Hellsing Ultimate: Volume 4

Introduction

Well that's it, that's the end of Hellsing Ultimate, or at least it is in English speaking territories for the time being. The thing is that Kouta Hirano is quite admirably taking his time with the manga, and following the comparative disappointment of the Hellsing TV series (which followed the manga until they ran out of story and then made its own ending up), the Hellsing Ultimate OVA series is sticking slavishly to the original story, with the animators following a strict schedule of it will be ready when it's ready. Volume 5 of Hellsing Ultimate has only recently been released in Japan. It now has to be licensed and dubbed for the US, before it can be brought to the UK. Given that Geneon, who licensed the first four instalments, has pretty much hung the closed sign on the door (which made dubbing this fourth volume a challenge in itself), we may have a lengthy wait for this story to be concluded. That's no reason not to savour this disc though.


Vampires exist, as do the legions of the undead, and the Hellsing organisation has been tasked with guarding the British Empire from their onslaught. The current head of the organisation is Sir Integra Hellsing, who inherited the position from her father. The ace card she holds is Alucard, a renegade vampire who fights for humanity against his own kind. If only vampires were the only problem they had. Britain is a Protestant nation, and Hellsing works for the Church of England, something that rubs the Vatican the wrong way, who have their own Iscariot organisation to battle the undead. The ideological differences between the two groups have them locking horns on more than one occasion, and while they are distracted, the vampires can feed. But while political infighting has been keeping the two rival groups distracted, a sinister power from the past has been reborn, and now the master race is calling the shots.

Previously, after investigating the attack on the Hellsing mansion, it became clear that it was more than just a random vampire attack. Undead Nazis were on the loose, and after recruiting the Wild Geese mercenary group to their cause, Alucard and Seras went to South America to search and destroy. Only they were expected.


Now, to face the Nazi threat, the Queen of England has convened a round table conference, inviting none other than the Vatican's Enrico Maxwell to sit across the table from Sir Integra Hellsing to share information and pool intelligence about the resurrected threat. They aren't expecting a gatecrasher. The cat-eared Nazi vampire Schrodinger appears, carrying a rather blunt message from the Major. He's declaring war on England, and the sound of vampiric goose-steps is getting closer. It's a chilling announcement but Alucard is already revelling in the destruction that is about to come. But there's no time for him to lick his lips. Even as the Zeppelin fleet draws closer to London, treachery strikes in the oceans. One of the UK's aircraft carriers, the Eagle has mutinied; or rather the officers looking for bloodsucking immortality have wiped out the crew and handed the ship over to the Nazis. Their new employers have an odd concept of gratitude though, when they send Rip Van Winkle to take command of the ship. Alucard has to deal with this immediate threat, but vampires and oceans aren't supposed to mix, and this could all be an elaborate trap. Meanwhile, the Vatican plots and manoeuvres.

Picture

Hellsing Ultimate gets a 1.78:1 anamorphic transfer, and it's a good one. The image is clear throughout, there's no signs of artefacts except around excessively noisy moments, NTSC-PAL conversion issues are practically invisible, and this is as good as anime transfers usually get. What usually causes trouble for anime transfers are misty or dark scenes, or a combination of the two, usually showing up in horrific colour banding. Hellsing is about vampires, it's all mist and darkness, but there are no such issues here, and the animation comes across brilliantly. This fourth disc is a single layer one, as opposed to the dual layer discs released previously, but it makes no difference to the quality of the presentation.


It deserves a good transfer too, as the character designs are excellent, the animation is vibrant and expressive, it's given the full OVA budget treatment so expect something a cut or two above the tight schedules and corner cutting of television animation. What you get here is moody, utterly stylish, and deliciously dark. Effective use of light and shade do much to establish the genre feel of the show, and broad distinctive outlines give it a unique character. And there is plenty of blood, gallons of it, arterial sprays all over the place.

Sound

You have a choice of DD 5.1 English and Japanese, but the DTS track has once again been dropped for this volume. There are optional English subtitles provided, but Manga Entertainment omit the separate signs track. Of late, Manga's releases have been nigh on perfect, it's just that one final quibble that remains. The sound is awesome. This is an action packed show; with an excellent orchestral score from the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, and the surround does it full justice. It's a vibrant, immersive track with excellent directionality for effects, dialogue and ambience. Unlike a lot of television anime that start off with stereo and then get glorified upconversions, this is a show that was sound designed right from the beginning. And yes, I still loathe the English dub.


If you can't live without DTS, then you will have to import from Region 1, but bear in mind that only the Special Edition of volume 4 has the DTS in the States, the regular edition does not.

