CAA: Christian Anime Alliance

Good news, Hellsing fans! According to this month's Anime Insider, Kouta Hirano will wrap up the manga version of Hellsing with V. 10.

That makes sense. Too many loose strings are being tied up and too many characters are dying for it not to be near the end. Plus, it's been thematically in climactic last battle mode for quite some time now.

I'll be curious to see how everything is resolved. It seems we're setting up for two final battles, which could easily take us through volume 10.

That would be because he's beginning the "Hellsing: The Dawn" project, I believe it's called. It's a prequel series.

Cool. So we'll see the end from Dark Horse in... oh, about 5 years, I'll say.

I have only recently come to realize just how long the gap between chapters is. And when they do arrive, they're short and don't advance the plot much. It seems Hellsing will be with us for some time.

Tom Dincht wrote:That would be because he's beginning the "Hellsing: The Dawn" project, I believe it's called. It's a prequel series.

So far I haven't been much impressed by it. The art style is distracting and the story hasn't interested me much... other than getting to see the werewolf fight.

Awesome. What's out in the states right now? I can't find anything past volume 7.

zombieguy wrote:Awesome. What's out in the states right now? I can't find anything past volume 7.

that's because nothing else past vol.7 exists in the states yet. Hopefully that'll be fixed in the near future...

uc pseudonym wrote:I have only recently come to realize just how long the gap between chapters is. And when they do arrive, they're short and don't advance the plot much. It seems Hellsing will be with us for some time.


So far I haven't been much impressed by it. The art style is distracting and the story hasn't interested me much... other than getting to see the werewolf fight.

I've read up to Chapter 78 and hearing this news, ticks me off.

Bump!

Ok. I just got into the Hellsing manga. Any word on books 7,8,9 coming out in the USA yet? I see English versons of 7 and 8 on Ebay. They illegal or what? My local borders has 1-5. Someone fill the manga noob in.

ShatterheartArk wrote:Bump!

Ok. I just got into the Hellsing manga. Any word on books 7,8,9 coming out in the USA yet? I see English versons of 7 and 8 on Ebay. They illegal or what? My local borders has 1-5. Someone fill the manga noob in.

as far as I know, vol.1-7 are officially out in english and 8 & 9 don't have a release date yet.

Vol. 1-7 are all available on American shores for an expensive $15 a pop, vol. 8 exclusive to Japan.
[spoiler]Personally, I think Hellsing has suffered some problems from being dragged out so long with such a distinctive lack of anything much occurring. The plot's crawling along with battles that just drag on and on, and at roughly 16 pages per chapter, and one chapter per month, there are certainly more satisfying Manga for your reading pleasure. Kohta Hirano's grown lazy, and I don't think I'll look into any of his future endeavors.[/spoiler]
I will, of course, be catching the OVAs, as what he's doing currently might work better animated.

I agree. Not only are the chapters short, they have so many large panels of nothing but bloody mayhem that they take incredibly little time to read. I'm still holding out for a complex ending, but if I'm not impressed I'll be inclined to say the plot was weak overall.

The series has a lot of style, and I hope it has more than that. But if it has only style that won't be enough for me to give the manga-ka's future works any special treatment.

uc pseudonym wrote:I agree. Not only are the chapters short, they have so many large panels of nothing but bloody mayhem that they take incredibly little time to read. I'm still holding out for a complex ending, but if I'm not impressed I'll be inclined to say the plot was weak overall.

The series has a lot of style, and I hope it has more than that. But if it has only style that won't be enough for me to give the manga-ka's future works any special treatment.

Yeah, one of the things in Hellsing's favor is definitely its sense of style.

Ok. I am slowly de-noobing to Hellsing manga. I've got my grubby paws on volumes 1-5 now. Just finished 4 and 5 tonight. I loooove the series. But I do agree with the lazy comments. Huge panels of just blood-bath stuff. Eh. Still good though. I have my local Borders ordering me volumes 6 and 7 right now. Any word on 8 yet?

ShatterheartArk wrote:Ok. I am slowly de-noobing to Hellsing manga. I've got my grubby paws on volumes 1-5 now. Just finished 4 and 5 tonight. I loooove the series. But I do agree with the lazy comments. Huge panels of just blood-bath stuff. Eh. Still good though. I have my local Borders ordering me volumes 6 and 7 right now. Any word on 8 yet?

I hope you're the patient sort. Dark Horse tends to release Hellsing volumes roughly one year after their Japanese premieres. I'd ballpark it at publishing stateside sometime during this summer.

Oh ok. If that means 8 will be out in the summer....9 is still a ways off from being done? Last I knew they were finishing 9 in Japan right? So maybe this time next year 9 will be in America? And 10...being done someday lol. Now I understand why people say this dude is lazy.

