hey can you give me a quick rundown of what hellsing is and how i could consume it? it looks super interesting based on all the images you've been relbogging lately and i wanna know more
I would be so very happy to!!!!
Hellsing was originally a manga by Kouta Hirano made in the 90s, and was subsequently made into two separate anime. The first one, also called Hellsing, was made before the manga was finished, so it improvises wildly (kind of like the ‘03 FMA). Some people love it, many people don’t. The second one is an ova series called Hellsing Ultimate, and it’s ridiculously faithful to the manga, almost frame-for-frame. I recommend that one highly.
The premise of Hellsing is that instead of killing Dracula at the end of Bram Stoker’s novel, Abraham Van Hellsing defeated him and took him as a servant of the Hellsing family. He tortured him with occult knowledge for years, until Dracula (now called Alucard, for some reason…) became the ultimate vampiric weapon, doomed to serve the Hellsing family for generations as their trump card against the supernatural forces of evil.
The latest Hellsing descendant is Sir Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing, literally the most beautiful woman and one of the loves of my life. Soon after the story begins, Alucard turns a young woman into a vampire, and she’s literally my girlfriend. Then, surprise! Disaster strikes! Suddenly they’re in this big-ass battle and it’s wild times.
I really recommend starting with Hellsing Ultimate; it’s really good and if you like it, you can read the manga and watch the original show. It’s kind of soul-crushingly depressing, but in a beautiful way. Each episode is an hour, but u will not regret it.
The animation style will seem very weird at first, but I PROMISE you will get used to it. Every single person who’s watched Hellsing has originally complained to me about the animation, but they all start loving it after like two episodes. You will fall in love with the family dynamic between Alucard, Integra, and Seras. The dub is ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE!!!!
There are a few goofy anime moments (weird dream sequences, mostly), and a few parts where one character’s titties are weirdly big. But there are so many female characters, and almost none of them are sexualized. There’s two women who are heavily implied to be lesbians, and one of them is heavily implied to be trans. Integra Hellsing is canonically half-Indian; one of the protagonists is a woman of color.
TW: GORE, body horror, violence, nazis (but no Holocaust mentions or antisemitism whatsoever), one mention of rape and two actual rape scenes. If you want me to tell you more about these warnings, I absolutely will!
Crunchyroll now has the first seven episodes of Hellsing Ultimate, as long as you log in and prove you’re of age (it is a very mature show). Otherwise, you can find them on youtube or Kissanime!!!!
PLEASE WATCH HELLSING AND COME YELL ABOUT IT WITH ME
