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 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 at 1999, the Organization 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 England and plans to bring ruins and destruction to all there is... by summoning a Wicked God.

Music

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

Production
An adaptation of the manga series Hellsing was in talks around 1997 (before Volume 1 was released), and Hirano's involvement in the series itself was very little as he himself doesn't know anything about anime making. 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," is made to be the opening of the series. In a slight contrast, Mr. Big's "Shine" is used as the series' ending theme. Three variations of ending was made. For the animation, Hellsing mostly utilizes Cel shaded art, however in many cases; teams would resort to using digital art. 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.

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 was later given to dubbing companies to let them know what type of show they're buying the rights to. 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 were eventually used in the main episodes. 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 mimmick English words.

2001 marks the year wehre 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 studio however was put into trouble as the manga hadn't even finished yet, so in response, Hirano let them 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.

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.

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 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.

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)."

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.

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.

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. Soon later in February of 22nd, a list of top 20 televised anime in Japan was made by Anihabara, and Hellsing tied 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
Although it did well with audiences in many regions due to its unique style, one particular criticism came from Hirano himself.

Hirano openly stated 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) adopted 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.

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.