Hellsing Genre: Action Drama Bobo's Overall Score: 10

Reviewer: Bobo
Type of Review: General

In this day and age, most anime is becoming geared toward comedy and love stories, while straight-out bloody action is becoming less and less prevalent. "Hellsing" is a welcome treat to fans of "old school" anime from the early 80's - early 90's, where blood, violent, and all things sinful were the mainstays.

Set in modern day England, "Hellsing" tells the classic tale of humans vs. vampires with a nice scientific twist: these vampires plaguing Great Britain are being created by something called a Freak Chip, a little micro-computer implanted in their bodies. The Hellsing Organization combats these abominations, and now that things have escalated, they unleash their secret weapon: a true vampire named Alucard. After he saves young police girl Ceres Victoria by chaning her into a vampire, she too is brought in to the group.

The action is very very violent, especially in episode 10 where we see the first meeting between Integra Hellsing and Alucard. There's plenty of vampires being blasted in the chest and skull by Alucard's wicked handguns, ghouls being sliced to ribbons by 70-year-old Walter's steel wires, and innocent people being torn apart by undead creatures. There are also a couple of sexual situations throughout the series, the most prominent one being Sir Integra's demi-raping at the hands of a female vampire.

There are a small handful of main characters in this series, and most of them are given a good amount of development time. My only gripe was with Incognito, who was meant to be the main villain. He barely gets more than 3 1/2 episode's worth of air-time to get built up as a true threat to the world and challenge to the mighty Alurcard. Most fans will probably be more interested in the rivalry between Alucard and the Vatican's own secret weapon, Paladin Anderson.

But I'll stop talking now. Just go buy the series. Just go. Now. BUY BUY BUY!