Hellsing Ultimate at 20: Still the perfect horror anime to sink your teeth into

'A great night... The kind of night that makes me want to drink blood'

When Kohta Hirano’s Hellsing was first serialized in 1997, the acclaimed manga leaned into the gaudy excess that's often a part of the vampire mythos. Hirano eschews narrative restraint to reinterpret Bram Stoker’s Dracula, with the secret organization Hellsing embodying the iconic legacy of vampire hunter Abraham Van Helsing. To that end, the vampire Alucard pledges loyalty to the Hellsing family post-defeat, serving as a sadistic exterminator of supernatural entities that threaten the peace in England.

Hirano’s striking saga revels in the grindhouse aspect of this blood-soaked premise, allowing its characters to hack, slash, and blast their foes into oblivion in the most brutal ways imaginable. This no-holds-barred approach subverts the norms of horror-focused manga storytelling, almost as if the Hellsing manga is barely able to contain the lurid chaos threatening to break free of its gorgeous panels.

In 2001, studio Gonzo adapted the manga into a 13-episode anime titled Hellsing, which rapidly tones down Hirano’s audacious style and diverges significantly from the source material. However, a more manga-accurate OVA (original video animation) named Hellsing Ultimate premiered on Feb. 10, 2006, embracing the operatic grandiosity of Hirano’s vampire myth. Even 20 years after its release, Hellsing Ultimate stands out as the superior adaptation, shedding light on the flaws of its predecessor. Gonzo’s Hellsing roots its strengths in its creative reimagining and Yasushi Ishii's stunning opening theme ("A World Without Logos”), but it's held back by both technical limitations and intriguing-but-flawed changes to the source material.

[Ed. note: The article contains spoilers for 2001’s Hellsing and Hellsing Ultimate.]

The Hellsing anime closely follows the manga in its initial episodes, in which the immensely capable Integra Hellsing uses her highly-trained military forces to keep supernatural threats in check. But none of her other soldiers compares to the vicious Alucard, whose deep loyalty to Integra stems from an admiration for her indomitable spirit. With some help from the Hellsing family butler, Walter C. Dornez, and the freshly turned vampire Seras Victoria, Alucard faces off against the Vatican-backed rival group Iscariot and the mysterious vampire Incognito, an uncanny villain created solely for the 2001 anime. This creative gamble yields mixed results: While Incognito introduces an enigmatic element to the story, he replaces the war-hungry Millennium, a Neo-Nazi paramilitary organization that is fleshed out in Hellsing Ultimate to startling effect.

Speaking of Ultimate, the OVA successfully brings Hirano’s uncompromising vision to life. When Alucard uses his dual semi-automatic pistols to paint the town red in one moment, and indulges in subtle vulnerability towards Integra in the next, we are compelled to ponder the line between man and monster. As someone who relishes the brutality of killing, Alucard respects Integra’s refusal to give in to vampirism, as doing so would be the ultimate betrayal of the Hellsing legacy.

A complete inversion of this philosophy can be seen in franchise antagonist The Major, whose fanatical obsession with war is more monstrous than any vampire or ghoul. When Walter betrays Integra later on to embrace monstrosity, Ultimate uses its flashy ultraviolence to illustrate that even an ambitious traitor must wrestle with the complex man-monster duality. While Walter detests the limitations that come with being human, he is not a proponent of indiscriminate butchering, which complicates his moral stance throughout the series. As adamant as Walter is to discard traditional morality, he’s not immune to compassion, given his genuine appreciation for Seras when she thanks him.

Much of this thematic nuance is lost in the Hellsing anime (where Walter's betrayal never happens), which was produced before Hirano finished the manga in 2008. As a result, narrative fluff was added to pad out weaker parts of the adaptation. This approach inevitably altered some characters: Seras gains more prominence within the story, while Alucard’s ruthlessness is toned down in favor of a more humane worldview. These revamped quirks don’t always work, and the animation feels heavily restrained by a limited budget and a stilted understanding of Hirano’s work.

In contrast, Hellsing Ultimate is as gleefully indulgent as the manga, benefiting from a surreal interpretation of violence that incinerates undead armies and shatters skulls on deadly impact. The OVA’s only drawback is its inability to eclipse the Hellsing soundtrack, which evokes a moody atmosphere uniquely suited to its gothic horror influences. Even so, Ultimate grants us a version of Alucard who is a threat to existence itself, his mere presence injecting pure dread into every scene he inhabits. He lives up to his moniker of The Ultimate Undead, draping his relentless thirst for bloodshed in an unforgettable theatrical flourish. The rare moments where he pauses to appreciate human fragility (which isn’t always tied to weakness) give us a glimpse into Alucard’s ancient soul, which the Hellsing anime explores with greater fervor.

Ultimate’s deliberate championing of style over substance might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it remains utterly faithful to Hirano’s maximalist vampire manga that urges us to read between its blood-soaked lines. A frenetic odyssey centered on flamboyant gunplay and quippy exchanges, Hellsing Ultimate feels thematically meaty enough to sink our teeth into.

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Hellsing Ultimate is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.