Disaster Report: Hellsing
There are few things more thrilling for a manga fan than to
see one of their favorite series make the jump to television. It’s not just the joy that comes from seeing
the story and characters you enjoyed previously come to life, there’s also the
delight of new viewers becoming new readers and fellow fans and the occasional
satisfaction in seeing these adaptations become critical, if not commercial
successes. More than a few of us are
enjoying this feeling right now as we watch this season’s adaptations of The Ancient Magus’ Bride and Land of the Lustrous. That being said, for every successful
adaptation there are countless others that simply miss the mark. Few of those shows can be said to be as
disappointing as the 2001 anime adaptation of Kouta Hirano’s Hellsing.
Hellsing is the
story of the Hellsing Organization, a secret military force led by the steely
Sir Integra Fairbook Wingates Hellsing.
Her goal is to protect England from both supernatural forces and the
ever-present threat of the Catholic Church, all in the name of Queen and
Country. Her secret weapon is Alucard,
an immensely powerful vampire who takes no greater delight than doing battle
with what he sees as lesser beings. He
is assisted by Seres Victoria, a former policewoman turned vampire and Hellsing
operative, as well as Walter, Integra’s butler and master of the garrote
wire. Ultimately all of their skills and
strength are put to the test when a mysterious figure known as the Major
unleashes an army of supernaturally enhanced Nazi ghouls upon England,
resulting in an orgy of psychedelic violence that threatens not only London but
the world itself.
Hellsing is not a
terribly deep work as far as manga goes, but there’s something irresistible
about Hirano’s commitment to outrageous action pieces, wild leering faces, and
the occasional bit of oddball or morbid humor.
It certainly worked for me, as it was one of the first manga I ever read
and one I still enjoy to this date. It
was popular right from its start back in 1997, so it’s not shocking that four
years later it would be picked up by Studio GONZO for a single season of
anime. The problem was only two volumes
worth of manga had been published by the time the anime went into
production. Worse still, there was no
overarching plot to tie them together, as Hellsing’s
story didn’t properly start until Volume Three.
Then there was the fact that Studio Gonzo was working on
it. While they were nearly a decade old
at this point, they were still relatively new at producing anime on their own
and were already garnering a reputation for shows that started to drag visually
and narratively after the first few episodes.
Still, they were bringing in some talented staff, including Umanosuke
Iida, who had previously the majority of the Mobile Suit Gundam: 08th MS Team OVAs. They also hired Chiaki Konaka as the main
screenwriter, who was at this point known for his work on Serial Experiments Lain and The
Big O. Perhaps it was thought that
their talent could compensate for the lack of source material and any animation
shortcomings. In retrospect, their
presence would be something of a mixed bag.
Hellsing is at its
strongest when it sticks to the books.
All the notable moments from the first two volumes are there: Seras
Victoria’s rebirth as a vampire, Alucard’s initial fight with the supernatural Vatican
priest Alexander Anderson, the flashback detailing how Alucard became Integra’s
servant, and the assault on Hellsing Manor by the vampiric Valentine
Brothers. Even when stretched out
generously, though, these stories only covered half of this show’s thirteen
episodes. The rest of the time is spent
on Konaka’s original content, and when it makes that shift the show’s spirits
sink.
Konaka was a talented screenwriter in his day, but you would
have to work hard to find a worse match for this sort of material than him. People like Hellsing because it’s outrageous, irreverent, and positively gleeful
in its ultraviolence. In comparison,
Konaka’s additions are too serious, too small-scale, too dull and too dreary to
mesh with the other half of the show. In
any other show, these stories would be mostly mediocre; here they might as well
be boredom incarnate. Things do ramp up
near the end as he tries to tie it all together to a conspiracy involving
“freak” chips, an army of artificial vampires, and a creation known only as
Incognito, but it simply can’t compare to the glorious, gore-ious heights of
Hirano’s original work.
Of course, the character design for Incognito doesn’t help
things. Seriously, look at that
thing! That’s not a vision of horror,
that’s a rejected design for a minor villain from one of the lesser Dragon Ball Z movies! The only thing more ridiculous than this character
design is how the entire show ends.
