*TFS* Hellsing Ultimate Abridged

The OVA is still really freaking good and I've heard that the pacing is better than the manga, though.

The reveal in this one that Alucard lacks the will to live is absolutely going to come into play with the with the Monster of God Anderson fight and maybe even the bit with Schrodinger.

I really hope for callback to the Michael Mc Doesntexist gag from earlier in the series.

...Why did you spoiler that?

It's possible. We did just get a callback to "Fuck you, that's how" which was completely unexpected.

Because I don't know what to spoil and what not to? And I figured it would have tied in with what was said above me.

edited 31st Dec '16 8:39:24 PM by GethKnight

Your comment has no reference to anything else in it. I mean, it's not a big deal, but I can't not ask when I see people spoiler what seems to basically be random things that aren't actually spoilers. It's become a surprising big peeve of mine.

edited 31st Dec '16 8:41:00 PM by LSBK

I mean. Anyone who knows Schrödinger's name could probably guess.

This site has more or less destroyed my internal censor for spoilers and I'm trying to fix that. I figured my comment would have been read as connected to Zelenal's spoilered comment.

Eh, even if someone thinks something is up, it doesn't mean they'll have any idea about what's going to happen.

Honestly, I wish the spoiler tags were done away with. Apparently most people apply them wrong anyway.

edited 31st Dec '16 8:56:03 PM by LSBK

The OVA is really great but I always felt the chronic issue of Hellsing is Alucard itself. He's so insanely overpowered and dickish that it just kills any tension whenever he strolls into battle because he's so damn unkillable (and unlike say, Superman, he doesn't have any moral regard for anything, so he doesn't hold back). It's telling that the Major's gameplan relied entirely on just stalling for time (by stranding Alucard in the middle of the sea) so he can take over London and kill his allies.

That's why episodes 5-7 are the OVA's height, because Alucard is absent from the conflict and the stakes become real for the first and only time in the story. When Alucard comes back in episode 8-10 the story loses a lot of its punch.

The Abridged version naturally handles this much better because their Alucard is a over-the-top parody of the original Alucard, so he's a riot to watch rather than a mood-killer.

Wasn't that the point though?

Yeah, there are plenty of people who love seeing Alucard just walk all over everything. It's a very YMMV thing, but it's less of a bug than it is an intentional feature.

Which is why also claiming this is better written than the original is sort of suspect. Among other reasons, they're just entirely different animals that it really doesn't make much sense to compare them like that.

edited 31st Dec '16 11:25:30 PM by LSBK

Yeah. As much as I adored the scene between Alucard and Seras in this version, I wouldn't say it's better than the canon version since a lot of the details surrounding both scenes are completely different.

In canon, it's the culmination of Seras' story arc as she finally stops trying to be a human and fully embraces her identity as a vampire (something Alucard has been trying to get her to do since the very beginning). In doing so, she also casts aside her status as Alucard's Servant and becomes a full fledged vampire in her own right. She finally caved and drank blood (something she was actively avoiding throughout the series) only when her love interest died and used his last words to push her past her inhibitions. After this, she finally becomes a full character in her own right rather than just a companion or counterpart to one of the others. She steps into her own and it really shows in how everyone- especially Alucard- treats her afterward.

Here, it's more of a culmination of Alucard and Seras' relationship. Seras never seemed to have any real problem with being a vampire here but she has been holding herself back when not in a blood rage by considering herself to be weak or not that special. Aside from a few instances (pretty much only when she's in a blood rage), she never really does or says anything indicative of her status as a vampire. When Alucard talks to her through their link and finally drops his flippant attitude and becomes completely serious, his insistence that she's more powerful than she believes and that she possesses something Alucard doesn't (a reveal that casts Alucard's past interactions with her in an interesting light) is what pushes her to absorb Pip's blood (something they didn't focus too much on since it wasn't as big of a deal here) and finally proclaim her status as a real fucking vampire. Now it's just a matter of time to see how things play out from here with her. I'm really looking forward to her interaction with Alucard after his battle with and near death to Monster of God Anderson.

Seras's actual arc Seras is supposed to go through in the original is theoretically stronger and the plot itself is stronger in the original by virtue of the original following an actual plot, whilst this one is a parody concerned mostly with hitting jokes rather than making a truly coherent narrative.

The area I think Abridged succeeds more is characterization and dialogue. It was well-done how everybody keeps calling Police Girl just to build up her "SAY MY NAME!" moment in this episode, and made it all more awesome. In the original she also doesn't deliver anything as memorable as "God! Save! The Queen!" in this moment, if you ask me.

And hey, if you found Alucard's tension-killing powers exciting, more power to you, but to me it really spoiled the entire show, especially when the supporting cast was so much more interesting, complex and functional. The story's hard-on for Alucard actually leads into the three things I dislike the most about the show that I'm curious how Abridged will deal with: Alucard's Heroic Second Wind and Anderson's subsequent defeat with that bullshit "only a monster can kill a monster" explanation, Maxwell's terrible Face–Heel Turn and Alucard's return after Schrodinger.

That's not a sign of better writing though, it's a sign of this fitting your preferences more. Those are distinctly different things.

