Hellsing (anime)

"In the name of God, impure souls of the living dead shall be banished in eternal damnation. Amen."

Hellsing (ヘルシング) refers to the made-for-television anime based on Kouta Hirano's manga Hellsing. It was first broadcast in Japan on Fuji Television from October 10, 2001, to January 16, 2002, and ran in the United States from October 4, 2003, to December 27, 2003, on Starz's Encore Action cable channel. It finished at thirteen episodes long.

The anime follows a different storyline, especially towards the end, but with the same protagonists and main characters. The series was directed by Yasunori Urata under the chief direction of Umanosuke Iida from a screenplay by Chiaki J. Konaka and animated by Studio Gonzo.

Summary
Hellsing, an organisation specializing in dealing with supernatural threats, is called in to eliminate a vampire that is turning the villagers of Cheddar into ghouls. To put an end to this, the leader of the organisation, Sir Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing, dispatches her most formidable asset: a powerful vampire known as Alucard.

Armed with only a single handgun, Alucard wreaks havoc on the monsters plaguing Cheddar. However, a young police officer, Seras Victoria, gets caught up in the chaos and becomes mortally wounded as a result. Taking pity on the girl, Alucard gives her a choice: die as a human or live on as a vampire. Seras accepts his offer and begins a new life as a member of Hellsing. Though it was her decision, Seras struggles with the fact that she is no longer human. Nevertheless, she must embrace being a creature of the night soon if she wants to survive on the front lines in the fight between humans and the supernatural.

Music

 * Opening Theme - "A World Without Logos"
 * Ending Theme - "Shine"

Production
Talks about a Hellsing anime adaptation began around 1998 - 1999 and was eventually produced around 1999. Because of the fact that Gonzo was a new studio at the time, having produced only about 3 animated series, and in addition, was also producing another show at the time of animating Hellsing, Gonzo hired many talented staff members to work on Hellsing; some of those were from Pioneer, and also, most of these staff had worked together before; Producer Yasuyuki Ueda of Pioneer LDC had worked with Series Composition and Writer Chiaki J. Konaka on 1998's Serial Experiments Lain. Yasuyuki Ueda also later worked with Art Director Shinji Katahira on Haibane Renmei. For the chief director of the series, Gonzo hired Devilman's director Umanosuke Iida for the job and Yasunori Urata as the series' director.

In 2000, the trailer for Hellsing aired; revealing the silhouette of The Major, The Doctor, and The Captain. The trailer was later given to dubbing companies to let them know what show they were buying the rights to.

With Toshiharu Murata as the character designer for Hellsing and Shinji Katahira as the art director, the team is pretty much all set. Being set in England, Hellsing has a fitting and traditional backdrop for a vampire story. London's fog-banked streets and narrow alleys lend themselves to the contemplation of creatures that walk the night, both human and inhuman. Even in the days of modern conveniences and commonplace electric lightning, sometimes the contrast only serves to make the shadows deeper and more frightening.

The style that they were going for is obvious; using many inks for the face for the details and the background being "ghastly" and "uncomfortable". However, it is noticeable that because of deadline issues; they had to lower the inks and such - creating off-model characters. These were fixed in the DVD release of Hellsing, fortunately. Surprisingly, even though the show focuses on the horror and supernatural aspect of "Hellsing", the soundtrack is a mix of Jazz and Rock, although it does have some melancholy piano songs. With smart directors, they were able to perfectly mix them both together smoothly, which was praised by many critics.

In one interview, Murata said that he has no preferences but either way; he can work. However, he said that he does have a personal art preference and that Hellsing is one of them. He was always careful about being faithful to the original character designs from the anime that he was working on.

Casting
For the English Dub casting of Hellsing, Jonathan Klein, the English Dub producer of the show, set out to get an all-British cast, to make it look more "convincing", rather than casting American Actors for the role and make them do a British accent; expressing that he wasn't sure that it'd convince the viewers. In addition, he stated that the biggest challenge of this was finding an actor that was right for the voices - and while there were some in Los Angeles, there really weren't a huge number of voice actors to choose from. He also mentioned how most of the Voice Actors cast were from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, which is a very prestigious school in England.

Finding Steven Brand for the role of Alexander Anderson, he struggled to find someone to play Sir Integra that had the same kind of "gravitas" present in the original Japanese version.

