Hellsing Ultimate

A few people may remember a short, pseudo gothic,13 episode vampire anime series a few years back called 'hellsing'. It had a steady cult fan base but was in the essence of things good, but not really great. It seemed doomed to obscurity with no more material to work from into the latter half of the series, which then free-styled off onto a tangent.Fans were disappointed, an ultimately anti-climactic series with no real reverence for it source material.

last year things changed and a phoenix rose from the ashes in what can only be called anime 'history'. Most failed series are laid to rest and never mentioned again like a past you want to forget, but not with kouta hirano. His labour of love was to have his vision realised in animated form and so we get,true to its name,'Hellsing Ultimate OVA' this series unlike any other gives us a viewing experience we could only dream of, with episodes now feature length ova's with lush quality animation and production values out of the norm for short anime series. From the artwork to the dialogue, everything about the series reeks 'quality'. Its almost scary how very close it comes to being exactly like the manga it is based on. The music is 'epic' and sound is superb.

This is so unlike the old t.v series that it's beyond even funny! To those not familiar with hellsing the manga is probably, well actually IT IS the darkest graphic novel you are ever likely to read. Sure it has moments of mild humour which Japanese love, but in the grand scheme of things it is genuinely unsettling how close to being an evil villain the protagonist assumed to be 'good' really is. In short Alucard a vampire hunter,but a vampire himself works for & protects humans (you can see where characters such as Dante from devil may cry were inspired :p), the hellsing organisation a secret organisation set up to obliterate any supernatural threat to the protestant British empire. Protestants (Hellsing) Vs Roman Catholic Vatican (Iscariot Organization,Section XIII), Modern day Nazi bad guys, these are elements of the content in the series. No spoiler here, but needless to say, if you like blade,devil may cry, cool anime with action, extremely mature and 'cool' dialogue that isn't cheesy, a serious and dark storyline, a proper depiction of a modern day vampire (and believe you me, the way alucard is depicted has set the standard of what vampires should truly be about :D). this series is not Bram stoker 'dracula' re-told, or Dracula 2001 or anything you've seen related to vampires. GET READY for an anime that will literally blow you away! Overview: MATURE CONTENT, SCENES OF GRAPIC VIOLENCE AND OF A SEXUAL NATURE (Although you'll be surprised how little there really is :D). OVA (Original Video Animation) - Feature Lenght, High Budget, High Quality Anime. One 'episode' per DVD but it's Worth it since it's like watching a mini film based directly of each consecutive manga.

(Bare in mind i am not usually a big fan of vampire related anime or overly violent anime but this anime charms the audience in a way never thought possible. This anime has in essence the truest 'anti-hero' in the definition of the word. ENJOY!)

I'll re-add this as it was supposed to be in the first place.

Hellsing OVA follows pretty much the same plot as the TV series did. Alucard, a powerful vampire who is working for his master Sir Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing and her organization, is killing vampires and their minions known as ghouls. Pretty much all Japanese voice actors are back in their roles. I have to say that I liked the original TV series. The OVA, I believe, follows much better the manga, though I've never read it. This anime is almost ridiculous few times. Now, at times, there isn't much that separates this one from many other flashy trying-to-be-a-lot-at-the-same-time animes.

CGI have been used a lot now and therefore it basically looks better, but the art isn't always looking that great. It's not as simple as it was back in the old Hellsing, and there's some new styles and techniques and such, but at times it could look a bit better. Actually sometimes it even lacks stability and dimensionality on characters. If you don't like computer effects in anime, you might not like this one since there's lots of them. One of those things that make this OVA kind of ridiculous is the huge amount that those computer effects are used. There's also some weird lines, and few things the characters do are somewhat ridiculous.

Alucard seems to talk more, but where in TV series he was cool and you saw that he was powerful, it's now usually stated by others that he is a powerful vampire. I guess that this time the new team tried to make him somewhat deeper, but if they succeeded is pretty much flickering. This time he isn't such a mystery and there's as soon as in the first episode much information revealed about him. Still he is pretty much the same Alucard, which is great.

It's not totally hopeless anime, I have to say. If you are going to watch this, I think you should watch all of the 13 episodes of Hellsing ("Herushingu" 2002) before that, so that you could see what is different and what kind of anime that was.

The soundtrack unfortunately isn't even near the original ones soundtrack. It's not that bad, but the old Hellsing had a great one. This new Hellsing seems to rush some scenes a bit, and in good and bad it's very fast going. However, OVA gets much more interesting when the series goes further and there's new stuff, something you couldn't see in Hellsing TV series. But whether you are a Hellsing fan or not, this is still a piece of work to check out.

Not being familiar with the older 13 episode series, then I had no expectations for this series. I sat down to watch it with a clean slate, so to speak. Was told that it was a really great series by an acquaintance, so I decided to give it a go.

I will say that the art style is somewhat different from the Manga that I am used to watching, but it wasn't bad. I liked the style of art in "Hellsing Ultimate", it was dark, it had an edge and it was nicely rendered. Smooth animation and interesting characters really helped the series along.

"Hellsing Ultimate" has a lot of blood and violence in it, so it may not be suitable for all people. Just a word of warning. I, however, did enjoy it. The vampires here were brutal, devilish and beastly - read not having big hair and sparkling skin.

The characters in the series were nicely thought up and well put to the screen. However, I think that they could have made the episodes longer and given the characters a chance to show their personalities and nature more on the screen. Given them a chance to delve into character development, as some of the characters were a bit shallow and could have benefited from a more in-depth presentation.

There was a lot of jumping between the episodes, in the sense that there was an red thread in the storyline, but individually the episodes were a bit too skittering and 'flash bang'. By that I mean, it was all great, action-packed and full of blood, but once one episode was over, the next would skip entirely to something else.

One thing did puzzle me, well it is just me being petty, but why did everyone speak Japanese? It didn't make any sense that people from the Vatican or South America spoke Japanese, or that the Nazis spoke Japanese. But hey, it was a Manga animation, so it was easy enough to bear over with that.

Having seen this new series, it sort of sparked an interest to get a hold of the old series and check that out as well. The 2006 "Hellsing Ultimate" series was great entertainment and it well worth checking out, for both newcomers to the Manga scene and for avid fans alike.

Hellsing the OVA Series is a brilliant piece of work.

It follows the manga much better than the original anime series, although the soundtrack to the original was brilliant, so is the OVA's.

Alucard is more deep in character than the last time and so is Anderson (even more so,) and many scenes that didn't make the anime appear in the OVA.

The graphics outdo the original series (and most other animes for that matter,) as they utilise cgi in important scenes. The same voice actors from the original show are here, along with a few new ones.

overall, i recommend this to any and all Hellsing fans.

The new Hellsing OVA is a much better adaptation of Kouta Hirano's manga in comparison to the original 13 episodes. This OVA closely follows the intended storyline of the manga with better animation. If you're a fan of the manga, then chances are you'd enjoy this OVA much better than the original 13 episodes which featured shoddy art and animation techniques with a storyline that had very little to do with the manga. This OVA was an amazing visual experience in the realm of new age anime. The character development is much better on the part of Seras and Integra than they had been in the original anime. The fight sequences are nothing short of amazing. This remake is entirely better than its original and stays true to the manga that Hirano has created; it is most definitely a recommended watch.