The sunlight thing is actually another callback to the original Dracula novel. Where sunlight did not destroy him but merely weakened him to a normal human state. The destruction by sunlight was an addition later by the movie nosferatu

In the original vampire lore, vampires can go out in daylight, they just have no powers during it. The idea that the sun burns vampires comes from the German film Nosferatu, which was trying to make things arbitrarily different from Dracula to skirt copyright laws. And I say "original" loosely, because actual vampire lore is wildly inconsistent itself, varying from region to region and time period to time period. Hell, in some versions of "original" vampire lore, vampires are associated with wolves and people who are bitten by vampires become werewolves, not other vampires. Still, if you're going to make a point of telling the newbie vamp not to go out in daylight, you should probably not have her go out in daylight. It raises too many questions. And that'll get Jim Carry's Riddler on your case.

Hellsing Ultimate is better, but Hellsing gives a funnier review x). Now that we started with vampires, can we end October with Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust?

How do you know you're old? When people only remember the OVA. And it's never a good idea starting an anime on an unfinished manga. Right, Gantz?!

Surprising Trivia: In Bram Stoker's original Dracula novel, sunlight didn't hurt the vampires. It would only turn off their superpowers for as long as they remained in light.

Watch Hellsing Ultimate instead. It has Nazi Vampires and one of the best villain speeches ever!!!!!

I never seen the original Hellsing, but Hellsing Ultimate was great.

Hellsing exists for one reason only: To show Alucard being a badass. Whether or not you enjoy it really comes down to whether thats enough for you as there really is nothing else to it. That said: Hellsing Ultimate serves this purpose too and is just an all around better show.

I loved the old 'Hellsing' back in the days, but 'Ultimate' made it something we don't need anymore, except for the cool soundtrack.

At the start: Was Alucard out for a walk again? "Because we never find out who's pulling the strings." Naziiiiis~~ In Bram Stoker's take, vampires are debuffed and depowered in sunlight, but they're perfectly able to walk outside during the day.

Team Four Star cameo or we riot. Edit: Hah, first 5 flippin' seconds! And on the subject of branching out, congrats to the engineer for landing the role of Soundwave on the new series. I'd tell him myself but I avoid twitter like the plague on principle. Edit edit: New bet: this is going to end with the sound of glass breaking, Alucard singing some kind of jaunty jingle a la Deadpool, and Bennett running for the hills.

TEAMFOURSTARS CAMEO OH MY GOD

I never even knew I was waiting for this. And now I will wait for Hellsing Ultimate.

I will say this: I prefer the anime's soundtrack over Ultimate's. I'm a big fan of jazz, and this style of music gives the Hellsing series a unique identity. I also love the Opening theme and the ending theme. This anime was also my introduction to the Hellsing franchise, as I used to watch it on TV late at nights, so it has a special place in my heart. But everything else was done a million times better in Ultimate, so there's absolutely no reason to watch this series.

I think we can all agree on 2 things. 1. That was a hilarious HUA cameo 2. The music is still the tits

"If that's the case all of us gonna be vampires by 2020" well that's another one on the apocalypse bingo

Anderson is Scottish...

Hellsing TV has indeed become irrelevant. Though back before Ultimate was even a thing, this anime was a holy grail among anime fans that you COULD NOT criticize. It's an anime that flopped in Japan, but was beloved in the rest of the world. It was dark and edgy, had a great soundtrack and the character of Alucard and Anderson were way cooler than the anime they were put in. You couldn't go around message boards at the time without being smothered in fanart of this series. It didn't help that the manga was in a constant hiatus atmosphere that would put Hunter x Hunter to shame. And with the manga not being as readily available as it is today (good old days of fan scanlations), the series by itself got a somewhat mythical status, right next to Berserk (Yes, that Berserk). It's only when the first Ultimate OVA proved it was leagues above the TV series that people stopped treating the tv-series as the next coming of Jesus.

The anime of Hellsing is heavily flawed, but I still do believe it has it's perks. Fantastic soundtrack, heavy gothic atmosphere, and it served it's purpose to introduce me to Hellsing. Hellsing Ultimate however has better voice acting (by that point the actors were more comfortable with the characters) a better villain, and fantastic animation and art style. However that's not to say Ultimate is perfect, it has it's own problems. Many problems. But it accomplishes what the anime tried to do but does it better.

Hmm, I find the idea of "selfmade" vampires still interesting, especially to the arrogant and monstrous Alucard. I think Gonzo tried to create a story about power and what people will do to achieve it. I mean there are a lot of scenes, where people talk about how immortality is awesome and Alucard shows how far gone you can be as a human. Powerful stuff. The problem? The show ends abrubtly and in the end they should have cut down on the plotpoints, either writinng Incognito or Anderson out. In hindsight, they could have turned Anderson in the leader of the freaks, since he already was an enhanced Supersoldier with regenerating health. Would have made as much sense as Incognito and we would have gotten our Alucard vs Anderson way earlier. Oh well. I still like the Atmosphere and the idea behind Alucard as a mixture between lovecraftian monster and arrogant bloodsucker.

