Hellsing 2
Posted: November 29, 2008 Filed under: Hellsing Leave a comment »I decided to re-read this series in anticipation of the 9th volume coming in the mail within the next few days, plus the fact I finally got ahold of the original 12-episode anime series and have been going through that. Re-reading the first volume did not do much for me, and actually put me off quite a bit due to the… well, the silly anatomy and just the weird and choppy pacing of the story (which may have been more obvious after watching the anime, where a lot more focus is given to Seras and her hesitation about doing vampire things). The art is still quite good, but I was sad to see the story just didn’t hold up after all these years. I think I liked it a lot less in the first volume because there were a lot of short one-shot chapters that could have used more story development.
I liked the second volume a lot better, though. Most of the volume was a story called Dead Zone, which was about the Hellsing mansion coming under attack by two vampires and an army of ghouls while the committee that runs England was upstairs meeting with Integra. The attack pretty much wastes the compound, but the reactions to the attack by Walter, Integra, and Alucard are still pretty awesome, especially since it seems like the enemies were having an easy time of it. The final confrontation between Integra and one vampire and Alucard and the other was also very well done. This is also helped by the fact the art is still very awesome and works best in epic action scenes like this, as opposed to some of the lesser confrontations in the one-shots of the first volume.
The rest of the volume is mostly for introducing the Millennium organization (the eventual antagonists) the backup guard/mercenary group Wild Geese, and for showing off Maxwell, who is still one of the most insane characters I’ve ever seen. I’m still in awe of him.
