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| From http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/lt/hellsing.jpg |
Series Director: Yasunori Urata
Japan
Work #29, for Monday 29th October, for Halloween 31 For 31
Horror is not as prevalent in
Japanese anime as I think it would be, despite the ease and creativity animation
could give a creator, in its vast catalogue. Even the well known aspects of
Japanese horror in cinema – from Ringu
(1998) to body horror and splatter – are not as vastly replicated in
animated form despite the prominent amount of horror stories in manga. When straight-to-video
works known as Original Video Animation were prominent - opposite to the
traditional use of the term in that, excluding terrible examples, they were usually
well (or incredibly well) animated and allowed more adult or experimental
content - horror anime was more common, the bizarre one-offs and short form
adaptations of manga mixed which genre works which were far more bloodier and
gruesome in content. Even after the Japanese economic bubble crashed, and
killed off the more experimental works, the 1990s still had OVAs and a great
deal of them which were still gruesome or horror related in tone, going on to
laserdisc and DVD later on. Without the concerns of censorship a TV series
could suffer from, and the time and allowance to be different in content, the
OVA allowed the distinct type of horror in Japanese culture, of the
supernatural to the manipulation and distortion of the body, to exist
prominently, blending into other genres, such as the versions of The Guyver before the live-action
films. Bar the few exceptions, including Hellsing
Ultimate (2006-ongoing), the more faithful to the manga reinterpretation
that followed the series I am reviewing, the OVA is less prominent and has left
a huge gap for the kinds of anime that can exist including the horror ones. There
are TV series in the genre, but not that many; for more examples actually exist
in hentai (pornographic anime), taking advantage of the lack of restrictions
because of its porn content to include horror, but since I’ve seen none of them
I can thankfully dodge the topic of how uncomfortable mixing violence and sex
could be. Most of the existing horror works, as mentioned, are usually blended
with other genres, Hellsing as much
of an action series as well as horror.
Set in an alternative England,
the thirteen episode series follows a secret government organisation that destroys
vampires called the Hellsing Organisation, lead by Sir Integra Hellsing. Their ultimate
weapon is however a vampire named Alucard, who along with a penchant for red trench
coats and desiring a good vicious fight, is also a lot more noble, more
powerful and more psychotic than most of his peers and vampire lowlife, making
him a perfect tool for the organisation. With Seras Victoria, a policewoman
turned into a vampire by Alucard who has to deal with her new undead life as a
member of the force, the organisation has to deal with a swathe of artificially
made vampires over the country, attacks on their headquarters and the Vatican
approved vampire hunting organisation wanting to reclaim Protestant England
back.
Upfront, this version of the
original manga by Kouta Hirano is flawed and is the product of the often
fragmentary nature of a lot of Japanese anime. The art form has a history of
series and works which are left unfinished, or ending up with multiple versions
and contradictory ones, pockets of dimensions, spin-offs, versions without
endings, and parody spin-offs to make the late Kurt Vonnegut’s head spin. Some were designed only to interest
people in the original manga, a concept that doesn’t translate to Western anime
fans when said manga isn’t released over here. Some were financially stalled, had
producers who closed down, or were unsuccessful in getting any sequels
commissioned, leaving abrupt and unfinished conclusions to them. A few, like
this version of Hellsing, were
started before the original manga was actually finished, catching up with what
the author has completed and leaving the anime creators to create new story
shifts and endings. This version of Hellsing
had to design and thread a new plot into the exiting material, starting off
following the original story but by the halfway line ending with a new
conclusion and new villain. In the more faithful version of the manga, without
spoiling too much, it involves the Third Reich, as you do, while this version pushes
a new plot involving artificially made ‘freak’ vampires. In thirteen episodes
only, it can feel abrupt when plot strands and characters are introduced
throughout and end in single episodes. This version has been viewed as immensely
flawed, and there is also the factor of the studio that made it, Gonzo, who
were known for making great looking works before their bankruptcy and being remade
into a smaller studio, but were also notorious for anime fans for erratically
toned and/or incompetently put together anime. I have thankfully avoided most
of their worst work, and I will actually defend some of it, but the erratic
tone is obvious in Hellsing.
Nonetheless, I will argue this
version of Hellsing is not that bad.
