Hellsing 8
Posted: August 7, 2007 Filed under: Hellsing 5 Comments »Ugh, I’ve been swamped at work the past couple weeks, which explains the light posts. I need to read these things, because they’re piling up, and apparently I’m being sent around $200 more manga (discount price! I don’t even know how many volumes that is), so I need to read this stuff like right now.
Some of it I’m not particularly fired up about, so I have to save things like Hellsing to read and break up the monotony. I’ve been waiting SO LONG for this volume. It doesn’t pay off in conventional ways. Let me be the first to tell you that the plot of Hellsing isn’t terribly good. But one doesn’t read Hellsing for the plot, just like one doesn’t read Stephen King’s books for a weepy “How Green Was My Valley” experience. This volume of Hellsing pays off with a really long action scene that takes up almost 3/4 of the volume.
THE BEST ACTION SCENE EVER.
I forgive the non-plot in this volume because Alucard finally shows up and just… kills everyone in the most spectacular fight scene in any manga ever. This was grandiose. There was a certain poetry in the way that all the random stuff happened to… lend Alucard more badassness than any character can handle. And Alucard can’t handle it. He turns into another character high on my list of badasses.If I had to pick a word to describe this volume, it would be badass. Yes. Not a whole lot of sense, and it really suffers from all the random elements, but badass enough that I didn’t care.
Also, what the hell, Kohta Hirano. The blatant reference was totally out of left field. I just finished that book about two months ago, and I don’t want the Harkers et al in my manga. I’m sick of them and their teary friendships.
[...] 6 of Nodame Cantabile, vol. 1 of Pita-Ten, vol. 1 of Gon, and vol. 2 of Disgaea 2. Connie reviews vol. 8 of Hellsing at Slightly Biased Manga. At PopCultureShock, Erin F. looks at three “goth-loli [...]
Ha, I just finished reading Dracula recently, too. Mina is very annoying. She’d done all that work on researching what’d happened to Lucy and didn’t recognize when it was happening to her? And didn’t notice a freaking bite mark? *eyeroll*
Mina was pretty lame. The part that really got me was the constant reaffirming of their friendships, but mostly this was done by Van Helsing and Mina. Towards the end, I don’t quite remember where, there’s a long-winded speech Mina gives on the topic, and then all six of the main characters burst into tears. That was about it for me.
*laughs* Yeah, there were /lots/ of long-winded speeches on the same topics. Here’s a blurb from my review:
“On the negative side, the women were irksomely fragile and pure-hearted and fond of lauding the bravery of the men. There’s a plot hole. What really made it drag, however, were the long-winded characters, particularly Van Helsing. There were a few speeches that he gave more than once, too.”
I think you hit the nail on the head with the part about the women. The speeches too, but especially the women. I literally could not handle too much of Lucy or Mina. I watched the Francis Ford Coppola version of the movie right after I finished the book, and preferred his slightly sluttier Lucy. Though I hate it when things deviate from the novel like that, it at least gave Lucy a little more personality than the totally generic one she had in the book.