Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.0

Hellsing Ultimate: Volumes 5-8 Blu-ray Movie Review

Blood, sweat and tears. But mostly blood.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman November 16, 2012

Is graphic or even outright gruesome imagery somehow easier to take when it’s animated? It’s a salient question when it comes to an enterprise like Hellsing Ultimate, certainly one of the most violent and bloody anime of all time. Don’t take my word for it: over and over again in the commentaries included on this second set of Hellsing Ultimate episodes (the first set can be found here), cast and crew talk about how horrifying some of the imagery in this franchise actually is, evidently leading in some cases to nightmares. Vivisection, blood sucking, limbs being shorn from bodies and more gore pop up with great regularity throughout Hellsing Ultimate, and the fact that it’s “only” an animated outing really doesn’t help to dispel the shock of seeing some of these images explode on the screen. What keeps Hellsing Ultimate from being downright distasteful is its rather dark (and often sly) sense of humor, something that creeps into the main character of Alucard (or Arucard in its “Engrish” version) most especially. Alucard is one of the most distinctive characters in recent (and maybe not so recent) anime, a haunting and frightening character who is also just lunatic at times to provoke outright laughter. These OVAs delve into Alucard’s rather vicious tendencies but manage to make the character bizarrely lovable in his own (extremely) twisted way. Hellsing Ultimate is still probably not for the faint of heart of squeamish of stomach, but it remains one of the most viscerally compelling vampire anime to ever come down the bloody pike.

As was discussed in the review of the first set of Hellsing Ultimate, Hellsing has a rather long and interesting development history, with the original manga not being especially well followed in the first Hellsing series, leading to this reboot which sought to reclaim some of the manga’s original intent and story content. For those uninitiated into the dark and spooky Hellsing universe, the series deals with a group of vampire hunters called The Holy Order of Protestant Knights, which had been founded in times past by the legendary Abraham von Helsing. Hellsing Ultimate begins with the “management” of the order being passed down to young Ingegra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing, who barely escapes being killed herself during the bestowing of her legacy, but who ends up discovering her family’s “secret weapon”, the aforementioned Alucard, who comes to the young girl’s defense in rather spectacular fashion. Alucard, despite being a vampre himself, has sworn an oath of fealty to the von Helsing family, and as we flash forward a couple of decades, we find that his relationship with the now adult Integra is still going strong in its own peculiar fashion.

This second half of Hellsing Ultimate OVAs picks up exactly where the first set left off, with an impending Nazi vampire (yes, you read that correctly) attack on a kind of Gothic version of London. Playing into this battle for the future of not so Merrie Old England are a number of interesting religious subplots, and in fact Hellsing takes no prisoners in rather brusquely skewing religious icons and tropes. Also playing into the machinations are characters who get “turned” to the vampire lifestyle (or would that be deathstyle?), making knowing who is a good guy and who is a bad guy more ambiguous than might be expected. This is another way that Hellsing Ultimate excels at defying audience expectations: even the “hero” of the piece, Alucard, is absolutely despicable in some ways, while at least some of the supposed villains have at least a couple of redeeming qualities to their credit.

This set of OVAs cartwheels rather frenetically through a number of huge action set pieces, most of which are incredibly bloody and graphic. Strangely, though, there’s an almost human element at play here, something that is perhaps intentionally ironic given the series’ emphasis on the undead (and supposedly non-human). The relationship between Integra and Alucard as well as Alucard’s “protégé” Seras remains the central focus of the series even while any number of manic events swirl about them. The supposed revelation that dots the eighth episode about Alucard’s backstory will come as no huge surprise to anyone who knows anything about the iconography of Dracula, but even that potential cliché is handled with some good character information. While some aspects of the main storyline are resolved by the last episode in this set, other potentially major issues are left hanging, and in the meantime at least one new Hellsing Ultimate has been broadcast, with another evidently on the way. It’s hard to keep a good undead man down.

