Hellsing (anime)

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

Hellsing (ヘルシング,) refers to the made-for-television anime based upon a manga by the same name by Kohta Hirano.

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 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.

The anime follows a different storyline, especially towards the end, but with the same protagonists and main characters.

Summary
Within the dark and misty city of London, filled with smoke and mystery crawling in the darkest and deepest pits of the city, supernatural creatures are present. To combat this, the late King of England created a small branch of Vampire Hunters called "Hellsing" led by Abraham Van Helsing himself. Now in 1999, the Organisation is led by Van Helsing's great granddaughter, Sir Integral Wingates Hellsing. During this time, its discovered that the vampires nowadays are created using a chip implanted onto their body dubbed "FREAK Chip." An investigation started, but failed miserably. Until... its creator suddenly appears on the small and boring island of England and plans to bring ruins and destruction to all there is... by summoning a Wicked God.

Main Characters

 * 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.
 * 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.

Music

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

Production
An adaptation of the manga series Hellsing was in talks early on before the manga was nowhere near finished, and around the release of Volume 1. The involvement of Hirano himself is very little as he does not know much about anime, stating that he's just an "otaku." The cast of the main characters were decided even before the release of Volume 1. Pioneer LDC (Geneon), the producer of the anime, brought in many staffs who had worked with each other before to work on this project. Talented staffs with the likes of Umanosuke Iida (known for Devilman) and Yasunori Urata served as the series' director. A commentary on the site Gonzo released for the Hellsing anime stated that this is a suitable work for Gonzo's first "terrestrial" broadcasting work, and it was also one of their biggest projects yet.

To give the production team a unique name, "Hellsing K.G." was created to serve as the series' production team. An original song made by Yasushi Ishii, the composer for the Hellsing series, titled "A World Without Logos," was made to be the opening of the series. In a slight contrast, Mr. Big's "Shine" was used as the series' ending theme. Three variations of the ending was made.

Chiaki J. Konaka, the writer and screenwriter of the series, tried to avoid using elaborative phrases and instead try to go for a normal lines for Alucard, while for Seras herself, Konaka uses the words used by an "ordinary" girl back then. Wanting to explore the characters and give them more depths then ever, this is shown when Konaka himself expanded on the part about Seras' colleagues in episode 1, whose names are never revealed in the manga, although the characters were all short-lived, they made a huge impact on Seras herself compared to the original manga. Regarding the new and added "dramatic" scenes that were not from the original manga, Konaki states that he expanded in it to fill in the story told too quick in the original work.

In short, the lines written are described as "powerful signature words" with a hidden meaning under the "words that colors the darkness." Konaka stated that proper character names are given to character who doesn't have any in the original work, in which, serves a purpose so that the characters can feel alive and not treat death "lightly." Within the many changes in the episodes that were adapted from the manga, Konaka states that most lines are the same since the original work have a lot of "momentum," but in some cases, minor changes were made in order to match the lines of the play, and to make it more "nuanced" when it is voiced by the actors themselves. Konaka also finds reading the lines that he would typically not write refreshing.

For the animation, Hellsing is an early digipaint show, with muted colors given to the characters and background to give the show its "aesthetic" and "gothic" feel that they were aiming for, instead on having to rely on traditional handdrawn animation. The animation uses a NTSC-PAL conversion, with a soft, lower resolution image, the expected ghosting and blended frames, while pans and scrolls are a little uneven. Regarding the digital animation, Hellsing would often switch to traditional cel art, in which, was scanned in computer and was then colored digitally. In addition to the digital format that the production team uses, the anime also uses 16 or 35 mm film reels, with scenes digitally edited and/or through super16/super35 cinematographic process and then printed on Betacam. Due to deadline issues, the sky's colors would change occasionally. Lighting the sky properly would mean using contrasting shades of blue and black for everything in the frame, which would take far too long. Their solution was to color the sky red, to avoid having to light everything. A replica of Alucard's gloves was made by an anime goods maker in Japan, so Gonzo used their inscriptions for reference as Alucard's gloves inscriptions on the manga was only a bunch of gibberish written by Hirano to mimic English words.

