Manga 267 Hellsing

There's two parts to Hellsing. Broken up into ten volumes, the first seven really feel like they are the setup for the final set of three volumes, and I draw this line also because it creates two distinct parts to the series. The first seven volumes could be seen as the first two acts of the Hellsing Story.

The first act really helps define who the principle characters are, with a focus on the protaganists. There's Hellsing, the leader of a religious order, Alucard, the vampire who serves Hellsing in fighting against monsters (mainly vampires), and Seras Victoria, a police officer that ... Alucard turns, and is now brought into the war between the Hellsing Order and the monsters.

Hellsing as a manga lives and dies on those battles between Alucard and eventually Seras as Vampires. In Act one it's mostly random vampires to let readers understand the heroes of the story well. however the battles are well drawn. Hellsing's fights are well designed and drawn. It's effortlessly to tell what's going on, and there's large scale action in almost every fight but drawn in such a way readers will never lose focus.

Act two mostly involves Hellsing learning of the "Millennium" and from there finding out who is behind that group and eventually what their motives are. This fleshes out the story, and starts to build pieces of a great conflict. I'll avoid spoilers on who the enemy but they are easy to hate, and the story is well designed.

Like I said, the first seven volumes of Hellsing are great. Fantastic action, great characters, interesting battles, and a story building to a great purpose.

The problem is Act three is the finale where the development of the story and characters pays off. And unfortunately it's also where Hellsing loses me. While the art is still good, the battles are a quite a bit harder to follow, almost every character just gets random powers that are neither explained nor given relevance other than "It's super cool", and while the art still is incredible, I don't really feel like I want to read the final 3 volumes again. I much prefer the first 7, and would just read them and stop there.

The thing is, Hellsing is about this super cool vampire who takes down monsters. A character that had been developed into a bad ass character in those early volumes. He has powers, and likely some limitations but the final three volumes spends most of it's times just throwing new powers for every character into the world just to make the battles as big and epic. That would work, but none of these new powers are explained or defined, and none of them are interesting enough to be worthy of the huge power creep. Instead of having Alucard deal with the challenges and limitations they've imposed on him up to that point those final volumes are just trying to be as super-cool-awesome a finale as can be, and sadly it tosses aside almost all the development of the world and characters to do it.

I'd give Hellsing probably a 9 for those first two arcs, they were really well done and made me excited to see how the series ended, but that ending is so weak, the rating for the series drops sharply. I end up giving Hellsing a 7. A good but not great manga.

It's a pretty meh manga all things considered. I don't consider Hellsing as a horror (if it was intended as one it failed in that department) and is more just a straight up action and it's.. okay I guess. Feels visceral enough but because the characters are vampires and ghouls they have an annoying ability to keep coming back to life no matter how much punishment they take.

There's not really much a storyline which is a shame because the whole Vampire Van Hellsing thing has a lot of potential but it doesn't really live up to much. If you just want a manga with ... some vampires and mindless action Hellsing might be okay for you but if you're looking for something more it won't scratch that itch.

After buying and reading Hellsing in the hardcover edition, I felt that this series is very average. I have two major issues with this manga. Hellsing is an action manga, there is really not a lot of plot, the majority of the manga are action sequences. A good action manga usually needs some kind of character development. However, this manga does not have a lot. The main character Alucard is the most powerful character from the very beginning of the manga, he never met any real challenges throughout the manga. Thus, there is a lack of excitement when he wins. The only character who ... has some development is Seras because she is a new vampire.

Furthermore, I had some issues with the panel layout. Some of the action sequences are very confusing to me. There are times when a battle finishes, I don't really know how the battle is won. Going back to reading it again still doesn't help. I had to guess what really happened. The power of the characters was very abstract, there is not a lot of explanation, and I had to use my imagination most times. In the end, I felt this is a mediocre manga. People who read this as a kid might feel differently.