I tried to watch Hellsing with my fiancé (now wife) a few years ago, because it was her favorite series growing up. We couldn't watch it past the first episode and I'm pretty sure she's not as nostalgic about it anymore..

I don't hate vampire characters in fact some of them i find them really cool (DIO brando, Remilia and Flandre Scarlet, Demitri Maximoff, Alucard from Hellsing, Slayer from Guilty Gear,etc) but dear god i HATE Vampire STORIES, mainly because they just became glorified sexual fantasies with dumb and bland teenagers, and with the vampires not even looking like one, even Vampire anime is like that too (With some going WAYYY TOO FAR like Diabolik Lovers)

Yes vampires can walk in daylight. They aren't destroyed they are just weaker in sun and need to rest in the soil of their homeland. Read Bram Stoker.

When does Hellsing Ultimate hit the cutoff point? It's got flaws but it's focused. And stupid fun.

Yeah about the Integra stabbing herself trying to die but not die thing... It's one more dumb inconsistency the show has about vampire lore. If I recall she literally spills the blood because "it's impure." It's literally the suck the poison from the wound method x 11. I hate that I remember this detail but it pissed me off so much when I first watched this series that it stuck. Thank God for Ultimate.

Hellsing has a god-tier OST.

Your hate for vampires mirrors my hatred for zombies.

The only thing not mentioned that I think is important. Right after the Valentine Brothers invasion, Hellsing tv anime goes off script. They caught up to the manga and then created their own storyline. Hence everything before alluding to a grand shadow puppeteer and everything after not making sense to that narrative. The only scene still left from the manga was the flash back of Integra finding Alucard as they had skipped it.

Hey! I like Hellsin...Oh. The original TV series? Nevermind. Go on. lol

You reaaaally cherry-picked that Picard clip. Leaving out entirely how far he'd been pushed until that point, how out of character it was for him, and how much he'd, uh, been through? At the hands of the Borg? When he was assimilated? Furthermore, it's pretty clear that Integra is a very emotional person, but that she has learnt that to be taken seriously you have to adopt the calm, logical, 'manly' approach to things. I'm not apologizing for Hellsing the Series, but I do think that character is one more the better parts of it. When she bleeds herself, it's to reduce the ratio of impurity, under the logic that a blood transfusion of human blood could keep her human before things are irreversible. It's still magic logic, but there is thought behind it.

8:56 Macross 7 beat you with space vampires, and the movie lifeforce.

Hellsing Ultimate is waaaay better than Hellsing Tv.

The sole writer and script supervisor for this anime was Chiaki Konaka. Best known for Serial Experiments Lain and Texnodepression. Usually he's a strong writer, but he was NOT the right person to adapt something as goofy as Kouta Hirano's writing.

I'm with you, Sage. I'm not really a fan of vampires. I'm more of a werewolf person myself. It's a shame there are not many werewolf animes out there.

So to save some time, here's where the review actually starts:4:26

Incognito and the entire Set thing were tacked on by the anime's writers as filler. This is product of the manga being at barely 2 volumes in (!!!) when the anime story was written - episodes 1-3, 5-7, 10 are adapted from the manga, while 4, 8-9 and 11-13 are "ORIGINAL FANFIC DO NOT STEAL". In the manga it's established that vampires aren't harmed by daylight but it does weaken them (Alucard simply finds it unpleasant). The part about Integra trying to kill herself (or whatever was the point there, presumably "drain the venom" or such nonsense) was a framing device added by the anime's writers. In the manga the flashback constituted majority of the chapter, with a small epilogue between Seras, Alucard and Integra (who was simply reminiscing about those events). However, Alucard's remark was arguably in-character for him. The notion in the manga seems to be that he respects willpower and determination to fight despite any odds, while detests those who trade their humanity for shortcuts to power.

Ah Pet Shop of Horrors! A Locomotion Classic

“All of us are going to be vampires by 2020 thanks to Apple!!” That aged well 🤣🤣 I love your reviews

I've been waiting for this for so long.

19:02 Well..........between those two scenes *a lot* happend to picard. He got assimilated by the borg, made a prisoner into his own body by them, did atrocities. He has nightmares ever since about them. I can forgive the fact that he used his smarts to disable the safety from the holodeck, conjured up a tommygun and *saved someone* by killing one of them *since phasers don't work on the borg.*

This is what happens when you mess with the crimson fucker...... wait just the first version? Ok then, continue on

Hellsing is eh, Hellsing Ultimate is fun, Hellsing Ultimate Abridged is EPIC!!!!