The studio however was put into trouble as the manga hadn't even finished yet, so in response, Hirano allowed for them to do whatever they want with the show, so they ditched the plan to create more seasons and stay faithful to the manga, and instead go for a filler ending. Even so, the first three episodes of Hellsing was based upon the manga however featured many differences to lower the budget. In a staff interview on one of the DVDs, a staff stated that if they were to faithfully adapted the fight between Alucard and Anderson, then the studio would go bankrupt. Yasuyuki Ueda, one of the producers of the anime and a member of Pioneer, stated that there was no way for them to adapt the manga faithfully as production started early on, way before the manga was even finished.

Due to the restrictions because it was aired on television, changes has to be made; violence were reduced, most of the blood coming out of ghouls and vampires were turned into piles of dust rather than blood and fight scenes were shortened. Other censorships includes some shadow over a character's wound and colors getting inverted. So to contrast, the general tone of the anime was made much darker compared to the manga itself, reducing the amount of "light-hearted" scenes.

The soundtrack was largely composed by Yasushi Ishii, and it's also his first notable work within the anime industry. Ishii previously had been active to provide music for commercials and more, so Hellsing was his first attempt at an animation soundtrack. The sound and music were later mixed in by Yabuhara Masashi, who's known for his work on Cowboy Bebop.

In 2000, a trailer promoting the Hellsing anime by Gonzo released, featuring casts from the original manga with spotlighting lighting on Alucard, Walter, Seras, Integra and even Anderson. The main villain of the series, or rather, the manga, The Major was also featured. The trailer however, was produced even before the episodes were animated, therefore, original shots in which belonging to the trailer are mainly left unused, however some brief sequences were eventually used in the episodes of the anime. The trailer was later given to dubbing companies to let them know what type of show they're buying the rights to. Despite Psalsm of Darkness being shot in a 16:9 ratio, the episodes broadcasted on TV used 4:3 shots. In order to re-use the animation from the trailer and into the show, the animators would crop the 16:9 footage into 4:3. However, mistakes were made and some shots weren't fully cropped.

2001 marks the year where the official site for Hellsing launched, with several official companies with the likes of Shōnen Gahōsha themselves having a link to the site, so in response, a page specifically created for links to other official companies was made in the official Hellsing site. In 2003, Pioneer launched its own Hellsing website that announces releases of DVDs, with character profiles and episode summaries. The Japanese site was later archived by NBCUniversal Entertainment Japan after merging with Geneon.

Casting
In the Character Introductions on the back of Volume 1 of the Hellsing manga, characters voice actors were announced, with Hirano himself stating that he's not involved in any way whatsoever with the casting of characters. Hirano said that as far as he's concerned, Anderson's VA is Nachi Nozawa, and stated that Yoshiko Sakakibara is beautiful as Integra's voice. Humorously, Hirano also said that his favorite voice actor is "Nachi Nozawa" because of the "Nachi," in reference of Nazis of course. The trailer of the anime revealed that Jouji Nakata was playing Alucard, followed by the official announcement of Yoshiko as Integra. Fumiko Orikasa was then announced to be playing as Seras Victoria on the official site of the Hellsing anime, with Walter C. Dornez being played by Motomu Kiyokawa. The main villain, Incognito, was due to play by Takumi Yamazaki.

For the English dub of the series, Crispin Freeman was first brought by Jaffe and was set to play the role of Alucard, with Seras' role being taken by singer K.T. Gray, and Sir Integra being portrayed by Victoria Harwood due to a suggestion made by Steven Brand, who played Alexander Anderson, to the producer of the series, as he needed a voice actor that has the same kind of "gravitas" as the original Japanese voice actor. Isaac C. Singleton Jr. is hired by Taliesen Jaffe, the voice director, to play the role of Incognito as he thought that he was a good foil to Crispin Freeman.