And on the dialogue, people go on about that but I would hate it if most characters in the actual series (here and Dragon Ball) actually spoke like people in the abridged verse do. It works specifically because it's supposed to be a parody and for humor, and I'm honestly bemused why so many people act like the two things could seamlessly be interchanged.

edited 1st Jan '17 12:40:00 PM by LSBK

I'd say it's a sign of my opinion on Alucard's overpowering being that it is bad writing, while your opinion on it is that it's not. That's what YMMV means, after all.

Have you ever read One-Punch Man?

No, because that's the entire point of the character. Whether it was executed well or not is a different matter.

But if you're just saying you don't like characters like that in general, just lumping any example of that, devoid of context, the setting, or actual storytelling and plot, as bad writing is way too broad to actually be a fair assessment.

edited 1st Jan '17 12:44:40 PM by LSBK

One-Punch Man is actually the counterpart to what I'm saying. That's a overpowered protagonist being done well. My opposition is not really with the concept of a overpowered protagonist itself (though it is a pretty difficult concept to make work), but just how keeping the context, setting, actual storytelling and plot in mind,, Alucard's overpoweredness lays havoc with the story's quality. If I was saying I don't like over-powered protagonists in general, I wouldn't enjoy Abridged-Alucard, who's just as (if not more) overpowered.

Maybe the reason I find Abridged's approach to work better is because the focus shifts to the absurdity of it all, so there's a lot less concern with tension and more with humor. The original Hellsing is still trying to be taken seriously and build tension, so whenever Alucard's walks out of the door and shows himself to be unbeatable, the tension and seriousness the story was supposed to have just deflate for me.

Well, I mean, the entire story is about beating him. Maybe you dislike that aspect of it too, but arguing that he's too overpowered and too much is focused on him seems to be ignoring the main point.

On the supporting cast being more interesting, I don't really have a thought except that people say that about every supporting cast. At this point I can't help but think people automatically expect what we spend less time on to be more interesting even without any actual reason to.

And that's not a specific shot at you, or anyone, it's just an observation based on how things like that are usually discussed.

The main point is just that the story is, more broadly, about a worldwide three-way between the (supernaturally absurd version of) Nazis, The Catholic Church and the English Crown, all the subterfuge conspiracies in-between them. Alucard didn't need to be everything about it, this background conflict is a lot more interesting than just one abomination of nature. You don't even need to remove Alucard from it, just tone him down (or increase his foes's danger level) to a point he doesn't annihilate all the stakes every time he walks in a room. Notably, the series itself does this with Father Anderson, who's a lot more functional in the power sense but still quite hard to kill. Perhaps an alternate solution would be reducing Alucard's role in the story to a more Supporting Protagonist

Things like Pip, Seras, Sir Penwood, Integra, Walter and Anderson holding the line in London via trickery and sheer grit was a lot more blood-pumping because these characters could die (in fact two of them do), and because they have to come up with more creative methods to defeat their foes than Alucard's "just kill it" tactics. The series itself is aware of this to some extent, otherwise it wouldn't leave Alucard absent for three whole episodes of the final battle for nothing.

His dramatic conflict is also kind of one-note (he's a walking ball of self-pity who doesn't really give a shit about the conflict and is just trying to fulfill his master's will, even his atoner aspect doesn't get much attention until the last two episodes) in comparison to the other character's more nuanced conflicts (like Anderson's Blue-and-Orange Morality fanatism, for example).

But it is, all in all, a matter of opinion. That's just my take on it.

edited 1st Jan '17 1:32:46 PM by Gaon

I mean, I understand why those things would bother someone.

It just strikes me the same thing as what happens with Dragon Ball, that sounds less like "Make the story better" and more like "Make the story something it wasn't supposed to be".

Zelenal once said something that sums it up well: "It's like wanting an arc of One Punch Man where Saitama gets CurbStomped; it just doesn't work." or something like that.

But, in the end, this is all a matter of opinion isn't it.

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the conflict stem from the "abomination of nature" and while Alucard did end fights he didn't solve the problem.

edited 1st Jan '17 1:37:43 PM by Cross

I don't think Alucard being god incarnate is really tantamount to Hellsing's inner workings. I think the story wouldn't lose any of its thematic strength if Alucard was just a tad easier to deal with (like Anderson) or if he was a much minor character (despite the story centering around beating him), like he's a shadowy force lurking in the story's background sporadically appearing until the climax. If that is also making the story "what it wasn't supposed to be", then it becomes really hard to make any sort of critique that isn't "write better, Hirano".

I'm not understanding the first half of what you're trying to say. The second half (Alucard ending fights but not solving everything), well, not really. In Hellsing there's not much real work to be done other than killing your enemies.

edited 1st Jan '17 2:04:44 PM by Gaon

He's hardly God, but that so many people want defeat him is oncredibly central to everything and his power is a ver big part of that. It's also a big part of his character and symbolic of why people either adamantly refuse or rejoice at the chance to be a vampire

Alucard being the way he is is key to most of the story and his sheer power is a big part of who he is and why.

edited 1st Jan '17 2:48:52 PM by LSBK