|
Title | Volume 1
|
Author | Kohta Hirano
|
Publisher | Dark Horse Manga - 2003
|
First Printing | Shonen Gahosha - 1998
|
|
|
Title | Volume 2
|
Author | Kohta Hirano
|
Publisher | Dark Horse Manga - 2004
|
First Printing | Shonen Gahosha - 1998
|
|
|
Title | Volume 3
|
Author | Kohta Hirano
|
Publisher | Dark Horse Manga - ?
|
First Printing | Shonen Gahosha - ?
|
|
|
Title | Volume 4
|
Author | Kohta Hirano
|
Publisher | Dark Horse Manga - 2004
|
First Printing | Shonen Gahosha - 2001
|
|
|
Title | Volume 5
|
Author | Kohta Hirano
|
Publisher | Dark Horse Manga - 2004
|
First Printing | Shonen Gahosha - 2003
|
|
|
Title | Volume 6
|
Author | Kohta Hirano
|
Publisher | Dark Horse Manga - 2005
|
First Printing | Shonen Gahosha - 2003
|
|
|
Title | Volume 7
|
Author | Kohta Hirano
|
Publisher | ---
|
First Printing | ---
|
|
|
Title | Volume 8
|
Author | Kohta Hirano
|
Publisher | Dark Horse Manga - 2007
|
First Printing | Shonen Gahosha - 2006
|
|
|
Title | Volume 9
|
Author | Kohta Hirano
|
Publisher | Dark Horse Manga - 2008
|
First Printing | Shonen Gahosha - 2007
|
|
|
Title | Volume 10
|
Author | Kohta Hirano
|
Publisher | Editions Tonkam - 2012
|
First Printing | Shonen Gahosha - 2009
|
| |
Category | Manga
|
Warnings | ---
|
Main Characters | Alucard, Seras Victoria, Integral Hellsing, Walter, Vernedead, Alexander Anderson, Maxwell, The Major
|
Main Elements | Vampires, werewolves
|
|
Volume 1
There's a secret organization somewhere in England created to defend the Queen and country from monsters of all sorts. Enter Hellsing, an agency long in tooth, with the experience, know-how, and...er...equipment to handle the problems that arise when vampires, ghouls, and the like clamber from the darkness. "What equipment?" you may say. How about another vampire, souped up by generations of study and refinement, armed with a big pistol loaded with special silver bullets? That oughta do the trick. But was really knocks 'em dead is the sharp wit, awesome artwork, and crazy, bloody action that make up the manga. Hellsing, the long-awaited gothic graphic novel series that spawned the popular anime is finally in America, thanks to Dark Horse Comics and the folks at Digital Manga, and you're gonna love it. The night is dark, but at least those creepy anti-heroes from Hellsing can make light of it.
Volume 2
A world of murder and mayhem, political intrigue and religious conflict, monsters and undead heroes boils beneath the radar of regular existence. And it's bomb-grade business! There's the cute little police girl, Victoria, a recently turned vampire, who refuses to drink blood and become the real thing (but she's still a darn good fighter); the super swank super-vampire Alucard, who hasn't completely shown his abilities; and the old butler Walter, who's got some tricks under his trousers as well. This is but a taste of the characters killing and being killed in Hellsing, and the action is just beginning.
Volume 3
Vampires! Nazis! Bloodshed! Action! Add to that a healthy helping of sleek style and an exotic locale, and you have Hellsing volume 3. Our scant troop of vampire-killing vampires and mercenaries are planning a little trip overseas...to beautiful South America, in search of the elusive Millenium Project, an old Nazi organization with very secretive origins. It's the start of a war, and only time will show how nasty this war will become. But one thing's for sure, the vampire Alucard will make sure it gets off to a fitting start.
Volume 4
What do you get when the Nazis, sequestered in South America for generations, have engineered an army of vampires and are preparing for an all-out campaign of deathly dominance? Well, for one, you get a little unity. It seems the Protestant Hellsing Organization and the Catholic Iscariot agency might just have to think about teaming up. It's looking like the world's biggest battle of blood and fantsy is soon to erupt. Read about the next big arms build-up as the first World War of the undead is mounting. It's just heating up in Hellsing.
Volume 5
Intense and full of action, Hellsing continues its fevered pitch into a dark chaos that defies human logic. Human? Well, there are only a few left in the story line, as the emerging Millenium Project, an army of Nazi undead, is unleashed upon the world. What will surely ensue is a war of blood and nostalgia, with a coolly gothic style and increasingly frenetic pace. Envision the Hidenburg, old sharpshooter rifles, and throwback uniforms, mixed with new jet technology and incredibly bold vampires. Hellsing is piled to the sky with radical mysticism and scary apocalypse...and it's fun as Hell!
Volume 6
The war between three armies of vampires, humans, and those in between is in full swing. The Hellsing organization, under the Queen of England, ie embattled as London is falling to Nazi vampire forcesm, turning the city's citizens into rivers of blood and a population of ghouls. It looks like it might be the end of Sir Integral Wingates Hellsing and her henchman, Walter. But what's this? The Vatican? But that means the Vatican is unprotected. If you haven't figured it out yet, Earth is in chaos of a World War like no other. There's no telling how this will end, as Hellsing clamors foward with a seething with and a frantic pace, and style that passes beyond gothic grace.