Regarding the full British cast of the English dub of Hellsing, Jonathan Klein pitched this idea so that the cast would be more believable and "convincing," which is why they didn't hire American voice actors to do a fake accent. 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.

Production Presentation
In 2001, the production team held a production presentation in Tokyo on July 10, and announced that there would be 13 episodes and will be airing on October of the same year on Fuji TV at midnight. Most of the important staff members appeared at the presentation, expressing their enthusiasm on the anime, along with a promotional video titled "Hellsing: Psalms of Darkness" being played before the interviews. First appearing on stage was Gonzo Digimation's production team, Shōnen Gahōsha's editor-in-chief, and Pioneer LDC's production manager; each of them talking about their hopes about the project, whilst during the midst of this, reporters gathered to ask whether it was difficult to release this "controversial" work outside of Japan, to which, GONZO Digimation Holding's president stated that they were careful about the political and religious aspects, so he does not think that it would be a problem, and instead thinks that enthusiasts would appreciate it.

Next appearing on stage was producer Yasuyuki Ueda and Shouji Murahama, series director Yasunori Urata and character designer Toshiharu Murata, along with director of photography Atsushi Takeyama, composer Yasushi Ishii and finally, chief director Umanosuke Iida. Yasuyuki Ueda, the manufacturer and producer of the series, said that Hellsing, to him, was interesting for a long time, and thought about adapting it, and that it was recently decided to be aired Fuji TV's CX late night. Murata Toshiharu, the character designer, said that he feels like it's something that's never been seen before, while Yasushi Ishii, the composer, said that he'd like to use Hellsing as an opportunity to present anime music around the world; feeling like it hasn't been presented enough.

Umanosuke Iida, the chief director of the series, said that even though it'll air at midnight, it's going to be aired on terrestrial TV; expressing his interests in keeping the balance between the anime and the original series. Iida also found it interesting to think about "how to bring out the general mood of Hellsing," and in addition, commented about how hard it was to decide how to separate the "cruel" scenes from the "exciting" ones. Yasunori Urata, the director of the series, said that he'd been working all night long on the anime, and stated that he wants to explore on the characters more.

Last ones to appear on stage was Alucard's voice actor, Jouji Nakata, Seras Victoria's voice actor, Fumiko Orikasa, and the original author of the series, Kohta Hirano. Jouji Nakata, the voice actor of Alucard, said that he wants to enjoy the unique world of Hellsing, while Fumiko Orikasa, the voice actor of Seras, said that she hopes to be able to express her "life-sized" self, and looks forward to the series while worrying about how she could convey the "world view." Hirano was the last one to appear on the presentation. Regarding one of his work to be made into a TV anime for the first time in his mangaka carrier, Hirano said that he's been an "otaku" his entire life, so to see this, he thinks that it's unbelievable and it's overwhelming for him, so he's looking forward to see his characters being brought back to life on screen. Hirano also encouraged the staff to do as much as they can about the animation.

Broadcasting and Release
The series' first episode aired on Fuji TV on October 10th of 2001, with each episode airing weekly. It officially ends at 13-episodes long with the final episode airing on January 16, 2002. The series was then licensed by Geneon Entertainment for its English release, and Geneon's dubbed episodes in the United States on Starz!'s Encore Action channel from October 4 to December 27, 2003. ADV films later licensed Hellsing for to become its European distributor. The closure of ADV however, led to the series become unlicensed in Europe. Madman Entertainment licensed the series to release on Australia.

In 2002, Pioneer started to collect these Hellsing episodes into four separate DVD boxes, with each titled "Impure Souls," "Blood Brothers," "Search and Destroy," and "Eternal Damnation" respectively. Each boxes contains special booklet which includes information about characters, organizations and even species. July 23th of 2002 marks the release of the Impure Souls DVD, followed by the release of Blood Brothers on September 10, and Search and Destroy on November 12, with the final DVD, Eternal Damnation, released on January 21th of 2003.

