HELLSING (manga)

HELLSING (ヘルシング,) is a manga series written and illustrated by Kohta Hirano.

It first premiered in Young King OURs in 1997 and ended in September 2008. The individual chapters are collected and published in tankōbon volumes by Shōnen Gahōsha. The series was licensed for English language release in North America by Dark Horse Comics. This series consists of 10 complete volumes on which both TV Series and the OVA are based.

In 2020, it was announced the Dark Horse Comics would release the Hellsing manga in a "Deluxe Edition" format. Compiling the 10 volumes into 3 complete editions.

Story
Hellsing is named after and centered around the Royal Order of Protestant Knights originally led by Abraham Van Helsing. The mission of Hellsing is to search for and destroy the undead and other supernatural forces of evil that threaten the Queen and the county. This organisation is currently led by Sir Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing, who inherited the leadership of Hellsing as a child after the death of her father. She witnessed his death which turned her from a once innocent and shy little girl to a tough and deadly force. She is protected by the faithful Hellsing family butler Walter C. Dornez, a deadly foe in his own right, and Alucard, the original and most powerful vampire, who swore loyalty to the Hellsing family after being defeated by Van Helsing one hundred years before the story takes place. These formidable guardians are joined early on in the storyline by former police officer Seras Victoria, whom Alucard turned into a vampire.

As the scale and frequency of incidents involving the undead escalate in England and all around the world, Sir Integra discovers that the remnants of a Nazi group called Millennium still exist and are intent on reviving Nazi Germany by creating a battalion of vampires. Millennium, Hellsing, and the Vatican Section XIII, Iscariot clash in an apocalyptic three-sided war in London, and Millennium reveals its true objective: to destroy the vampire lord Alucard, ending a feud begun during World War II.

Alucard

 * Alucard is a mysterious figure. A supernatural vampire of untold age and power, he acts as the Hellsing Organisation's secret weapon. His reasons for doing so, however, as well as his motivations, remains unknown. His position within the Hellsing Organisation is one of unique status. He is the agency's ace in the hole, answerable only to the Organisation's Chairman.

Sir Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing

 * A young noblewoman, she is the head and last member of the Hellsing family. She doubles as the leader of the Hellsing Organisation, and Alucard's "Master." She inherited the Hellsing Organisation at the age of thirteen upon the death of her father. Although she often seems strict and domineering, she is respected and admired, even among her sworn enemies.

Seras Victoria

 * Seras was a member of the D11 elite police response unit until she was mortally wounded by Alucard in his destruction of a vampire masquerading as a priest. On the verge of death, she chose to allow Alucard to turn her into a vampire. Serving beneath Alucard, she now works for the Hellsing Organisation and deals with the consequences of her decision.

Profile
This work was serialized in Shōnen Gahōsha's Young King OURs magazine from issue 27 (released on May 2, 1997) to issue 164 (released on November 2008). As of March 2009, the total circulation has exceeded 4 million. In 2005, the sixth and seventh volumes of the Hellsing manga series ranked among Diamond Comics Distributors' list of the top 48 manga volumes sold in the United States for the year. In November 2007, the ninth volume was among the top 10 volumes sold according to Japan's monthly sales rankings.

On the profile page of Volume 5 on Dark Horse Comics' official website, it was stated that there are 20k copies shipped since Volume 1's initial release. The profile of Volume 10 on Dark Horse Comics' official website stated that there are over half a million copies of the Hellsing series in print.

Many of the characters (regardless of name or appearance) are borrowed from Hirano's past works, and prototypes of settings such as Nazi remnants and the Iscariot Organization can also be seen.

The names of the characters were written in Katakana (a Japanese phonetic script used to transcribe and approximate English sounds), meaning that it's quite hard to transcript back characters' names like Vernedead's name in katakana. Notoriously, many sources vary whether Pip's last name is "Vernedead" or "Bernadotte", "Alucard" or "Arucard", "Integra Fairbook Wingates Hellsing" or "Integral Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing", etc. For example, many of the subtitles on the many adaptations of Hellsing wrote Pip's last name as "Bernadotte", however, the original Dark Horse Comics translation and also the cover of chapter 52 of the manga wrote Pip's last name as "Vernedead" (chapter 55 of the manga only showed half of Pip's last name: "Pip Vern"). One of the most notable examples is also Walter's last name, which is written as "Dornez" in the DHC translation of the manga, but "Dollneazz", "DDollneazz", and many other variants of it exist. The main cause of this was probably because of the "l/r" confusion (E.g: Alucard/Arucard), and also the "b/v" (E.g: Bernadotte/Vernedead) pronunciations.