Extras

There are a smidgen fewer extras this time around, but they are appreciated nonetheless.

There are two separate interviews on this disc, with the first seeing Ralph Lister (Walter) joining ADR director Taliesin Jaffe for 15 minutes, and talking about his career, his character and the show. The second interview is with Kari Wahlgren, covering much the same areas, with the added discussion of what singing in German was like. Both of these featurettes suffer from distortion at higher volumes, and are plagued with compression artefacts (thankfully absent in the main feature) but otherwise they are perfectly watchable,

The Production Videos last 7 minutes, although they are really just lengthy trailers for this volume.


The fourth Non Credit Ending is on the disc, although unlike the first three, this isn't a preview of the fifth instalment.

The disc is polished off with the commentary, and once again you have to select it through disc set-up, rather than the extras menu. This time Taliesin Jaffe joins Kari Wahlgren and Ralph Lister. There's some mention of the difficulty of putting together the dub for the fourth volume, after Geneon had effectively ceased to exist as a distributor in the US, but otherwise it's a nice, friendly, informative chat, striking a good balance between frivolity and information. It's worth noting that the audio was buggered for this track, constantly wandering between front and rear speakers, and eventually I was forced to turn the surrounds off and listen to it through my television speakers.

Conclusion

Hellsing Ultimate: Volume 4 is the darkest, bloodiest, goriest, most violent, profane, and gleefully psychotic instalment yet. Heads explode in graphic detail, this being a vampire story, there is the obligatory, languid sexual metaphor, and one character gets a lengthy death scene, tortured, tormented, made to look imminent demise directly in the eyes, before being feasted upon. And there's Nazis, goose-stepping legions of them. I love this show!


It's not the ideal pick if you're looking for a deep and detailed narrative though. It's very much a case of style over substance. But what unmitigated style! This is perhaps one of the boldest, most striking animations I have seen in a long while. It hits straight between the eyes with an aural and visual impact that leaves you wide-eyed and demanding more. The story, what there is of it, is supremely simple. You have your anti-heroes, Hellsing, a group of demon hunters who are almost as bloodthirsty as they demons they hunt, you have the villainous Nazis, who are revelling in the bloodbath that they are about to unleash, and you have the Vatican, utterly amoral in their divinity, playing both sides against the middle and just as bloodthirsty as the rest. Throw the three into an anime oven, bake at gas mark 9 for 50-odd minutes, and then be overwhelmed by the rich flavour.


With shows like this, you really are looking more for the moments than the story, the over-the-top characterisations, with scenery chewing performances rather than subtle nuances. Hellsing Ultimate gives you just what you ask for, and volume 4 even more so than the earlier discs. From the moment that Vatican secret weapon Alexander Anderson meets Alucard again in South America, you know you're in for a treat. It's a meaty, explosive reunion of two antagonistic killers, and Anderson is just there to do them a favour. The roundtable meeting in London is surprisingly restrained, given the antipathy that was shown between Integra and Enrico Maxwell in volume 3, but that's just the calm before the storm, when the Nazis arrive to deliver their declaration of war.


When the aircraft carrier is captured, we're introduced to Rip Van Winkle, the Nazis' lethal musketeer. She arrives to take command of the ship, and she begins by dispensing with the dead weight of the original crew. In a show full of scenery chewing psychopaths, she takes her mania to a whole new level, singing Nazi inspirational anthems as she reaps her targets. And when she runs out of red paint creating a swastika for the Third Reich's newest acquisition, she uses the most obvious alternative. Then there is the end of the show, with the undead Nazi Major's war soliloquy. That must have been a hell of a piece of dialogue to dub in either language, but it's delivered with such relish, panache and style, that it's the sort of thing anime fans will memorise and quote at each other at conventions. It's the anime equivalent of the Ezekiel quote from Pulp Fiction.


There is room for the quieter character moments as well, with Walter wondering why Alucard turned Seras into a vampire, and Seras finally getting her first taste of human blood, after three volumes of self-denial. It's the sexual metaphor moment I mentioned earlier, but it may as well not have been, leaving little to the imagination. This volume, like the first two gets an 18 rating, but for the first time I really do feel it's justified. This volume is nasty… In the best possible way of course. It does leave us at an annoying cliffhanger, with the master race of vampires poised to unleash their hordes on British soil, and Alucard stuck in the middle of an ocean on a burning ship. Someone needs to licence the subsequent volumes and quick, dubbing and releasing them in the West, as they are released in Japan.