third and fourth are due on 11/12/02 and 1/21/03 respectively.

First, since it's the first thing you see, let me mention the packaging. The first volume came with an optional box, complete with a spacer that contains - a blood bag. It's so cheesy, yet still pretty fun. The bag has the hellsing seal where the traditional medical symbol would probably be, and has hilarious warnings like "not a toy", "not for consumption", and "not for transfusion". The third and fourth volumes will release with figures of the main characters. The promotional website that was up before the series began release, which introduced me to the show, was well designed, and overall this made me uncharacteristically excited to actually buy this series as it came out, as I am one who usually just waits for the entire set to come out to both make sure it's a good series from start to finish, and to try to get a better deal on the whole thing.

Anyway, what's the actual show about? The "main" character is Arucard, who is (shockingly) an old, powerful vampire. I quote "main" because he is not actually the character on the screen most of the time - they might be saving a full description of him till later in the series (I have seen the first 6 episodes so far). The other primary characters include Victoria Seras, a naive police girl who Arucard both turns into a vampire and enlists into his service, and Integra Wingates Hellsing, head of the Hellsign family who runs an organization devoted to eliminating non-human entities. Integra has somehow gotten Arucard to join this organization despite the fact that its mission would target him as well. Arucard apparently has joined partly out of ennui and partly disgust for the "instant vampires" that are being manufactured of late.

Basically the premise and artwork showed a lot of promise, so I let myself get all excited about collecting it as it came out and watching it with an actual break between discs. So did it live up to expectations? Not quite. The first disc let me down a bit - it was not what I was expecting. Arucard is a bit of a wacko - he starts fights by taunting his enemies and goading them into shooting all his limbs off, and then after regenerating everything until the target gets scared, he finishes them off violently. I was expecting "cool" fight scenes, but a lot of the first few made me go more "huh?" than "woo!". However I started warming to the series based on the combination of a serious background layered beneath this sort of goofy action, entertaining battle dialogue, and over-the-top gore. In other words, it's campy! It starts running certain cliche'd gimmicks throughout that add to the campiness, like how the girl wears a ridiculously tight shirt and short skirt over her slim-yet-busty frame, and while looking thusly imbalanced already, they ALWAYS give her a monstrously huge bazooka contraption as her weapon. Arucard IS a total nut, but it is still amusing to laugh with him as he freaks his opponents out with various mutations of his nightmarish form before he eats or obliterates them.

So those are my impressions of the first half of hellsing. It might very well get more serious and thought-provoking towards the end, but I have faith they will still leave an underlying tone of irreverence and John Woo-style unnecessary, gratuitous violence to soften the strain to your thought and reasoning centers.