Hirano is a big fan of video games, and the subtitles of each chapter are derived from the names of famous video games. The range is wide, from arcade titles to PC games, consumer titles, overseas ported software, etc. Minor titles of fairly old domestic and foreign PC games are also included. On the back cover of Volume 2 onwards, there are surreal gag illustrations that overturn the serious developments in the work. Characters such as Alucard were tampered with, but among them, the Major had established himself as a typical otaku character, participating in Comiket with his subordinate Doc and others. In the final volume, all the characters are showing off their intense cosplay.

Kohta Hirano himself aimed to publish one book a year, but in reality, the publication of the book was often delayed. In the bonus afterword chapter at the end of Volumes 6 and 8, the Valentine brothers made a joke about Hirano's publication pace.

Hellsing has been adapted into an anime twice, one by studio Gonzo and one as an OVA animated by multiple studios. In 2001, the Hellsing anime aired from 2001 to 2002, lasting 13 episodes, and later in 2006; the Hellsing OVA was officially released in Japan, animated by studio Satelight. After producing volumes 1 until 4 of the OVA, studio Madhouse stepped in and officially became the new studio to animate the Hellsing OVA until OVA 7, OVA 8, and onwards was animated by studio Graphinica.

Volume Guide
During publication, 95 chapters were submitted and released in multiple issues of Young King OURs. However, these 95 chapters would later be condensed into 10 tankōbon volumes and the chapters were also condensed into 89 chapters instead. Combining the total number of condensed chapters with the Crossfire special released in Volumes 1 - 3 of the manga, the total number of chapters is 92. The wiki uses the tankōbon volumes chapters numbering, not the magazines.

Production
Before Hellsing, Hirano had created a very infamous one-shot hentai story called "The Legends of the Vampire Hunter". However, Hirano later commented in an interview that "We can read here and there that this story was called 'The Legends of Vampire Hunter', but it is a mistake; in reality, it was already called "Hellsing" which basically means that the story was supposed to be called "Hellsing", instead of the famous "Legends of Vampire Hunter".

Hirano later said that it was not his intention to do a manga that's subjects lean towards "erotic/hentai register", but however, it was his intention to create a somewhat daring action story. After the publication of the one-shot, Hirano later thought to himself "why not remove the daring side and continue to show this strange universe by focusing more on the action?" and, apparently, that is how the Hellsing series was born. At the start of Hellsing, Hirano and Young King OURs wanted to test the reception with the readers, and that's why the start of the series may seem a little disjointed; however, given the positive reactions from readers and after it became a hit manga, Hirano decided to continue it; making Hellsing an actual series.

Later, Hirano said that he felt that he could continue drawing the series, so he started shaping the story since Chapter 2 of Hellsing. Chapters 1 to 3 only served to introduce the viewers to the world of Hellsing; he put various characters in, and they go out killing small-time enemies - describing it as "very generic". He later started thinking about larger enemy organizations starting from chapter 4. When asked why he chose England as the main location for Hellsing, Hirano said that it has to be England if you want to talk about vampires; later stating that it doesn't make any sense anywhere else - especially America, stating that he would rather make a story about Cthulhu rather than vampires if it was going to be set in America. Hirano later said that he had always thought about putting Nazis in his work long before Hellsing. "And besides," Hirano said, "there are the Vaticans as well fighting in this story, so it has got to be England".

When asked about Hellsing being a homage to the famous "Dracula" novel created by Bram Stoker, Hirano said that it's not a sequel or anything, but in Hellsing's world, the events of Stoker's novel took place. Hirano also mentioned in said interview, that he actually went to England for vacation; expressing his love for England be known. The popularity in oversees surprised Hirano very much as he thought that the manga would only appeal to Japanese viewers, stating that he drew many things that are not considered "taboo" in Japan but taboo in others, so he does expect things to be revised in many other countries.