In the US, the original DVD volumes were rereleased and specifically used the English Dub for the release, with the first one having to release on 7th of June on 2005, followed by Blood Brothers' release on September 6th and Search and Destroy's release on 1st of November respectively, and the final volume releasing on January 10th in 2006. Geneon collected these volumes into one single box set on August 6th of 2006.

These five DVD sets of the Hellsing titles, titled "Hellsing Rescript" was made to fix the problems made during the original production of the series. With the first volume of the Rescript Edition releasing on January 25, 2002, followed up by a second release on February 22nd, and a third release on March 22th, and a fourth release on April 25, and a fifth and final release on May 24th, all in the same year. Pioneer then collected these Rescript boxes up in a single Limited Edition special. Later on, these DVDs were later rereleased. 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.

After having rescued Hellsing after the defunct of both Geneon and ADV, Funimation re-released these volumes of Hellsing up in a single box which was released on November 13th 2012 titled "Hellsing Series (Classic)." In addition to the closure of ADV Films, Hellsing was rescued by Manga Entertainment who released a single box-set on 2013.

Comparison between the manga
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. The fight between Alucard and Anderson was shortened in episode 3 due to budget issues as Gonzo was a new studio at the time.

In episode 7 however, Gonzo decided to animate some parts of the first fight between Alucard and Anderson, which includes Alucard getting decapitated, and his regeneration afterwards. Seras also held Alucard's head in her arm before that happened. This fight however, was only exclusive in the anime and never happened in the manga, as in the manga, Alucard and Anderson met in the museum and the fight was interfered by Seras. In addition, Hirano possibly took some aspects of this fight in his manga, as events happened that parallels the fight between Alucard and Anderson in Volume 8 of the Hellsing manga, including Alucard shooting off Anderson's arm (part of his left arm in the manga), Anderson biting his bayonets only to rush forward towards Alucard.

However, there are some scenes that were faithful to the original manga, even more so than it's successor; most notably, the Valentine Brothers Raid on the Hellsing manor. While the anime didn't add Jan telling Integra the hint for the organization's name that ordered them to attack Hellsing, in Hellsing Ultimate, there were couple of new scenes added in, and an entirely reworked fight between Alucard and Luke Valentine. However, in the anime, it remained faithful and the battle between them was in a hallway.

Reception
Soon as it was aired, and during the month of November in 2001; Anihabara posted its monthly list of top Anime, in which, was based upon votes from viewers in Kanto region of Japan. In the list, Hellsing made its way to top 5 of the list, passing Inuyasha, Vandread the 2nd Stage, and is behind Najika Dengeki Sakusen. Later in February of 22nd of 2002, a list of top 20 televised anime in Japan was made by Anihabara, with Hellsing tying with Kasumin for 12th place.

The series itself was noted for having a tone that differs from the manga, with its elements of comedy being removed and a general focus given to the horror aspect of the series.

Author Criticsm
Hirano openly states that he prefers the OVA over the anime, despite feeling that the anime did well for "its purpose," he was clearly disappointed by it. His disappointment in the TV series, in which, openly disliking it led Geneon (Pioneer back then) adopting the policy of "respecting the original work as much as possible," thus the new Hellsing adaptation begun to be in production.

The casting of Nozawa as Anderson is quite controversial as Hirano himself particularly does not like the decision for him to play Anderson. Due to this, the new OVA casted a completely different actor for Anderson; with the website itself announcing "Brand new Anderson." Hirano stated that they change the part they needed to change, however kept voice actors that does not need to change; like Nakata as Alucard for example.

However, Hirano does like some aspect of the anime; like Alucard cocking his gun. Hirano also said that he's very much moved about his work being made into an anime.

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."
 * Because of the exclusion of the Millennium Organization, Walter C. Dornez never betrayed Integra and the Hellsing Organisation.