This anime is pretty special to me. It was one of the first anime's I ever watched as a teen, my best friend had the entire series on dvd and we would watch it together. And we absolutely loved all the characters and Intregra became one of my favorite female anime characters. It's also one of the first anime's I watched in english and I think the dub is amazing.

The one thing that we can say about the original show is that the music in Hellsing is spectacular

The story is always irrelevant to my opinion on any work of fiction. Vampires not going out in Sunlight was invented in 1922, it's BS and I wish more Vampire fiction would drop it. Dracula does out in the Sun all the time in Stoker's Novel, same with Camrilla, Ruthven and Varney.

Hey Sage please review SD Gundam Force.

Yes, I've been waiting and wondering if you were ever going to do Pet Shop of Horrors and now it's going to be the next episode, Thank you so much.

Saying hi in 2022, I hope to see a Hellsing OVA review from you soon! I think it’ll blow you away !!

Props for the correct pronounciation of Vlad Tepes :D Awesome review, as usual

I think Sage you should try Hellsing Unlimited a better adaptation. Along with Team Four Star Hellsing Abridged Series both are better than the actual original series. Which honestly the manga is way........................... *13 hours later* ............ better then the 13-episode series we got.

I was fully expecting a knock and a cliffhanger by the end. You disappoint me Sage.

Yessss I'm so excited for the next episode!

"That didn't hurt Full Metal Alchemist..." HO-ho. Agree to disagree I guess, because FMA's original ending and last few episodes were a cluster in my opinion.

BITCHES LOVE CANONS! And also...HOLY SHIT! PET SHOP OF HORRORS!

I really enjoyed this review.

Thank you for referencing my favorite quote from Dead Alive.

What, you mean a story that started out its life as a hentai turned gorefest isn't deeply invested in developing a well-thought-out, coherent and compelling plot?

“I hate vampires” whelp, that definitely proves that our tastes definitely do not match up.

The manga establishes that Alucard and by extension Seras are immune to sunlight, but it's still carelessness since the anime left that line out

What I got was Integra stabbed herself so that the vampire's blood inside her will come out. She wasn't trying to kill herself, just trying to get the vampire's blood out so she won't turn. The doctors wasn't curing her vampirism, they were treating her blood loss from preemptively stopping herself from turning.

But Hellsing Ultimate is good tho

While I did sorta like this as an edgy teen, yeah I can admit it’s pretty bad. After reading most of the manga and watching Ultimate, it absolutely feels irrelevant. Seras’ charm is about the only saving grace, but there’s pretty much no reason to ever go back and rewatch this. Necromancer edit: the OST is top notch, worth watching for that alone imo

I am very curious now to hear Sage's thoughts on Ultimate. Both in how it fixes things from the anime - the sunlight thing and a more coherent plot for starters - and uses vampires both as disposable grunts for gory action set pieces, but also as intelligent demons, while taking the characters and fleshing them out *significantly* and having just an overall more jovial action shlock tone. And not an accidental tone either, but really leaning into it and having fun with it.

"You demonic vampire bitches!" sounds like something Frank Miller would write.

Hellsing was pretty much just Hirano wanting an excuse to draw cool stuff and re use character designs from the various hentai manga that he did.

Not to sound like a vampire know it all, but the original Bram Stoker novelDoes have Dracula walking around in the daytime. Is powers are weakenDuring the daylight hours so he prefers to stay underground.

Good have you back

Great intro to October

Did you forget to mention that Hellsing and some of their characters started off in hentai one-shots?

Awesome anime, especially Ultimate.

OMG you're gonna review my favourite manga series as a kid! Pet Shop of Horrors is beautiful and the creatures it take from real mythology and uses them in such a bizarre setting as a pet shop is incredible. (I look forward to seeing you destroy the OVA :3)

Great intro!

I never saw this but I did see the reboot hellsing ultimate and based on what I just watched here I made the right choice. i'll take Nazi vampires over what ever the hell this is

Hellsing, the manga and OVA, is very, very good at two things: style and spectacle. Style is the only thing the TV series has going for it, and even that is derivative because of the minuscule animation budget. It doesn't have the direction or writing of Berserk, because the source material's writing is...well, not great. Yes, I know that'll be downvoted, but it's not the greatest written series by a long shot. Alucard is this walking god who needs a contrivance to get him away from the action to up the stakes, the villains are extremely one-note (They're Nazis. Literally.), and vampire powers get really inconsistent. At the same time, I don't care because the spectacle of Hellsing Ultimate is such a freaking blast. Dracula crashes an SR-71 at Mach 2 onto an aircraft carrier controlled by Nazi Vampires and a musketwoman constantly singing Wagner. The entirety of the fight within London just keeps topping itself in terms of scale. It's an exercise in doing some of the most ridiculous things possible. All of these things are completely lacking in the TV series. It's why it's almost completely forgotten.

