This manga is pretty good, it has all the stuff you might want if you came here. Vampires, werewolves, gore, insanity, mystery and some slight comedy. We have vampire nazis, crazy religious people and whatever else you could think of. I find it to be quite interesting and was quite fond of the characters although I can honestly say that I didn't really feel that connected to them(by that I mean that I didn't really care much about anything that happened to them and neither did I ever feel that I hate the enemies or slightly worried/annoyed about someone from the main cast), I also liked the expressions and drawing style, but I won't care to go deeper into the reasons why I like it since so many has done this before. I'll instead go through the things that
Okay, let's start off with the biggest issue. Endless prattling and needless use of foreign phrases. The last few volumes felt like somewhat of a chore to read at times because the people just talk and talk and talk about pretty much nothing, it mainly shows how they're insane and have twisted logic or views of things. When people was doing that, you could skip the entire chapter and not miss anything much. The translations weren't bad, but I was honestly annoyed by the often severely overdone dialects and other things that are there just to show that "oh, they're from the countryside" "Oh, they're from britain" "Oh, they're from germany". Sometimes it was nigh unreadable. I feel like it's purely a detriment, we already know they're from these countries and places, why force the readers to search the dictionary for weird words no one ever uses or foreign language phrases/words?
The next thing is that this thing feels pretty silly and pretentious at times, as if it's trying too hard to be cool and ends up like something you'd find in a chuunibyou's head. Everyone's pretty much utterly insane and their reasons for doing things are usually truly retarded. We don't grasp any true motivations or deep underlying reasons for anything, there's no real "goal" and it feels pretty lacking because of that. The main guys are just responding to the enemies and the enemies just want war while pretty much everyone of these monsters seems suicidal and wants to die in combat as if it's the ultimate pursuit. As everyone is crazy and no one makes much sense, it just feels empty in a way.
Maybe it has to do with me growing up and going through so many different novels, manga and anime, but I really can't enjoy many parts of this manga like I did back then. I easily notice so many flaws and weird parts that just doesn't make sense. I also felt like the gore was pointless at times. This thing is full of gore, or rather, full of deaths and bodies, but it also manages to completely disconnect the readers from the entire thing. I've gone through quite a few disturbing works, and "hellsing" is way too tame, which further detracts from the reading experience. There's no feeling that these people are humans or even alive, it's more like he's attacking and killing straw dolls, no one cares and it's just pointless. The gore is usually just black parts as well, there's no great detail given to innards or anything else, it feels unrealistic. It's to the point where a complete rookie could read this without being disturbed much at all. It's not as if you feel a little bit disgusted or ill at ease either, which is yet another reason as to why this whole thing feels childish at times.
Oh, and I wish there was more scenes with lolicard(the female version that shows up in the prequel and in the last few chapters of this manga). Her personality is way more interesting compared to alucard's male form and would've made for a better main character. The impact of a black loli murdering everyone is also much greater than some random big dude. Too bad.
That, amongst some other things, are what removes 2-3 points from this manga. I made it sound as if it's horrible in my review, but it's actually quite enjoyable, especially the first time you read it or if you're not as deep into the shithole of endless manga/novels/anime that I and many others are. If you haven't read much horror/gore focused stuff, this is bound to be a fresh and awesome experience, it could also serve as a good starting point to explore this type of stuff. Give it a try, no matter what it's truly a must-read. I also recommend the second anime version, hellsing ultimate, the OVA anime. They made a sweet job with that one. The first version is garbage though, don't bother. That's it for me, well done on making it to the end.
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