Taliesin Jaffe, the voice director for Hellsing, shared his experience of working with the English Dub crew of Hellsing, and describing Hellsing as the "Great Demonic Learning Experience", expressing that he had learned many things when working on Hellsing's English dub. He also stated that there's a variety of reasons why Crispin Freeman was chosen as Alucard. Jeffe stated that for a show like "Hellsing", the hero sets the tone, and the villains set the energy level. "Everyone had to fit well with Alucard, both reflecting and opposing him in all the right places", Jeffe added. Most of the voice actors cast for Hellsing were previously singers, including Seras' voice actress, K.T. Gray; his reasons why he had cast singers were because they have good voice control and that they know how to work with a mic.

Problems
While it is normal for many animes to fix issues from the original broadcast due to deadline issues and such, Hellsing's however, is very different compared to its original Broadcast release. Many changes were made to it, including entire scenes getting redrawn to match with its character sheets, meaning to keep things consistent and such.

One notable episode that changed so much is; episode 8, Kill House - nearing the finale of the episode, Alucard had begged Integra to let Incognito come to the "small" island of England, which, Integra was anxious. During the episode, on the broadcast version, there are many inconsistencies with both Alucard and Integra's designs; which they seem to have over-detailed them both, leading to some of the creepiest-looking Alucard designs ever. The DVD version fixes this and made Alucard and Integra look like how they were on the character sheets, however, there are some scenes that were never redrawn. The differences between them both led many to believe that Gonzo had a completely different art style in mind, which would explain the inconsistencies and the over-detailed characters.

The plotline of the anime is different than the manga and OVA. These differences are only slight up until the middle of episode 7: Duel, where the plot begins to diverge dramatically from what is presented in the manga. Like much other anime, the studio ran out of source material to adapt while the show was in production, forcing them to create their own storyline based on what had already been presented.

There were about 2 Volumes at the time this anime was being produced, but despite this, there was a trailer for the Hellsing anime that featured the Major, the Captain, and the Doctor, meaning that there were some discussions about creating a different story to make-up the 13 episode series, or to stay faithful and adapt the entire manga, which would've led to a season two. However, they chose to make up their own story which led to further Hellsing adaptations coming to a halt because of the manga not finishing, as such; a season two is likely not possible.

Rescript
These five DVD sets of re-released Hellsing titles titled "Hellsing Rescript" was made to fix the problems made during the original production of the series. To sum it up, the said DVD mentioned before was the Rescript DVDs which was released back in 2002 by the same distributor for the original DVDs, Pioneer. It serves as the "Blu-Ray" version of Hellsing, and now, is mainly the "common" version to watch Hellsing in. Because of this, the original TV Broadcasted/DVD release of Hellsing became sort of a lost media and is never used in any of the official sites to watch Hellsing in, legally; like Netflix for example.

Comparison between the Manga and the Anime
Despite this, the canon episodes were not really adapted straight out of the original manga either, like the incident in Cheddar for example; the Cheddar Priest's backstory is omitted, and the final battle took place in the Priest's church, the manga however, took place in the Cheddar's forest. Due to budget issues, considering that Gonzo was a fairly new studio at the time, the Alexander and Alucard fight was shortened in episode 3. However, in episode 7, Alucard and Anderson fought again; this time however, there were some scenes that were from the manga, notably, Alucard's regeneration and Anderson cutting off his head. The final minutes of the fight is also similar to the final battle between Alucard and human Anderson from the manga, like how Alexander's arms are badly damaged and Alucard standing in front of him while Anderson was hopeless. Furthermore, Alexander bit his bayonet to rush forward against Alucard, however, in the original anime, Alucard didn't have any familiars guarding him; therefore, Alucard shot Anderson's bayonet, sparing him which would let to future fights that unfortunately didn't happen. In addition, the plot greatly diverges from the manga after the seventh episode; which is roughly the third volume of the manga.

Trivia

 * Incognito does not appear in the manga and his name comes from the literal definition of the word "incognito." In episode nine, Alucard responds to Incognito's introduction by saying his name's "quite an enigma as well."
 * It has also been argued that, while Alucard may be inspired by, or is, Count Dracula, Incognito may have been inspired by the vampire Count Orlok from the 1922 silent movie Nosferatu.
 * Because of the exclusion of the Millennium Organization, Walter C. Dornez never betrayed Integra and the Hellsing Organisation.
 * In addition to the digital format, anime also uses 16 or 35 millimeter films (for now, the film gauge is unknown). Examples are episodes 2, 3, and 6.