Oh man sage you got me excited to hear what you have to say about Pet Shop of Horrors I love that ova very underrated IMO love the twilight zoneesque twosts

now that's cool sage, when you gain the friends to make intro like that

Yes the original hellsing sucked but the ova Hellsing Ultimate was awesome

Hi poyo!!!

Cool for using hellsing abridged in the intro

I squeed out loud when Bennett held up "Pet Shop of Horrors!" I love that anime and I was hoping he would review it!

Seras was one of my first anime crushes.

Just watch hellsing ultimate.

Yooo you got Megami33 for this? Hell yeah autosubscribed

Now I'm hoping you do either a review or an Oldtaku New Tricks on Hellsing Ultimate

The Hellsing TV show has some music tracks ("If You're Going To War, Fight With Bow" even became the ending music for an OVA)

8:40 Now we know who was responsible for the Vampires in this show, THE PATRIOTS!!!!!

As someone who's only seen Hellsing Ultimate, this review shed a lot of light. holy shit, glad they remade it, but Ultimate still seems... out there.

Boy am I glad you said. Certainly for me holding a low opinion of Hellsing was not a common attitude when i first viewed the serie. Yea having your first episode of Alucard being an invincible badass was to be expected but then every episode followed the same trend. Humans outmatched by powerful confident villain. Confident villain faces Alucard who non-nonchalantly eviscerates what we were assured was a powerful villain. Humans comment in awe of Alucard's power, dying villain comments in awe of Alucard's power, Alucard waxes poetically about his own power. Repeat repeat repeat. The show is an unapologetic a power fantasy for the angsty weeb. Even more so than most as it also throws away the shackles of morality as a soul eating vampire. Whom by necessity must face the only villain that can make him look good by comparison, Mega Nazi Vampires; and even then ultimately Alucard was worse. For a moment I thought I could forgive everything when Alucard "died" at the end, even if it was just a "maybe, maybe not" death. A dignified way to spell the end. But NOPE. We actually end the series with Alucard somehow becoming even more overpowered on the quantum godlike level. AND becoming infinitely more of an asshole; having achieved this feat by destroying the millions of souls he has devoured (most innocent mind you) over the course of his unlife. Amazing.

It is really surprising how Gonzo managed to stay in business to this day.

Hellsing is old enought to be on Anime Abandon? Oh god I am getting so old *sob* Well they do not follow the manga. But let's get real here: following the manga would not have helped. The manga gets really bullshit.

Ever since Animerica's review of Hellsing, I've waited for this day... Thank you, Bennett! You've truly made my uneventful day worth it! Edit: also, waiting with baited breath for the day you review Blood-C! I eagerly want to see how you judge Saiya as a character.

I have long awaited the day that hellsing would grace this channel

And that's why I prefer the OVA series. It's waaaaaaay better than the now below average TV series.

Ah, Pet Shop of Horrors... I dunno whether or not that's "good" or "bad", really... Trying to teach moral lessons through pets? Eh... may not work so well if the lessons involve bloody death or illusions or whatever making a pet RABBIT look like their dead daughter... because reasons. But yeah, much as Hellsing was one of my "gateway" anime, it really isn't a good one...

this review gets a seal of awesome right out the gate. I am glad you are friends with the guys of Team Fourstar, Ben and hope the friendship last a lifetime.

Of all my top quasi intellectual KZfaq celebs, Bennett has my favorite mispronunciations.

Meh, fair dues, but I still absolutely adore Hellsing, while I honestly find Hellsing Ultimate pretty unwatchably cringeworthy. Say what you want about consistant story, but I find the original to be many times more entertaining with the atmosphere and the direction they were vaguely aiming with that broken story. With Ultimate? Nazi Vampires, catboys? I just can't get into it. Enjoy what you will and I'll enjoy my stupid bloody vampire killing goodness.

God damn. I haven't watched your content in a while, Sage. So I was caught off guard when I saw how much weight you've lost. Great going, man. Keep it up!

Regarding the comment at 12:54, while those are tropes they are *not* how the vampires of mythology functioned. If it had gone to become the series planned (Rather then Hammer going belly up) _Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter_ (1974) would have taken those tropes thrown them under the bus and ran over them a few times to make sure. Fact of the matter is in the original novel Dracula was out in the daylight; him turning into a crispy critter was something added by the movies beginning with Nosferatu (1922). gurps.wikia.com/wiki/GURPS_Blood_Types gives a snapshot of just how rich the vampire mythology actually is.

"Yes Sage, you did." - English lit. major