I still remember the early 2000s when I would hang out with folks at a friend’s Monday night anime meetup in Kennesaw, GA. We alternated several titles in that period, and one was interesting enough initially: the TV adaptation of Kouta Hirano’s manga, Hellsing. We watched as this goofy looking vampire came out of the shadows to do a Dirty Harry impersonation by using a really big gun to kill vampires for Sir Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing, the daughter of his legendary enemy, on behalf of the Protestant Church. Oh, and he happened to gain a cute apprentice named Seras Victoria, a tactical police soldier in one of the most amusing scenes of the first episode.
It was a fun show because everyone was trying to be coy on whether or not this vampire was indeed Bram Stoker’s greatest literary creation, Dracula. So many in fandom would argue for and against this simply because Arucard’s name had an “r” instead of an “l” in various romanizations, as is often the case when translating Japanese.
Animated by Gonzo, the TV series was a menace of the week deal, with Arucard and Seras chasing vampire threats in various places as well as other anti-vampire organizations who don’t like the Hellsing institute’s methods. The animation quality was OK for a limited TV budget. Storywise though, Hirano was still completing his manga plans, and so the screenplay deviated and the ending was one that fans had mixed to negative feelings on.
Hirano eventually finished his manga. This and other factors led to the release of a new series entitled simply Hellsing in Japan, but re-named Hellsing Ultimate in the U.S. This time, the story was told in the OAV (original animated video) format allowing for fewer restrictions in the content. Also, the work was divided among three studios: Satelight (1-4), Madhouse (5-8), and Graphinica & Kelmadick (9-10). All 10 volumes have fairly similar high production values but took a good bit of time to produce, and their importation to U.S. shores took even longer.
As the OAVs started to come out, it was good to hear Crispin Freeman reprise the Arucard role with gothic depth befitting a powerful master vampire. It was also great to hear Sir Intergra (Victoria Harwood) and Steven Brand as Arducard’s nemesis, Father Alexander Anderson of the Iscariot organization. The use of church, military and Nazi organizations often makes me wish I could’ve had this series while attending Catholic high school. I think it’d have been fun to either be watching this or reading one of the manga released by Dark Horse Comics in study hall, especially when Father Anderson is making one of his bible-quoting speeches.
The series as a whole was a serious upgrade compared to the TV show, even if it did have some unnecessarily long soliloquies, such as the Nazi speech at the end of Volume 4, after which…nothing happens. Also you could’ve probably saved a bit of time by not giving so much exposition to side characters at times like the Valentine Brothers and Rip Van Winkle. The animation was of much better quality though. You can tell the artists had a lot of fun doing Arucard’s various spells and transformations, and maybe with animating the ’long slide’ of his .454 Casull magnum. The fight scenes got crazier than the TV show ever tried to be. Sometimes, though, with all the forces present (some sent by Nazis, others by the Swiss or The Vatican) it gets a bit confusing figuring out who’s fighting for humans and who’s fighting for vampires and it gets to be all-out carnage between whichever two groups happen to encounter each other at the time. Even still, Arucard’s final fight with Anderson is a particular highlight of the series.
The overall screenplay is interesting in that there’s a whole arc where Seras winds up helping a group of soldiers commanded by Wild Geese commander Pip Bernadotte to fend off vampire forces. Over the course of these episodes, Arucard is barely seen except for cameos at the end, but it develops Seras a good bit as she comes into her own. Watching her use huge machine guns with a crapload of bullets is as much of a joy as 
when the show goes into chibi / super-deformed mode for brief comedy segments. The orchestral gothic theme by the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra sets the stage for things better than the piano opening of the TV show as well. On the other hand, I do think I’d have liked to have seen Integra kill more vamps on screen as her ancestors had previously done. You see her bodyguard Walter get a crazy story of his own though.
Like I said before, three studios worked to produce this series and between the time the first volume was released in Japan to the time the final volumes, 9 and 10, would be eventually released by Funimation, eight years would go by. Fans remained happy to see the show come out initially in individual volumes and then in blu-ray / DVD combo packs. I run the video rooms at Anime Weekend Atlanta and we had the pleasure of premiering Volume 5 and then Volumes 9-10 a couple years later. I can honestly say a lot of people came to those showings and went nuts whenever they heard Freeman do his Alucard lines and saw the action ensue. At the same time though, you couldn’t help notice people were becoming a bit weary waiting for the series to finish being released.
So when I noticed this show was eligible for the Ten Years later series, it kind of startled me a bit that so much time had gone by. Usually when thinking of a given work, you think of how much you miss it because it hadn’t been around for a long time. In this case though, it hadn’t really gone away so it’s still fresh in mind. In fact, it got to air on Adult Swim at one point.
In thinking of the great OAV series that have come before, like Macross Plus, Lodoss Wars, Giant Robo and others, Hellsing Ultimate is one that should very much be remembered alongside them. Some things could’ve been shaved for time but a lot of effort went into it, making it (deservedly) the definitive anime adaptation of the Hellsing manga. Also, it’s the wildest interpretation of the Dracula legend I’ve ever come across, right up there with Christopher Lee, Frank Langella and Gary Oldman movies. If my friend from Kennesaw were still here to read this article, I’d tell him thank you, Patrick Bohnet, for turning me on to Hellsing in the first place.
