After seven years and multiple staff changes, Hellsing Ultimate, the ambitious adaptation of Kouta Hirano's cult hit manga, has at long last reached its end. Episodes IX and X mark the last confrontations between the krieg's main combatants: Alucard, Anderson, The Major, Integra, Walter, Seras Victoria, and a handful of each faction's minions (whose chances for survival lie somewhere between "slim" and "none.") With all the build-up behind us, it's finally time to pit these impossible monsters and their human masters against one another for almost three solid hours of explosive, disgusting, climactic violence. Right?

No, not exactly. In fact, not at all. Hellsing Ultimate changed studios for the third time in OVA VIII, from Madhouse to the questionable "Graphinica & Kelmadick," but the sting of a step downward hadn't fully registered inside of that one episode. Here in IX and the double-length finale X, the pain of compromise has begun to set in, crippling the last leg of an already troubled production. For all its apocalyptic subject matter, the conclusion to Hellsing Ultimate is often agonizing and joyless, and always barely-animated. It's a damning problem for a story built entirely on spectacle and energy at the cost of all else to be reduced to still frames and redundant monologues, but that's where we find ourselves at the end of Hellsing's legacy.

In fairness, the ending to the original manga was equally troubled. Chapters were released erratically after long hiatuses, and the closer the story drew to its end, the more confusing and labored the content became. Key information seemed rushed, action scenes were disjointed, and overwrought padding detailing the motivations of the well-known Alucard or the irrelevant Captain took up space where motivation was desperately needed for other characters like turncoat Walter Dornez. (Yes, the manga prequel meant to flesh out Walter was serialized alongside Hellsing in Young King Ours, but try telling readers of the english Dark Horse volumes that.) If the conclusion to Hellsing Ultimate can be commended for one thing, it's ironing out all the confusion. Walter, The Major, and every character in between are given their full dues in character development. The manga's messy twilight action scenes play out naturally here, and it's simple to tell what is happening, when, and why. The result is nothing if not easy to follow, but the reason for this blessed clarity is a double-edged sword.

Of course it's easy to tell what's going on at the end of Hellsing Ultimate, because everything is over-explained to hades and back. Apparently, Graphinica & Kelmadick didn't have the budget to animate much of anything, so they dove headfirst into the well of limited animation trickery and never looked back. This finale is padded to a jaw-dropping extent unheard of by modern anime standards. The pacing most resembles the cheapest episodes of a filler arc in a long-running shonen series (from the 90s), and the production values seem nearly as poor. Yes, the art is still a decent approximation of the manga's ludicrous aesthetic, and can be captivating in stills, but when any actual animation is called for, the show completely falls apart. Alucard's battle with Walter is dominated by extreme close-ups and reaction shots. Seras' battle with The Captain is dominated by shaky-cam and jump cuts. Integra's "battle" with The Major is 99% tremulous staring contest stretched over minutes at a time.

Of course, all this non-action can't fill out three whole hours, so the rest of the OVAs are buffered constantly with monologues that put The Major's infamous "I Like War" speech to shame in length, but not in quality. If viewers needed a fuller picture of Walter's motivation and The Major's true plan, they'll get it in spades here, but may also be bored to tears in the process. Both men seem to change motivation upwards of three times while soliloquizing to themselves on and off without prompt, and this extends to other characters like Integra and Alucard as well. It's like they're desperately stalling while the next big plot point gets coaxed out of its cold feet offstage, and none of these charlatans are fooling anybody. The redundancy gets to be so bad it merits boos, rotten vegetables, and a desperate reach for the fast-forward button, which is not at all the feeling you want going into the big finish of a horror apocalypse.

There is a silver lining to this tragic devolution of the OVA series, though. End of Ultimate's long strands of unbearable purple prose are still broken up by big fun interrobangs from time to time. Even when the details in-between get messy, the big loud bullet points of Hellsing's conclusion still seem fair and karmic for all the characters caught up in its maelstrom, as character deaths pile on by the truckload. They are islands of satisfaction in an ocean of tortured execution. There's an "In Memoriam" extra on disc that revisits the last moments of every major character who has died in Hellsing, and while it seems like a trivial inclusion, the feature really brings home how good Kouta Hirano is at picking out last words and fitting ends for the members of his cast. (The Major easily wins the "best final words" contest.) Sadly, this extra also drives home fully just how low the production values of the series have fallen since episode VII, as Zorin Blitz's brutal final moments are slapped right up against minimally-animated Maxwell's.

Then again, even at Hellsing Ultimate's visual peak, it was stronger as an aural experience, combining a jazzy score inspired by the original TV series' eclectic soundtrack with the more expected "Dies irae" choirs and booming orchestra. The performances are equally strong in either language, starring veteran juggernauts like Jōji Nakata and Norio Wakamoto going all-out with their powerful, resonant voices in the Japanese version. The English dub continues to maintain its long-standing cast, with the addition of Liam O' Brien and Jessica Stone as young and younger Walter, doing excellent approximations of Ralph Lister's dignified butler performance. (The two new Japanese Walters are Daisuke Namikawa and Romi Park, adding to the series' big-name seiyuu roster.) English dub "in retrospect" features are the other prominent extras on this release, and the entire team seems justifiably proud of the work they've done. It is a small comfort to experience the show's overwritten script through so many talented voices chewing the scenery in the best possible way. The Major even gets to sing opera, and what lovely pipes he has! Still, a great score and stellar cast aren't enough to drag this finale out of the doldrums. The imbalance between End of Ultimate's rare punctuation and its bloated build-up is staggering and tragic.

"Tragedy" is the defining word for what went wrong between the dawn and dusk of Hellsing's saga. At some point, the once-raucous gorefest just stopped being fun. The show's immortals used to gloat about their fantastic might while stomping on the less stylish mortals under their boots. Now they pine for destruction and lament their lost humanity as the world around them burns very, very, very slowly. This by itself wouldn't be a problem with a more natural transition from light to dark, but Hellsing stumbles straight from white to black with no shades of depth to ease us through it. Arthur Hellsing's monologue about the true nature of once-human monsters was featured heavily in promotional videos for this release for good reason. It is the only time this story conveys anything with deeper thematic weight and succeeds, largely thanks to strong performances from both the Japanese and English Hellsing patriarchs. Everywhere else, Vlad's ennui or Walter's bitterness seem oddly placed and emotionally barren, reaching for depth but never coming together into something that sticks. It's just late-game melodrama for its own sake, and while it does a good job at fleshing out Hellsing's characters (whether they need it or not,) it's more padding than anything else. Here at the end, Hellsing Ultimate has both lost its edge and failed to substitute it with anything deeper, making its last impression a surprisingly hollow one.

It is for the best that the story ends where it started: on the tender relationship between the virgin queen of Hellsing and the immortal king of the damned. The moments between Integra and Alucard throughout these last two OVAs are by far its strongest material. Their love is definitely weird and hard to fully explain, but it's tangible and honest, resulting in this meandering finale's best emotional payoffs. When Alucard says goodbye to his master, it's heartbreaking, and when he says hello again, the smile it puts in your heart seems like the best place to roll credits. That relationship, and the little moments of quality between the padding, are worth the price of admission even if you have to swim through a sea of offal to get to the heart of this story's conclusion. We should probably just be grateful that it was finally finished and fully licensed at all.