Hellsing 5
Posted: November 30, 2008 Filed under: Hellsing 2 Comments »Two things happen in this volume. Alucard lands on the ship Rip Van Winkle has commandeered, and London is invaded by Nazis. Both are truly epic in every sense of the word. If there’s one thing that this series does right, it’s take things way over the top in the most stylish and powerful way possible, even if that doesn’t always make a lot of sense.
Rip Van Winkle’s story parallels that of “Der Freischutz,” which the story explains as her role unfolds. Well, maybe just the ending parallels it, I don’t know, but she sings the songs from the play and fires magic bullets, so that’s good enough for me. They keep mentioning that she’s a werewolf, but I’m a bit sad she doesn’t get to use her supernatural powers other than her bullets. That’s okay, because she has an appropriate reaction to Alucard consuming an experimental jet with his being and crashing it into a battleship at mach 3, something none of her subordinates quite grasped the severity of.
Aaaaand… the invasion of London. Once again, the Major has a nice speech, and he really does know how to make an entrance. The invasion is, again, one of the most epic things I’ve seen in a manga. He sends Zorin out with an invasion force to the Hellsing compound with a warning not to take Integra or Seras Victoria lightly, but something tells me Zorin is just going to disregard him. I’m not sure how she does it, being a human and all, but Integra is truly terrifying and somehow manages to hold her ground in any situation. She scares me more than Seras and Walter combined, maybe only a little less than Alucard.
I’m going to read the next three, but since I’ve alread posted reviews of them here, I’ll leave any other comments go until I get volume 9 on Monday or Tuesday. I THINK that’s the second to last volume, and I’m pretty excited about reading the ending even though the story sorta kinda dissolves after awhile. Of course, I think YKO runs about a year behind for graphic novels once the installments have appeared in the magazine, so for all I know there’s two more coming. Either way, I’m definitely looking forward to the end.
I honestly don’t know what’s happening in Hellsing anymore. At this point, with the recent publication of volume nine, I’m thoughtlessly buying them from some dim rememberance of how good the early volumes were. It seems to me that half a decade has passed since the release of volume seven. The chubby lead nazi with the bad flop hair style has a collection of androgynous freaks that I’ve lost track of (is the tattoo woman still alive?) The last two books have been a blur of action, which is good because — that’s why I read manga; action and violence. But the art is too cluttered with black ink and close-up action. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve stared at a panel wondering what it is I’m supposed to be seeing; it’s even worse when Alucard transforms into his black-mass-of-dog creature.
Are there really only two volumes left? That’s kind of sad and releaving at the same time.
I have Hellsing and Trigun linked forever in my head, but both have the same problems as far as… really bad and/or confusing plots and nonsensical action scenes in what should be a really awesome series. I think Trigun is a little worse about it because it tries harder at everything and fails, and the extra effort makes the failure somehow more. Don’t get me wrong, I love Trigun, but I have almost literally no idea what has been going on in the past several volumes, or at least since the last time Wolfwood was around.
Hellsing is a little better, if only because its plot is much simpler (they just love fighting), but even reading the volumes back-to-back didn’t help some things. I didn’t have too much a problem with the characters that went out and fought, like Rip Van Winkle and the Tattoo girl and the Wolf Boy, it was the two characters that never left the Major’s side that confused me the first time through because I could never remember who they were. Maxwell and the whole Catholic war thing still doesn’t make any sense, nor does Anderson a lot of the time in the later volumes, but he makes a little more sense than Maxwell. I kind of hate that the vampire powers are so ill-defined too, because that makes it a lot worse as far as what’s going on in the fights.
I still really want to read volume 9. Knowing that there’s only a couple more volumes makes me forgive it a little more for the problems.