Manga: Hellsing Review

So I was the one in the high school group that liked pretty plotted manga that wasn't...

Okay, it wasn't Hellsing, basically.



If I could easily lay a plot for this story, I would. I think it basically goes like there's a cop, the cop is named Seras and she is killed, Alucard, a vampire, makes her his sire...

From them on, your guess is as good as mine...?

SPOILERS

Hellsing is one of those stories where there's a plot but there really isn't. I know that seems nonsensical but then maybe that's the point. Alucard is pretty much indebted to serve this woman, Integra (you know how most manga you look at men and confuse them for women? Integra was the first time I confused a woman for man) and I guess his duty is to keep errant vampires in their place.

Alucard himself is a bit of a nutjob, I have to say. I guess he's entitled to be as zany as he wants but when reading it I often found myself raising an eye at some of the shenanigans.

Kohta Hirano has a bizarre sense of humor and I often found myself confused by the stuff he'd throw in. Like, if you're talking to your friends, any number of subjects can show up. To this day, Alucard's dream about shock goth singer, Marilyn Manson manages to just puzzle me in the larger scheme of things...x.x

This story also had been a pain because of just how slow it localized. The one of us that collected it complained about this often and I often stated dryly the guy admitted that he spent most of his time jerking off (seriously admits this in his author's notes).

Grade: C+

This manga is one of the more difficult ones to read if you're looking for finesse. I actually stopped reading it for a time (still haven't gotten to the ending) because I was just sick of pages of just utter gore. Fine, maybe two pages of just violence but when I had to flip through almost six to seven pages of just hoards of creatures biting off soldier's faces, it was a bit too much (though I don't know if I'm biased, I do love Berserk)

The Nazi thing, admittedly, is also weird, as is the Catholic priest guy though I suppose clever...just still odd.

The saving grace of this manga, to me, is the moments. 'The moments'? I mean those moments where you're just like, 'wow, that's intense' or you're almost astounded by what occurs. One of my key favorite moments had to be where Rip was sitting on a ship with her gun, probably full of herself...and then Alucard comes with this huge jet and directs it right down at the ship. Rip freaks out and starts shooting and the ship becomes like a gigantic black ominous thing. It was just one of those scenes that made it almost doable to get through dozens of pages of gore.

Though admittedly I lost a lot of interest after that one army guy that liked Seras died :/ Then again, this is one story that would probably be stupid to get attached to characters.

Read the first three volumes before you pass judgment. While it wasn't