Quite plainly, it doesn’t. While
Incognito is defeated in the end, none of the questions about who was
controlling Incognito or making the freak chips are ever answered. Even if you enjoyed the original content for
some reason, this move has to feel like an insult to injury. I can only guess if this happened either
because the staff was confident they would eventually get a second season to
address them or simply didn’t care at that point. I’m not sure which option is worse.
It doesn’t help that the show doesn’t really know what to do
with its main cast. They certainly have
no idea what to do with Walter or Alucard outside of battle, so the former is
barely seen and the latter mostly monologues to himself. Integra spends most of the show on the
sidelines before she ends up getting turned into a damsel for one of her
vampires to save. While she’s not
entirely helpless, it’s quite the unpleasant change from the determined, cool
and intelligent commander that I so greatly admired in the manga. The only character who gets any sort of
improvement is Seras. She’s rather
neglected in the manga outside of her relationship with Pip Bernadotte, but
here the writers try to turn her into a protagonist and give her a proper
arc. She struggles with her transition
into undeath, as well as her confidence as a soldier. There are even some feminist undertones
thrown in, as we see time and again how men on both sides of the conflict
underestimate Seras because of her looks and gender. While they drag out her indecisiveness a
little too long for her and the show’s own good, she grows enough as a
character to reach a mildly satisfying conclusion, arguably the only one to be
found on the entire show.
The visuals are just as uneven as the writing. It’s clear that GONZO didn’t have much money
to spare for the animation and had to spread it thinly outside of the more notable
action scenes. It goes out of its way to
frame conversations so as to avoid showing a character’s mouth (and sometimes
their faces) to avoid having to animate lip flaps. Walk cycles are noticeably jerky and fights
can shift on a dime from fluid animation to barely animated, Photoshop-heavy
stills. The show tries to compensate for
the garishly bright color palatte of early digipainting by washing out the
color palattes of the human characters and making the show as shadowy as
possible for maximum moodiness. This
ended up backfiring, as the end result ended up looking washed out and muddy on
DVD and only rarely captures the rich shadows and wildness of the original art. Later high-definition releases the color issues to some degree, but not enough to save the show. This
is a production that’s simply not capable of capturing the original manga’s
style nor capable enough to forge one of its own.
The most frustrating thing about the show is that it’s not
completely incompetent. There are quite
a few stylish shots and sequences scattered throughout, particularly in the
early episodes and in the finale. The
score, created by the experimental rock musician Yasushi Ishi, is full of
jangly, sleezy tunes that are a delight to listen to on their own. It was one of the rare shows where the dub
and sub voice casts are equally good, which is saying something considering how
excellent the original Japanese voice cast is.
Jouji Nakata lends a certain stateliness to Alucard, Yoshiko Sakakibara
gives Integra the sort of stern authority she needs, and Fumiko Orikasa makes
Seras sound sweet and youthful but never childish or ditzy. That’s a tough act to follow, but ADR
director Taliesin Jaffe was more than up to the task.
He not only cast actors who matched the original in pitch
and timbre as possible, but went the extra mile in casting actual English
actors in many of the major roles. It
lends the proceedings a bit of verisimilitude, and in particular I could listen
to Victoria Harwood’s low, smooth, Cate Blanchett-esque performance as Integra
all day. Of course, the real standout
was Crispin Freeman as Alucard. He was
already established as an anime voice actor when this dub was originally made,
but back then he was known for lighter, more comedic roles such as the title
character from The Irresponsible Captain
Tylor or Zelgadis from Slayers. Here he goes all out, performing the role
with gusto and lending Alucard a growliness that is equal parts threatening and
alluring. This dub is quite frankly
better than such an uneven and dull show deserves, and it stuck with anime
watchers long after the show fell out of print.
Despite its failures, Hellsing
got something that most bad anime adaptations don’t get: a second chance. It seems that Geneon was aware of both the
show’s popularity in the West and the frustration fans felt over how the story
was handled. That was why the Hellsing Ultimate OVA series was
launched in 2005, which would adapt the entire story of the manga beginning to
end and bring back the dub cast people loved so much. While that series is not without its
criticisms, it managed to better capture the charms of the source material and
bring them to life, thoroughly overshadowing its predecessor in the
process. These days, the Hellsing TV series is nothing but a
faded shadow of itself, one that is remembered only as a dud if it is
remembered at all. While I feel that its
notoriety is somewhat overstated, I do believe that it is best to leave this
series to rest in peace.
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