I read up to Volume 8 (I took Volumes 1-7 out of the library and one of my friends from another site showed me scans from Volume 8) and I gotta say, wow...

The manga is so much better than the anime, but the OVA...
I have to say the OVA beats both of 'em.

Tom Dincht wrote:The manga is so much better than the anime, but the OVA...
I have to say the OVA beats both of 'em.

Seconded.

Hm, I've heard a number of people say that. I may have to look into the OVA.

ShatterheartArk wrote:9 is still a ways off from being done? Last I knew they were finishing 9 in Japan right? So maybe this time next year 9 will be in America? And 10...being done someday lol

If I recall correctly, there are three issues of Volume 10 out in Japan. I'm not sure if the chapters for 9 have been put into a volume yet, though.

uc pseudonym wrote:Hm, I've heard a number of people say that. I may have to look into the OVA.

The OVA is essentially the Manga animated. And I have a sneaking suspicion the fighting in later chapters will flow better when watched as opposed to read. And the artwork is brilliant.

uc pseudonym wrote:If I recall correctly, there are three issues of Volume 10 out in Japan. I'm not sure if the chapters for 9 have been put into a volume yet, though.

No, we haven't gone into volume 10's territory yet, we're just about to wrap up volume 9, which is still loose chapters not yet been collected into a book.

Fish and Chips wrote:The OVA is essentially the Manga animated. And I have a sneaking suspicion the fighting in later chapters will flow better when watched as opposed to read. And the artwork is brilliant.

That would be almost exactly what I'd be looking for in the anime. Actually, that generally applies to most anime of which I have already read the manga: I'm watching mostly to see the fighting animated. Everything else really isn't made much better in anime form.

Fish and Chips wrote:No, we haven't gone into volume 10's territory yet, we're just about to wrap up volume 9, which is still loose chapters not yet been collected into a book.

Are you sure? I could be wrong, given that I'm basing this off estimates from the chapters, but I thought volume 8 ended in the 60s and we're up to chapter 80 now... or perhaps the system I access is completely off.

uc pseudonym wrote:That would be almost exactly what I'd be looking for in the anime. Actually, that generally applies to most anime of which I have already read the manga: I'm watching mostly to see the fighting animated. Everything else really isn't made much better in anime form.


Are you sure? I could be wrong, given that I'm basing this off estimates from the chapters, but I thought volume 8 ended in the 60s and we're up to chapter 80 now... or perhaps the system I access is completely off.

Due to low page count, chapter progression is rather hard to ballpark. I mean, volumes have gone from six chapters per book to ten to tweleve. I don't feel like counting individual pages up to 190, so you'll just have to take my word on it.

Man I really hope Incognito shows up.

He won't. He's an anime-exclusive character.

That may have been the point of the comment, actually. And he could still potentially appear, though I doubt that. To me it seems
[spoiler=something that is actually a spoiler]that Alucard's last battle is going to be with Walter and it will happen at the same time as Integra and police girl fighting the Fuhrer and minions. I suppose it's possible Alucard will have one more opponent yet, but he's already been fighting so many battles in a row that it would feel excessive to me.

Yes, there's probably an irony about my use of "excessive" in relation to Hellsing.[/spoiler]

Fish and Chips wrote:Due to low page count, chapter progression is rather hard to ballpark. I mean, volumes have gone from six chapters per book to ten to tweleve. I don't feel like counting individual pages up to 190, so you'll just have to take my word on it.

That's certainly true. And given how short recent chapters have been, I think they could very easily fit into volume 9. What threw me was that a few Japanese sites began counting issues as volume 10 a while ago, but their distinction was almost certainly arbitrary.

Joshua Christopher wrote:Man I really hope Incognito shows up.

And I really hope he doesn't.

Incognito. XD

Yeah, filler villians are never cool.
Incognito made an okay baddie, but not for the last fight in the series.

Hellsing should've been two 13-episode seasons so it contributed to the popular number '26'.

I say two different season because they needed a break to let the manga get a lot farther to avoid numerous fillers.

But they released an OVA instead, so I guess whatever floats your boat.

The problem is, the guy doing the manga is only slightly faster than say....a snail riding molasses uphill in January. I used to be mad that they rushed it. Then I realised, the dude may never finish Hellsing. (Is just bitter that he can't finish reading the manga)

ShatterheartArk wrote:The problem is, the guy doing the manga is only slightly faster than say....a snail riding molasses uphill in January. I used to be mad that they rushed it. Then I realised, the dude may never finish Hellsing. (Is just bitter that he can't finish reading the manga)

Well if it helps, I'm sure it will be finished before the next chapter of Berserk comes out.

Well at least he's not as slow as Masamune Shirow is with Appleseed. He started that manga about 20 years ago, I think. And there's STILL one volume left he hasn't even begun!