Blogging Hellsing Ultimate episode 3

Des­pite hav­ing far more blood and gore, des­pite hav­ing people’s heads being ripped off and entrails spread across the floor, des­pite hav­ing 4 army folks thrown and skewered onto flag­polls, the dvd for this epis­ode only had a 15 rat­ing. The last two epis­odes were 18. I can only think of one pos­sible reason for this. Epis­ode 3 is the only one so far not to include a one second shot of Seras Vic­toria being groped by zom­bies. Makes you worry about human­ity just a bit.

The format for this epis­ode was largely the same as the last one. Start off silly, intro­duce the plot, start the killing, take a turn for the worse, Alu­card goes crazy and then finally calm­ing down as we set in place the plot for the next epis­ode. Not that this epis­ode did it any­where near as well as the last one, but I’ll get to that in a bit. Because it man­aged to start well enough. Again, whatever about people com­plain­ing about the mis­placed humour in Hell­sing Ulti­mate, I still laugh at these scenes. The mer­cen­ar­ies uncon­vinced at the undead­ness of our vam­pir­ess Police Girl, only for Alu­card to step through the wall in an act of slightly more con­vin­cing vam­pire mag­nitude was quite a sight, but nowhere near as great as Integra Hell­sing fir­ing off that sharp tongue of hers, telling the mer­cen­ar­ies to ref­er­ence Bram Stoker if they wanted any­more information.

How­ever as sharp and won­der­fully masochist-making your tongue may be (hey, you would like it too), I can­not write this post without men­tion­ing this hat. Now it’s not like anime isn’t home to some pretty strange hats on occa­sion, the occa­sion mainly being the over­throw­ing of the Brit­an­nian Empire (how could any­one for­get Emperor Lelouch’s hat?). Heck, Alucard’s hat is a strange beast in itself. But what makes this hat unique is how simple a design can look so ridicu­lous. It’s like some­body acci­dent­ally sewed on two peaks while mak­ing a base­ball cap. I give it a 7/10 for sim­pli­city and achiev­ing it’s aim. *light polite applause*

Per­haps it was the aura sur­round­ing her hat, but it man­aged to attract the best scene of the epis­ode. The clash of the Monsters/Titans/Freaks/Shadows with no instantly dis­tin­guish­able facial fea­tures apart from their round glasses and manic grins…oh wait, that’s basic­ally a descrip­tion of every char­ac­ter in Hell­sing. What made the scene so awe­some was the two lead­ers try­ing to outdo each other by show­ing off their respect­ive mon­sters, only for them to both panic when they real­ised that they couldn’t turn their killing machines off. Crazy Scot­tish Priest vs Sad­istic King of Vam­pires in the Brit­ish Art Museum. A con­front­a­tion that can only be hal­ted by a timely inter­rup­tion of a tour­ist group con­sist­ing of senior cit­izens. Lucky Seras Vic­toria knew about this fail-safe switch, because it didn’t appear Integra knew. And to think she was lec­tur­ing the mer­cen­ar­ies earlier about the lack of vam­pire know­ledge. I’m sure Bram Stoker men­tioned the senior cit­izen tour­ist group some­where in that book of his.

Nazis. I sup­pose, for all their infamy, that they don’t show up in anime all that often. Full Metal Alchem­ist briefly touched on them in the movie. But the only other occa­sion I can remem­ber that dir­ectly involved Nazis was Black Lagoon, and those Nazis suf­fer from the exact same prob­lem as the Hell­sing vari­ety do. They feel so silly that they become com­ical par­od­ies of them­selves. In both Hell­sing and Black Lagoon, the actual ‘good guys’ are so bru­tal that the only way they can outdo them is to have Nazis. How­ever the Nazis can’t be cool so instead they have this com­ical tone to everything they do that they just don’t make cred­ible vil­lains. The Eng­lish dub actu­ally adds to the prob­lem here. While I love the accents they give to all the other char­ac­ters, that ridicu­lous, high pitched Ger­man accent just makes them even less credible.

Yes, I fol­lowed on a Nazi flag pic to his Pop­i­ness himself.

Popey and the church make a lot more inter­est­ing vil­lains. Nazis killing things is dull, because that’s what Nazis always do. Priests and Bish­ops killing stuff make it a hell of a lot more inter­est­ing. Plus you have this great under­cur­rent of church rela­tions with the whole ‘Prot­est­ant Cow’ insults being hurled around. I just like that touch. While battle priests might be even more com­mon in anime than those Nazi folks, the Nazis are just so tacky. Sorry Nazis, but your edgy factor had been depleted long ago in my eyes. Now you’re all just par­od­ies of yourself.

So yeah, there’s Nazis or some­thing. That means Alu­card has to go kill lots of people. I can’t even remem­ber why he had to go to that hotel in the first place. The plot is already get­ting rather flimsy and we’re only on epis­ode 3. All it did was give an excuse for lots and lots and lots and lots of blood and gore and killing and guts and entrails and all sorts of viol­ent nasty things that only require you to be 15 years old to view while you have to be at least 18 if you’re going to watch a hand grab a women’s crotch.

Look, I really didn’t like this whole scene. Not because I was squicked out by the amount of viol­ence or any­thing. I like my fair share of human destruc­tion as much as the next young male adult, prob­ably more than aver­age. But they man­aged to overkill depict­ing overkill. That’s quite a feat but not one it should be neces­sar­ily proud of. Not just the end­less bar­rage of gut­ted corpses left in Alucard’s trail. It’s not like the last epis­ode didn’t have that either, although it wasn’t as over­bear­ing there as it was here. Even Alucard’s phone call to Integra was total overkill. His mono­logue went on for about 5 minutes about how he wanted to kill, maim, des­troy yada yada yada, only for Integra to respond with a 3–4 minute rant about how she orders him to kill, maim, des­troy yada yada yada, which in turn is fol­lowed by Alu­card accept­ing her wish for him to kill, maim, des­troy yada yada yada and he’s now going off to kill, maim, des­troy yada yada yada kay love you byes.

We’ve seen this all already Hell­sing Ulti­mate. You did it 50 times bet­ter in the last epis­ode and it was (rel­at­ively) free of all this bloody overkill. I thought we were onto the ‘new’ mater­ial that the ori­ginal Hell­sing series didn’t cover. Instead we get a crappy rehash of the same for­mula as the last epis­ode. The first half of the epis­ode left me with a grin as mani­acal as a cer­tain Scot­tish Priest’s but the end left me feel­ing frus­trated. Come on Ulti­mate. Live up to your repu­ta­tion a bit more.