About
Hellsing is broken up into three distinct "series". There is Hellsing the anime, Hellsing the manga, and the Hellsing Ultimate OVAs (Original Video Animation). The anime and manga have very different storylines while the OVAs stay closer to the plot of the manga. All descriptive information on this page has been retrieved from Wikipedia.
Basic Info: Anime (TV Series)
The basic concept of the series concerns a secret British government organization called Hellsing. This organization was formed several hundred years ago by either Abraham van Helsing or his descendants to fight vampires across Britain. As the first episode opens, a vampire is ravaging the English village of Cheddar. Integra Hellsing tells the police to stand down, as the first few squads have already been killed by the vampire and become ghouls (in Hellsing, ghouls are similar to zombies under a vampire's control). She sends in Hellsing's most powerful operative, Alucard. Alucard comes upon the vampire as he was about to murder the last survivor of the police forces, Seras Victoria. In order to kill the vampire he shoots through Seras, mortally wounding her, but because she is a virgin, he is able to offer her the choice of dying human or becoming a vampire.The anime begins similarly to the manga but focuses more on Alucard feuding with the Iscariot organization while hunting down "false vampires" such as Jan and Luke Valentine. The final villain of the series, a powerful vampire named Incognito, does not appear in the manga at all. Likewise, the Millennium organization which appears in the manga and OVAs is never mentioned in the anime. There are a total of 13 episodes of the TV series.
Basic info: Manga
Hellsing is named after and centered around the Holy Order of Protestant Knights, originally led by Abraham Van Helsing. The mission of Hellsing is to protect Queen and Country from the undead and other supernatural forces of evil. This organization is currently led by Sir Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing, who inherited the leadership of Hellsing as a child after the death of her father. She is protected by the faithful Hellsing family butler and former Hellsing "trashman," Walter C. Dornez, and Alucard, the original and most powerful vampire that swore loyalty to the Hellsing family after being defeated by Van Helsing one hundred years before the story takes place. These formidable guardians are joined early on in the storyline by former police officer Seras Victoria, whom Alucard turned into a vampire.As the scale and frequency of incidents involving the undead escalate in England and all around the world, Sir Integra discovers that the remnants of a Nazi group called Millennium still exist and are intent on reviving the Third Reich by creating a battalion of vampires. Millennium, Hellsing, and the Vatican section XIII Iscariot clash in an apocalyptic three-sided war in London, and Millennium reveals its true objective: to destroy the vampire Alucard, ending a feud begun during World War II.
Hellsing is unique in that it takes much of itself from late 19th century and early 20th century Western fiction. It includes themes primarily from H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu works and Bram Stoker's Dracula, rolled together with some fast-paced action sequences.