Hellsing Ultimate: Volumes 5-8 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Hellsing Ultimate Volumes 5 – 8 is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of FUNimation Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. As was discussed in the review of the first volume of this release, FUNimation has the odd habit of describing their licensed content as "HD native" even if the source elements were initially SD, but were "pre-upconverted" to HD before FUNimation attained rights to them. There's no question that the first Hellsing Ultimate OVAs were SD, but one would assume that at least the later ones included on this set were native HD (meaning really native HD). That said, the animation style here tends to favor a kind of gauzy softness, especially in some of the more graphic and gruesome scenes, as if slightly "smearing" the image (for want of a better description) might help the blood and guts go down more easily. Other elements of this presentation are clearly more precise and better defined than the first set, with exceptionally strong line detail and very nicely saturated colors. Overall, this is a step up from the first Hellsing Ultimate set, but not a huge quantum leap.

Hellsing Ultimate: Volumes 5-8 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

My comments about the first volume of Hellsing Ultimate apply equally well to this release. Hellsing Ultimate Volumes 5 – 8 offers DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mixes in both the original Japanese and an English dub. This is one of those rare cases where even original language purists may want to at least check out the English dub, for it features some unusually excellent voice work, especially Crispin Freeman who really brings a delicious sense of menace to his reading of Alucard. Fidelity is excellent in both of these tracks, and there's also consistent surround activity in many of the ubiquitous action scenes, scenes which also quite often offer really boisterous LFE. Dialogue is cleanly presented (though it should be stated that this volume, as the first, offers some very "busy" sound design at times that tends to slightly bury the dialogue beneath the ubiquitous sound effects). Both tracks offer significant dynamic range.

Hellsing Ultimate: Volumes 5-8 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Episode V Commentary features Taliesin Jaffe (ADR Director) and Gildart Jackson (Max).


• Episode VI Commentary features Taliesin Jaffe and Yuri Lowenthal (Pip)
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• Episode VII Commentary features Taliesin Jaffe and Rachel Robinson (Zorin).


• Episode VIII Commentary features Taliesin Jaffe and Crispin Freeman (Alucard).


• Participating in a Legend (HD; 44:59) features many of the principal cast and crew discussing the Hellsing franchise.


• Hellsing Cast Roundtable Discussion (HD: 43:55) features Katie Gray, Crispin Freeman, Taliesin Jaffe, Victoria Harwood, Ralph Lister and Patrick Seitz (who really should learn to enunciate better).


• Anime Vegas 2010 Hellsing Panel (HD; 1:10:00) features Jonathan Klein, Charlene Ingram, Taliesin Jaffe, Victoria Harwood, Katie Gray, Crispin Freeman, Ralph Lister, Patrick Seitz and one more unfortunate soul who's microphone wasn't on so I couldn't catch anything he was saying.


• Fans Questions – Answered (HD: 22:43) features fan questions (via text intertitles) followed by various cast members answering them.


• The Dawn: A Supplementary of Hellsing (HD: 9:09)


• U.S. Trailer (HD; 00:58)


• Textless Songs includes:

  V (HD; 2:29)

  
  

  VI (HD; 3:04)

  
  

  VII (HD; 4:33)

  
  

  VIII (HD; 3:49)

Hellsing Ultimate: Volumes 5-8 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Hellsing Ultimate Volumes 5 – 8 continues the take no prisoners visual style of the first set of OVAs, with a number of disturbing sequences that may well give more impressionable viewers nightmares, or at least waking frights. The series remains one of the darkest, both literally and figuratively, in the entire world of anime, and reactions will depend upon an individual's tolerance for the occult and the outright skewering of some religious ideas. For those who delight in Gothic fairy tales (as in the extremely Grimm type) will love Hellsing Ultimate, especially with regard to Alucard, one of the most magnetic and unforgettable vampires ever, animated or unanimated (in both senses of that word). This second volume boasts somewhat better video quality, the same outstanding audio quality and another round of copious supplementary material. Highly recommended.