Forum - View topicREVIEW: Hellsing Ultimate Blu-Ray 9-10
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Zac
ANN Executive Editor
Posts: 7912 Location: Anime News Network Technodrome |
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If that's part of The Dawn then they included it in Episode 10 near the end. In fact the final episode is written largely to explain a bunch of stuff the manga doesn't bother with or only mentions in The Dawn (which I've only read a bit of). |
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Shenl742
Posts: 1524 |
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^I'm home now and I can confirm that that scene happens in the original manga. Volume 10, Chapter 8-9, Pages 130-146.
Checking my scans for the Dawn (which now that I look at it is EXTREMELY short. Most of the 6 chapters are only 14 pages long). spoiler[Mina's Corpse] is seen in chapters 1 and 2, but it's bound completely in leatherer straps, and the Major and the Doctor just say a bunch of vague stuff about how valuable SHE is to their research and is the only survivor of "That final battle". She's not identified by name. Most of it is just Walter and the Captain smacking each other around, and "ends" with Alucard knocking teenage Rip Van winkle out with his coffin on legs. |
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thelastronin
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You are entitled to your opinion but I have a couple of problems with this review. First off, I am baffled how someone could decide that Hellsing is good enough to watch 8 OVAs and then its suddenly stinks. I was confused by Walters motives for betrayal but I'm guessing he was a double agent or something and that's the only real problem that I had with the plot. Also its beautiful to look at on blu-ray and I really don't understand the claims of bad animation. All of these things are opinions though, but I will call b.s. on the C+ rating for the dub. Hellsing is notorious for having an amazing dub, up there with FMA and Black Lagoon. It was that part that really had me scratching my head. I would heartily recommend this set to anyone who enjoyed 1-8.
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gedata
Posts: 615 |
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You don't seem to understand the overall ratings. Those C+ grades aren't for just for the voice acting, those are overall grades for both the dubbed and subbed versions the show in their entirety (story, animation, music, etc.) Last edited by gedata on Sat Nov 01, 2014 11:17 am; edited 1 time in total |
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thelastronin
Posts: 4 |
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Oh ok I understand what you mean. I still think that it was an overly harsh review. I feel like I watched a completely different show, but you're right, I guess I've always thought the sub and dub grades were for the actual voice work. My bad.
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mdreura
Posts: 106 |
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I don't get paid to watch anime all day long, and I haven't read the source material so the production levels and adaptation quality don't have a lot of meaning or impact on me as a viewer. But if I agree with one thing Hope said in the review, it's this: At some point Hellsing Ultimate really does stop being fun. For me, everything started to unravel with the scene where Integra shoots Schrodinger in the face without provocation, for saying hello to her. As the guts and the gore and the body-count really started stacking up from that point on with nary a meaning, purpose or consequence in sight, it slowly dawned on me in a big way that putting violence and brutality and cruelty on display was the only real purpose of Hellsing Ultimate. There is no narrative payoff at the end of all the carnage. There are no transformative character moments. Nobody wins the war. None of the cast is even really, genuinely, terminally killed. The conversation between the Iscariots in the epilogue tells us they'll just start another war someday anyway. All you take away from Hellsing Ultimate in the end is the satisfaction of viewing multiple simulated rapes, child abuse and near-endless graphic mutilation and dismemberment of Nazi zombie mooks in every form imaginable for a little over 8 hours. In hindsight, that's some pretty sick shit to think about. I'm not a manga person, and as I mentioned I've never read the source material or internalized its charms and flaws. But I did see Gonzo's Hellsing series when it came out, and it had class, a lot more class than Hellsing Ultimate has at the end of its journey. Seras Victoria was the central figure, if not the protagonist of that series. Within its splashy, stylish framework we got to see her character grow and develop as the undead child of a legendary supernatural figure to something resembling self-sufficiency and usefulness, and there was meaning in that! Hellsing Ultimate didn't bother with any of that. All it was concerned with when the shit hit the fan was how frequently and unflinchingly it could put rape and murder on display based on whatever flimsy narrative pretense it could come up with. And when the time comes that the audience looks for some kind of meaning in it all, the series disappoints all over the place. |
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The_way67
Posts: 118 |
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First 5 episodes were sooooooo much better than the last 5. 10 was awful. The whole woe is me and kill me eagerness was beyond bore. I hate Seras, the whole Captains character complex failed.....as he was as powerful as Alucard, but let Seras kill him? Nonsense.