Volume 7
What do you get when you mix reanimated Nazis, vampires, and freaky killer Catholics and Protestants breathing down each others' necks? In the case of Hellsing, you get an all-out, bloody war. Or such has proven to be the case so far. The world is engulfed in the flames of destruction, and all seems lost. Vernedead's "Geese" are literally being eaten alive, and it might just take half-vampire, Seras Victoria, a certain loss of innocence to provide a shred of hope. But that's not all this story hinges on. The vampire Hellsing himself will surely show at some point, and the Catholic Iscariot Army, a dreaded force, is also on the march. This is a situation of boiling blood, and it's about to burst!
Volume 8
London is already bathed in blood, its citizenry almost entirely slaughtered by vampiric, reborn Nazi soldiers. And marching through the rivers of blood - thousands of extreme Catholic warriors in creepy cloaks. But the focus of this chaotic eight volume is the return of Alucard, the slave-paladin of the British Protestants, who's just piloted an aircraft carrier up the Thames to join the fray. It's a crazy face-off between three gory armies and their primary killers, and if you think that sounds nuts, wait until you dive into the crimson-stained new volume Kohta Hirano's creepy-cool Hellsing manga series.
Volume 9
After Alucard's triumphant return, the streets of London were flooded with the blood of vampire Nazi soldiers and crazed Catholic warriors. After the dust settled, only the Hellsing order of Protestant knights was left standing. Now it's up to the earthly agents of divine punishment to save the souls of the innocent. However chaos soons engulfs the streets yet again. As it turns out, not all the Nazis were vanquished after all. Will Alucard and his allies have what it takes to save what is left of the city? Earth-shaking destruction and gore-soaked supernatural battles fill the pages of this dark and creepy-cool manga.
Volume 10
L'ultime combat entre Alucard et Walter touch a sa fin. Le Furher voit son plan aboutir et la disparition du vampire millenaire semble ineluctable. De son cote, Victoria doit vaincre un loup-garou surpuissant pour retrouver et soutenir sa maitresse, Integra Von Hellsing! D'une maniere ou d'une autre, cette guerre qui puise ses origines soixante ans auparavant s'achevera avec la nuit, et le soleil se levera sur un genocide inegale...
The artwork - I thought it was gorgeous, except where it devolved into the doodles of a sexually frustrated male teenager (including the extra bits at the end...I had to roll my eyes when there was even a fart joke thrown in). Though for what it's worth I probably wouldn't have put as much thought into all the work that must have gone into drawing the rest of the manga if it weren't for the terrible doodles...they weren't even chibi doodles, which all manga have, they were...Beavis and Butthead quality. I always cringed when those little asides occurred, though the appearance of the actual Baron Harkonnen (from Dune) in a dream sequence made my inner nerd all happy. However, the rest totally impressed me.
The plot - Protestants in England fighting Catholics in Rome, with 50-year-old Nazi vampires tiggering an all out World War (well, we don't see much outside of England though something is going on in America too, presumably the whole world was affected). There was a lot of blood, and fight scenes, and corpses being eaten. I'm not all that great following action scenes in books, let alone in the choppy way mangas have to present it, so I could skim through those pretty quick. It was pretty brutal and violent, and that teenage boy peeking through with a fair number of boob jokes (poor Seras...), and really, really, absurdly big guns. But I knew what I was getting into at the start, just read the volume summaries above, and it's easy to skim over the bits that are too much.
The characters - You know, I mainly read manga for the pretty bishie boys, especially if they have wings. Alucard doesn't have wings, and he's a little too crazy-eyed to be considered bishonen, but surprisingly, I got really attached to a female character. I usually don't, but Integral Hellsing is the awesomest female character I've ever run across probably in any format, not just manga. She dresses in a suit, smokes cigars, wears glasses (as the manga artist himself noted at one point, most of the characters actually wear glasses), and is the toughest character of them all. I could see how the most powerful vampire in the world would be willing to serve her (it's not entirely clear if it's voluntary or not, but it appears to be, him taking actual pleasure in forcing her to decide when he should release his powers or not, thus the guilt of those deaths are technially on her...Alucard, though our protagonist, is not actually a good guy, he's just a bored monster playing a game to pass the time...the quote on his coffin about the bird of Hermes, Google it, it's an interesting interpretation of the character himself). And of course Alucard, crazy, brutal, psychotic, but also fun and snarky. And really, if you can't figure out who he really is, you're not reading his name close enough, though the section where that "twist" was exposed were kind of cool actually. And the best part? Not a teenager in sight!! Everyone here is an adult, many of them are actually downright middle aged or older. Don't run into that too often, so much manga/anime has teenage protagonists at their core.
I had a lot of fun reading this one, though I had my gross out moments, but those two main characters are really gonna stick as some of my favorites. Fortunately there are two animes based on this manga for me to enjoy even more of them, so far the older of the two series seems to be changing the core plot (no Nazis??) but I'm only a few episodes in so we'll see.
|