In an interview, Hirano praised his publishing house; Shōnen Gahōsha, because of their allowance for creators to have so much freedom in creating the manga; later stating that if he told another publishing house besides Gahōsha that he was going to do a manga about what was left of Nazis going to blow up England, the idea would not be accepted. Hirano said, "For a mangaka like me who has such an... atypical universe, it's something very precious." When asked about the historical references and characters being present in his manga, Hirano said that it's complicated; he doesn't consider himself as someone with a lot of culture, and said that he's just an "Otaku" and all these references come from what he sees and reads for otaku passion. He also said that he does not do any specific research on the references he displayed throughout Hellsing.

Hirano stated in an interview about the Hellsing Ultimate series that he had always planned for this to end at 10 volumes, and later predicted that it would take him around 2 - 3 years to finish Volume 9 - 10 because of his laziness.

When asked about his art, Hirano said that he draws them how he likes them to be drawn. He later did what he did because of one interview from Yasuhiro Nightow and another one from Akihiro Ito, Yasuhiro Nightow said, "If you're going to plaster a shade in your comic, then might as well paste it unsparingly", while Akihiro said, "If you're going to draw gunfights, then don't worry about the amount of bullets and so on", and that's exactly what Hirano did. Hirano also said that he has an assistant to help him with the drawing, to which, the interviewer made fun of sarcastically. When asked about why the background is always black, Hirano said that the setting is mostly at nighttime, of course, it'll be black. He continues by saying that he has this nagging feeling if the background art is not filled in, and later thinks that he has this sickness called "paranoia disorder" - only works when the picture is completely filled that he feels that the work is complete.

Hirano also confirmed that he switched to Digital art since volume 5, and every colored panel is digital too, and thought that it made it easier to draw. The digital software he uses is Photoshop, saying that he "worked his ass off to learn that program on his own". Initially, Hirano drew it with a pen, and he scanned the image for digital coloring and when he feels like it was hopeless, it means that it was done. Hirano also said that Zorin Blitz was his least favorite character to draw. However, he mentioned that he had to put tattoos on Zorin so that she could stand out as a character; but later complains about how hard it was to draw her, because of the fact that half of her body is covered in tattoos and wondering how he was supposed to draw her when she stretches out a hand on the wall or floor.

When creating Alucard, and in the original Hellsing, he portrayed Alucard as this vampire hunter who wore a trench coat up to his neck. However, he actually meant that to be a neck protector, and the rest that covers his whole body acts to block punches and bullets. Stating that he pretty much tried to make an invincible character. However, he said that the character ended up looking bad, so he switched the trench coat with a long coat instead and in addition, he made him really powerful that he doesn't even need any kind of bulletproof vest to cover him anymore. In another interview, he said that when creating Alucard, he wanted to do a story with gunplay, so making a vampire with guns just doesn't work with this formulaic vampire. He added the hat and the long coat, saying that it's still dark and ominous, but however, just more suited to his behavior.

Oddly enough, Hirano later in an another interview stated that his favorite character was Alexander Anderson, favorite character to draw was Walter, and the hardest one to draw was The Major.

Prototypes
This series includes Kohta's old works before he started Hellsing, which features the characters' prototypes.


 * Angel Dust: Alexander Anderson and Enrico Maxwell
 * Coyote: Pip Bernadotte, The Major, and Rip Van Winkle
 * Desert Guardian: The Captain
 * Führer's Paradise: The Professor and Schrödinger
 * Hi-and-Low: Integra Hellsing and Yumie Takagi
 * Magic School: Renaldo
 * HELLSING: The Legends of Vampire Hunter: Alucard, Seras Victoria, Luke, and Jan Valentine
 * Daidōjin Monogatari: Walter C. Dornez and Heinkel Wolfe
 * Susume!! Seigaku Dennō Kenkyūbu: Makube (Section XIII Iscariot's second leader)

Trivia

 * The longest period without any Hellsing volumes released is 1 year, and 7 months. The serialization of Tankōbon volumes in Japan also started a year and 4 months after chapter 1 appeared in an issue of Young King OURs.
 * At the start of the chapter, on top of the chapter names written in English, is a word written in katakana; and the katakana appeared in every chapter until Volume 5, where it was dropped for a bit, brung back, and once again dropped. The last time the katakana appeared was in Yaksa.