Review by Ian Keogh
Hellsing concerns The Royal Order of Protestant Knights, the present day agents of an organisation founded in the British Victorian era to deal with supernatural threats to the queen and her subjects. In the present day Sir Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing leads the organisation, cutting a distinctive figure in her cloak and round spectacles, an image cultivated to reflect the past. The cover star, though, is Agent Alucard equally distinctive in a trenchcoat and a floppy hat, who confidently deals with ghouls and their vampire controller in the opening chapter.
As a worldwide phenomenon and among the best known manga of 21st century, Hellsing hardly needs our recommendation, but the key to that success is there in an extremely effectively handled and violent introduction on Kohta Hirano’s part. It establishes the supernatural hierarchy, the Hellsing organisation, and Alucard’s not entirely benign personality. He’s able to take terrible decisions devoid of emotion, which won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, and there’s no soft soaping the violence, which is delivered in gleeful slow motion exhibitionism.
As Hellsing continues, though, it’s discovered that little Hirano’s introduces is by chance, and while three introductory chapters are to be admired from a technical viewpoint, it’s with what follows that Hirano kicks into high gear. He introduces demarcation between Catholic and Protestant vampire hunters, where the cure is worse than the threat. There’s no hanging about in Hellsing, as the blades and bullets fly fast and frequently, and yet a charm exudes amid the bloodbath, with the only drawback an attempt to phoneticise the Scottish accent of the Vatican’s envoy, and that’s more likely to be down to the translation than Hirano’s original version.
Hirano ends with a connected single chapter focussing on other assets the Vatican has at its disposal when it comes to dealing with the supernatural. There’s a clever revelation, a truth about Catholicism that many adherents will find unpalatable, and more violence. Still, it’s only vampires at the hard end of the massacre.
Some potential readers could find the relentless slaughter not to their tastes, no matter how efficiently it’s drawn, but if that’s not an issue, more fun follows in Hellsing 2.
If you’ve heard good things about Hellsing and like the idea, there’s also a hardcover Deluxe Edition combining the first four volumes. It’s nicely designed, but expensive.
