Hellsing (anime)

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

- Hellsing's Moto

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 organization 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 organization, 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.

Episodes

 * Order 01: The Undead
 * Order 02: Club M
 * Order 03: Sword Dancer
 * Order 04: Innocent As A Human
 * Order 05: Brotherhood
 * Order 06: Dead Zone
 * Order 07: Duel
 * Order 08: Kill House
 * Order 09: Red Rose Vertigo
 * Order 10: Master Of Monster
 * Order 11: Transcend Force
 * Order 12: Total Destruction
 * Order 13: Hellfire

Style
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 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 - created off-model characters. These were fixed in the DVD release of Hellsing fortunately. Surprisingly, even tho 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; most of it are jazz. 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 has a personal art preferences, and that Hellsing is one of them and he's always careful about being faithful to the original character designs from the anime that he's working on.

Deadline Issues
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 inconsistency with both Alucard and Integra's design; which, they seem to overdetailed them both, which led to some of the most creepiest looking Alucard 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 to many believe that Gonzo had a completely different artstyle in their mind, which would explain the inconsistency and the overdetailed characters.

Catching up to the Manga
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 many 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, 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 to create 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 that led to further Hellsing adaptations coming to a halt because of the manga not finishing, as such; a season two is likely not possible.

Differences
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 was 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 is badly damaged and Alucard standing infront 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.

Similarities
However, there are some scenes that were faithful to the original manga, even more so than it's successor; most notable, 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 the organization, 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.

DVD
the anime contains 4 DVD's. Each one of them has Special informations including concept arts, creditless openings and endings, magazines, weapons, ect.


 * 1) Impure Souls
 * 2) Blood Brothers
 * 3) Search and Destroy
 * 4) Eternal Damnation

Character Designs
Colored=


 * -|Not Colored=

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.

= Hellsing: Psalms of Darkness =

Hellsing: Psalm of Darkness is a trailer for the Hellsing anime series. It features some scenes from the manga and even features Millennium at the end, showing the Major, the Doc, and The Captain. Despite this, the anime would follow a radically different storyline, implying that Psalm of Darkness was developed before the deviation from the manga was decided upon.

Characters

 * Alucard
 * Integra Hellsing
 * Seras Victoria
 * Enrico Maxwell
 * Alexander Anderson
 * Walter C. Dornez
 * Luke Valentine
 * Jan Valentine
 * The Major
 * The Doctor
 * The Captain