“Hellsing”, written and illustrated by Kouta Hirano

 

144–208 pages, Dark Horse Manga, ISBN-13: 978-1593070564 (Volume 1), ISBN-13: 978-1593070571 (Volume 2), ISBN-13: 978-1593072025 (Volume 3), ISBN-13: 978-1593072599 (Volume 4), ISBN-13: 978-1593072728 (Volume 5), ISBN-13: 978-1593073022 (Volume 6), ISBN-13: 978-1593073480 (Volume 7), ISBN-13: 978-1593077808 (Volume 8), ISBN-13: 978-1595821577 (Volume 9), ISBN-13: 978-1595824981 (Volume 10)

Hellsing is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Kouta Hirano that chronicles the efforts of the mysterious and secret Hellsing Organization and its top agent Alucard (Alucard? Hmmmmm…there’s something fishy ‘bout that name) as it combats vampires, ghouls and other supernatural foes who threaten Merrie Olde England, and brother, is it a hoot. See, way back when, Abraham Van Helsing founded this thing called the Royal Order of Protestant Knights, which is now run by Integra Fairbrook Wingates Helsing after the untimely death of her father. When her uncle tries to hunt her down and kill her before everyone else knows the old man is dead, she flees to the basement levels of the headquarters where she comes across a desiccated corpse; uncle’s minions catch up with her there and, during the gun fight, Integra is injured and some of her blood lands on the corpse…which forms into the vampire Alucard (Alucard? Alucard. Al-U-Card…), Hellsing’s ancient secret weapon, for he is an undead monster who fights for Hellsing against the other undead of the world. He saves the girl and starts a new era for Hellsing as more adventures follow after this (told ya it was a hoot).

The layout is like it was in Japan, so the book starts with what would (in the West) be the back cover and you read it from the back to front; the comic panels and word bubbles are also laid out right to left on the page, which took a little getting used to but wasn’t too hard to master; strangely, most of the sound effects are still in Japanese, even though the dialogue is all translated into English (it’s easy to imagine what the sound effects refer to – sword slices, guns firing, feet creaking on floorboards, etc. – it’s just a little weird to have Japanese letters all over some frames and not know what they mean). As one reads this series, it becomes evident that characters aren’t really important to Hirano – nor, come to think of it, is logic. All he cares about is the art, which is, it must be said, pretty spectacular in a black-and-white ultraviolent sorta way. These drawings are almost enough to make you forget that you are reading a mish-mash of contrasting genres in which Alucard (?) and the Hellsing Organization fight-off the fifty-years delayed invasion of Britain by a Nazi army of vampires and werewolves AND the Iscariot Organization (also known as Vatican Section XIII), an arm of the Roman Catholic Church (Kouta helps us to distinguish between all of these characters and their loyalties through the use of heavily-accented English).

Back on March 5, 2019, I reviewed the 9-Volume Manga series Arm of Kannon by Masakazu Yamaguchi and said that “if you like your entrails rendered with anatomical specificity, Arm of Kannon might be your cup of tea. Anyone in search of a coherent plot or sympathetic characters, however, is advised to look elsewhere”. I feel as if I should say the same for Hellsing…but I just can’t, as I enjoyed this series so much more than Kannon. Perhaps it’s because, for all of the violence and the bloodshed and the incoherence and whatnot, there’s a certain oh, I don’t know, joie de vivre to the series (if that’s the right way to describe a violent metaphysical Manga series). I can just see Kouta having a blast drawing Nazi werewolves fighting English knights and Catholic agents, logic and plotting and characterization be damned. This series was weird, but fun, damnit, and I almost want to read it all over again just for the hell of it…OH! Alucard! That’s “Dracula” spelled backwards! My, aren’t we clever.