It’s flawed but as I will continue in this review, it has its virtues. While it’s
been years since I saw it, Gonzo made a vampire series that they still need to
be all punched in the face for in Trinity
Blood (2005), what started off as an interesting if silly blending of
vampires and science fiction but, if one was to show the progression to the
final episode on a graph, would make a perfect straight line down into god
awfulness involving space vampires. Once it gets into its stride after the
first few episodes, Hellsing on the
other hand starts to become more and more better. It is a standard, gun
fetishising, action work with horror and the amount of strong gore acceptable
for TV, but the black humour and giddy tone of the whole thing is clear and
engaging. It is ridiculous, and with an anti-hero who is very sadistic, grazes
on the ceiling of political incorrectness and is very edgy, but as a
reinterpretation of Western vampire lore and British culture, I have to admire
this knowingly lurid and revealing series. As an Englishman, I love the fact
that the original source, from another country, was playing with my culture and
had done their research too, whether it’s our obsession with form and
presentation to the divide between the Catholicism and the Protestantism in our
history as shown in two episodes. Despite the need to create its own ending,
the creators managed to keep the original tone of the original manga and
managed to make it a solid series. Even when it occasionally recycles scenes
from previous episodes in the last ones, it manages to still have an immense
punch to it.
In terms of the depiction of the
British, I decided to view this series for this season with its English dub
instead of the original one. For the most part, I listen to the original
Japanese dubs for anime unless they are not available. English dubs when I
still watched anime with them on could be incredibly stiff and lifeless, and
anime’s history is littered with some of the worst dubbing and voice acting in
any medium. But for Hellsing I
wanted to go back to the English dub both for nostalgia and, as a story set in
England, because it was decided that the cast should be voiced by mostly
British voice actors. Some incidental characters sound wooden, and at first
American actress K.T. Gray, voicing
Seras Victoria, wavers a little in her accent in the beginning episodes, but
after a while, as Gray gets into
character fully and very well, the decision to have British voice actors, with
an English script that clearly had more British colloquialisms and our creative
use of swear words added to the material, turned out to be an inspired one. A great
example of this would be British born actress Victoria Harwood as Sir Inegra Hellsing, who backs up her words as
the leader of the Hellsing Organisation fully just in Hardwood’s voice.
One of the biggest reasons why
this series, and the concept, still succeeds is the personalities of the
character which the English language voice actors flesh out as well. The main
character Alucard could have been terrible, a vampire whose abilities means the
character could have been too powerful for there to be any risk and danger to
be felt by the viewer, and with a sadistic streak that could be off-putting,
but the sense of charisma is clearly prominent in him, both in look and how
voice actor Crispin Freeman manages
to convey him in voice. The same can be said of all the major and prominent
characters, even the villain introduced near the end who isn’t from the manga,
all having a distinguished look and personality to them that, while hyper stylised,
makes them distinct. Regardless of the plot focus, the characters are treated
with enough respect to make the material still work. It also emphasises that
the original author Hirano in his use
of Western culture goes as far as drawing upon archetypes and pre-existing
characters for his own. Helen McCarthy,
one of the most prominent British authors and speakers on anime, on an episode of
the American podcast Anime World Order,
suggested that Integra Hellsing was a concoction of a Gerry Anderson character and Emma Peel from the TV series The Avengers (1961-1969); the sense
that Hirano managed to tap into the
British concept of the stiff upper lipped, tough and charismatic women of our
pop culture who are fetishitically sexual but still strong is clearly obvious. That
he went as far as calling a weapon in the series the Harkonnen, kept in this
series and the later OVAs, after a character from Dune says a lot about how he meshed together entertainment with
legend.
The other aspect that helps the
series immensely, and makes it worth seeing, is the great music. Beyond the use
of Mr. Big’s Shine, still the least conventional choice for an ending theme for
an anime that yet works perfectly, it is very varied and well made, adding to
the bipolar mood of the series. It is probably one of the most distinct
soundtracks I’ve heard in a while, one that doesn’t fall back on J-pop and
incidental music but tries to be unique to the show.
All in all, the series is far from the
best but it still stands up well and is far better than a lot of fellow series
that failed miserably (like Trinity
Blood), possessing a distinct style to it that would pass on further with Hellsing Ultimate, far more faithful,
far more violent and far more perversely humoured than its predecessor, but is
yet to be fully finished or released in the West as of yet. Until that changes,
I am glad to see that this version, one of the first series I owned before my twenties
and never reopened until this season, was still good. It did concern me with
the first three episodes, the worst of the whole series, that it would turn out
to be a disappointment on a re-viewing, but after them it manages to be
something of immense merit despite Gonzo’s reputation and the flaws it has.
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| From http://tu.tv/imagenes/videos/h/e/hellsing-zombie_imagenGrande.jpg |
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