Hellsing Ultimate OVA 1

[DB]

Basically a remake of the early parts of the Hellsing anime. It picks up with Integra inhertiting her birthright and Victoria's turning. Ends with everyone's favorite angry Cahtolic, Andersson, in a fight with Alucard and roughly ends there with the promise of more.

Nice artwork, and in some ways far more together and fluid (almost too fast in some ways) than the original series, which had its share of problems. No real Hellsing redshirts to die in massive numbers for one thing, and none of the irritating wannabe villains from the early parts of the series either, aside from the motorcycle pair, who are only there to get Celes used to being a vampire.

Basically, if you liked Hellsing, you'll probably like this. I give it a 5 out of 10. Worth watching once, but I'd seen it all already, so it really didn't impress me, though I thought it was better than the original series.

[thepanda]

Another view on the show.

I've heard that the Helsing OVA is supposed to draw more strongly from the manga than the original series. The artwork certainly does seem to suggest this, as does the inclusion of the manga-ka's strange flavoring of comedy. That's there, too.

But honestly, this is ground that we've covered twice already. The TV show didn't really begin to differ from the manga until the Valentine brothers showed up. This being as it is, I cannot really comment on the plot. You've seen it before.

The manga-ka's artwork doesn't really translate well to video, I'm afraid. The animation is a bit hockey (I guess so the artwork could remain pretty detailed). The story moves along at neck-breaking speed. In a way this is a good thing, as it allows us to get to the changed parts quicker. But as a stand alone episode its just bleh. Bad. Having seen it done before and done better really does spoil all the 'cool' that the show was going for. For which the show was going? Meh, whichever.

The show lacks style compared to the TV series. It just doesn't have nearly the goosepimpling kick that I'm used to from Helsing.

The most damning thing of all, though, is that they changed the soundtrack. Instead of the heavy rock/jazz awesome that we've come to expect from Helsing we get orchestras.

... Yeah, pretty much my reaction, too.

I couldn't honestly tell you if the new music is good or not because my mind remains focused on that one HUGE missing element that moved the first show up from average to awesome. It just isn't the same, or even a reasonable facsimile there of.

I give it a four out of ten. The pieces just don't come together very well. We've seen it done much better, and heard it done FAR better.

[Dracos]

DB's words are kinder than my own.

I basically saw something that if I hadn't already known hellsing, I wouldn't have been able to follow at all.  It leapt all over the place and generally left the whole 'motivations' thing completely out of the picture.  Additionally, I didn't feel that  the Alucard-Seres foils existed this time around.  In the last anime attempt you had Seres trying to hold onto her humanity, the conflicts that arose between her and alucard during alucard's attempts to get her to rise to a free vampire taking place in this backdrop.  You also had a Seres who was more of a human with powers for the beginning parts, taking time to adapt.  Here, you don't have anything of the sort, so the scenes with them are without context and it doesn't really feel like the interplay between them works.  The haste left a lot of things making little sense.  Such as the absorbtion into Hellsing and her acceptance of such, both done without any explanation.  The new uniform coming out of no where and bearing no discussion by anyone.  DB's right also, there's no sign of the rest of hellsing.  Hellsing in the tv series was humans with a few aces.  Here there's nothing but aces.  The ultimate undead thing didn't...really seem right either.  If they were, why was he locked up to begin with?

I'd say it's  not worth watching unless you're a major fan of hellsing to begin with.  It'll seem too incoherent.

Dracos

[DB]

DB's words are kinder than my own.

I think part of it is I was never all that thrilled with the original series, so this didn't really disappoint me. It's not like I had high expectations.  Alucard's uberness was just wayyyy too much for me to take, and the lack of a remotely interesting villain, combined with the pure incompetance of the Hellsing organization, outside of the 'aces' Dracos mentioned, just turned me off big time. Celes, the butler, and Integra were about the only things I found interesting. Alucard was okay in character interaction scenes, but he was so indestructable I never got a feeling he was ever in any danger. A palpable lack of tension, especially given the collective IQ of every villain of the series was about that of any youma from Sailor Moon.

Having never read the manga, I have no opinion on it, though. So my not being a fan of the series might have made me grade this higher than if I had been. So people can bear that in mind with my review.

[Dracos]

Didn't read  the manga either.  Been told the OVA is closer.

In what we've seen so far, it's like he's no less uber, only now really, Celes is also badass from the start.  And yeah, I agree that hellsing was largely incompetent.  Only, it feels like it moved the wrong direction.  They took the hellsing incompetents and erased them pretty much from the picture.  It was like there was no organization.  The whole integration into hellsing and uniform for it makes no sense without an organization to begin with.  I don't even think Walter gets more than a line in it so far.

Mmm, rewatching it to comment, the whole virgin and draculina bit was kinda unnecessary and off throwing.  The context is never given to Celes on camera.  The setup and all.  It all pretty random as shown.  Walter (the butler) gets but a single bit, just describing Anderson.  A full 20 minutes or so of it is the fight with anderson.

Basically I think they robbed on setup, with a good 20-30 minutes of the 45 minute OVA spent on fights.  I think the balance between action and story telling was too far down one direction.  The characters all come across more bestial, sure, but for a one hour opener, they've also not really revealed much character aside from Celes squealing a lot, Alucard being invincible, and Anderson being a nutcase.

*shrugs*  It isn't so much that the previous series was great, so much as the part of this oav that caught my eyes the most was Celes having gigantic breasts.

Dracos

[Kwokinator]

*shrugs*  It isn't so much that the previous series was great, so much as the part of this oav that caught my eyes the most was Celes having gigantic breasts.

Dracos

Haven't seen the original Hellsing or read the manga, but Ultimate sounds good right now <_<

[Dracos]

They're really only focused on during the almost-rape scene with the priest guy.  Other than that there's not much.

Dracos

[Dracos]

Okay, ep 2 finally came out.  Spoilerish review.

It's also not too impressive in my opinion.  The first half of the show suffers from overuse of intentionally cheap/shocked comic book looks for quite a number of scenes in a row.  A fair bit of interplay is silently skipped through, making the opener seem out of the blue.  This episode runs from Seres' 'adapting' to the end of the Valentine brothers and, once again, I'd have to say Seres' boobs probably are better than most the rest of the show.  Yeah, a bit rude for a review, but  I think it's deserved.

The early half of it focuses on Seres adapting and, as said, is marked with constant SHOCKED animations which really just feel out of place.  Both Alucard and Seres get new weapons in this, but there's little reasoning for it as there's been no lead up of their weapons being insufficient with one exception; the vatican priest.  Of course, the fact that Alucard's new weapon is decked out with blessings and holy material makes it feel particularly ill suited as a choice to take down the vatican dog, while of course being appropriate for the super vamps that appear later that episode.

The second half focused on the Valentines assault on the Hellsing compound and their dramatic devouring of the hellsing guard.  The problem with this is that the hellsing guard  doesn't exist prior to that in the viewer's mind.  They've not even been given a generic walkby on camera, much less a face to go along with the whole deal.  The suffering the commander has  following it just feels hard to associate with given all these characters were extras that they couldn't bother having show up earlier.  In the end, the whole "We killed  off everyone who didn't have a name" thing felt exceedingly contrived just to explain why 'hellsing organization' was just 4 people.

Overall?  I'd suggest to stay away for the same reasons as ep 1.  Maybe they'll get their act together later, but really it feels continually crammed and rushed without much attention given to how one scene flows to the next.

Dracos