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Greed1914
Posts: 4470 |
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I didn't really notice a dip in animation quality, but I'll admit it has to be pretty stark for me to take notice. Plus, these last two volumes were much less action oriented than what came before, so it didn't seem terribly out of place.
Really, the big thing that bothered me is that the rest of The Dawn wasn't included. It was irksome enough that it wasn't dubbed in the last set, but to not have it at all.
That, plus they mentioned that America had quite a lot of casualties of its own, so the country most likely to help out wasn't in much of a position to do so. Throw in just how difficult it would have been for anyone to find out what was happening or know how to deal with it, and it is no surprise that the battle was over before anyone could step in. |
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scriver058
Posts: 127 Location: NY |
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Damn, rough review. I'm gonna watch the last volume because it's Hellsing, and to this point I really like Ultimate, but the expectations are low.
Dumb question maybe, since a lot of the things Funimation puts out in parts they usually re-release in a more collected edition, but Hellsing Ultimate in it's entirety will eventually get something like a single release right? I get why Funi released a box for the first 2 volumes only, since there was a legitimate question as to whether they would ever get the rights to the last couple of eps, but now that they do they will at least give us a box to hold all three right? |
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MarshalBanana
Posts: 5391 |
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The 4th episode was the lowest part of the whole series, long speeches on how he wanted to kill people. 6 and 7 were the high points. |
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MarshalBanana
Posts: 5391 |
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The TV show showed clear signs of not knowing what to do, it reached the end of material far to early and just tried to cobble together a half arsed ending without any build up. And what's worse is a show about Alucard (Dracula) doesn't focus on Alucard. Your criticism is misguided, all this complaining about gore and violence. Hellsing is horror, that is the central pillar, it is more important than anything else, without it the show would just be an action show. If anything it is the TV show and it's lack of horror that is in the wrong, though I do understand that it had TV guidlines to follow. |
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mdreura
Posts: 106 |
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I'm not going to waste a lot of time or words on this reply, because if you can't even respect my opinion as an opinion, then its your own understanding of media and criticism that are horribly misguided, and it's unlikely that anything good or constructive is going to come out of trying to have a conversation with you about any of this. The one thing I would like to say in followup is that Hellsing Ultimate, like numerous quote-unquote "horror" genre films and television in the past 15-30 years, has completely lost touch with what horror actually is. Actual horror doesn't involve mowing down legions of monsters with high-powered firearms or flashy supernatural melee combat. Those are action genre conventions dressed up in superficial horror genre visuals. Hellsing Ultimate, more than most horror genre pretenders, really invokes precious little horror because it appears that few if any of the characters can actually be defeated or killed with finality. Nobody has anything to fear. Even when the protagonist is reduced to a single bloodstain on a rock, he can still respawn like a player in an FPS game and come back to mass execute some more zombie Nazi mooks. It's no more nor less horrifying than playing Call of Duty, and that's just pathetic. |
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MarshalBanana
Posts: 5391 |
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So instead of having a debate like an adult your going to have a temper tantrum and whine about your opinion. How am I supposed to "respect your opinion" was I supposed to start my sentence with "I respect your opinion. And yes I agree that horror is not extreme violence but fear. But this is more in-line with the Splater sub genre. Which is still Horror, even if it's not true horror, which is still a step above the nothingness that Hellsing the TV show was. |
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gedata
Posts: 615 |
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There was hardly any meaning to Seras' character arc in the original. It was just "but I dunt wanna drink blood, I dunt wanna be a vampire b'aawww". And it goes nowhere since the last leg of that show wasted it's time on spoiler[a meaningless showdown with that weird pale vampire dude who had nothing to do with the plot before the series just stopped] The Hellsing of old had no class either, it just didn't have gore. It had some cool aesthetics, but it didn't have anything close to a proper storyline, Ultimate at least did that much. |
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MaxSouth
Posts: 1363 |
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I agree with reviewer that the show is far from being perfect; here is numbered list of fourteen (14) concrete issues about Hellsing Ultimate -- eight (8) problems in concept/characters/story, and six (6) in visuals/animation/style/music category:
animenewsnetwork.com/bbs/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=4319585#4319585 Thirteen (13) issues of original anime there, too. All in one post for comparison. Both shows are deeply flawed (twenty seven issues, however big or small, is no joke), but definitely worth watching. |
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