Review - Hellsing Ultimate vol. 2
Reviewed by Richard Brownell on 9.15.2007.
Score: 9/10
Hellsing Ultimate vol. 1 is such a small taste of the Hellsing story. 45 minutes just isn't that much when you have so much story to tell. Sure, it sets the story in motion in a fantastic way, but we miss out on so much. We don't see any crazy Arucard powers. We don't see any real opposing vampires that can put up a fight. We don't see Walter fight. Volume 2 changes all of that.
One of my favorite arcs of the Hellsing TV series is the Valentine brothers. This volume contains the Ultimate telling of that arc from beginning to end in roughly 45 minutes. Sir Integra Hellsing has called a Round Table meeting with other Knights to discuss the widespread vampire menace. She presents to them their one tiny piece of evidence, a microchip that is found in all the new vampires.
The meeting doesn't get far though. The scene quickly cuts to two odd looking gentlemen walking down the road towards the Hellsing manor. These guys are priceless. Their names are Luke and Jan Valentine and they are brothers, though polar opposites in attitude. Luke is calm and collected, wearing a nice white suit and generally looking like a gentlemanly fellow. Jan, however, is full of piercings and dressed like a punk. He also won't shut up and his speech is too vulgar for me to quote it on this site. For instance, at one point he mentions Integra's skull and the things he might do to it.
These two approach the manor and find some guards. But these guards are no trouble at all. Not because they are vampires, but because they've brought a bus-load of ghouls and they're all heavily armored SWAT-style police. They infiltrate the house in no time which is where the battle truly begins.
The brothers split up with Jan choosing to take on all of the guards and head to the Round Table room. Luke, however, is more interested in testing his vampire skills. He heads to the basement where he knows Arucard to be hiding. So two key battles occur in the duration of this DVD. One is Arucard vs. Luke in which we see Arucard get his best competition yet. Luke was bred to be Arucard's superior.
Meanwhile, Walter and Seres head to the conference room to protect Integral and the Knights. This is important because it means we get to see the two of them fight. We saw Seres do some fighting in the last volume, but this time around she has a new ultra powerful weapon and her hand to hand combat is far more brutal. She doesn't want to be a vampire, but she doesn't have a choice in the matter and her struggle is already becoming intriguing.
Walter, on the other hand, is not a vampire. Rather, he used to be a professional vampire hunter and he's one of my favorite parts of the Hellsing story. He doesn't fight hand to hand combat, but instead has these razor sharp wires that he tosses around from his gloves which he uses to tear ghouls and vampires to shreds. He's also rather fast and his feet for an old guy.
The first volume of Hellsing was pretty much your average amount of vampire gore I would say. There was some blood but not too much. This arc changes things. There are limbs ripped off, blood flying around, eating of limbs and brains. It's all sorts of gory. And thanks to Jan, the language levels rises to one that would just sound like a long *beep* were it to be played on the radio.
It's definitely one of the most fun parts of the Hellsing story. And yet there's still so much more story to tell. In terms of the new vampire menace itself, this volume does have a few solid clues into what is really going on. It even hints a bit at beginning to deviate from the TV series. Or put more accurately, it's staying closer to the manga. But we won't really see the split between the two anime until the next volume, which can't come soon enough.
Special Features
· 16x9 Anamorphic Widescreen (Encoded from HD master)
· English 5.1 Dolby Digital
· Japanese 2.0 Dolby Digital
· English Subtitles
