[Dr Kain]

So I spent the last week reading the Hellsing manga and overall, I highly enjoyed it, and yet, I feel just a tad disappointed. I read all 10 volumes in a week, so clearly I liked the series or I would have found myself struggling to get through more volumes. I liked learning about Alucard's true identity and everything about him. At the same time though, I did not know the whole series essentially took place in the course of one night and was all essentially just one giant ass battle.

It just made a few of the character motivations confusing and I do not like what they did with Walter as it seemed out of character for how he acted in the first half of the series. Also, it was weird having Alucard not around for two volumes since he is the main character of the story. He is pretty much the Hellsing version of Goku. This series could have been done in 8 volumes as there was a lot of pages that were pointless. Not to mention there were chapters that were like 7 pages long, making them entirely pointless. Maxwell, on the other hand, confused me. He just suddenly has an army of crusaders and wants to kill everyone in Britain. That came out of no where.

Nevertheless, Hirano did manage to capture some great character moments in the middle of the battles (well, as long as your name is Yumi or Heinkle), which was nice. In fact, it was quite odd to learn about Alucard, Anderson, Seras, and the french dude over the course of the giant battle. Hell, he even managed to give a personality to the major.

Overall, I highly enjoyed the series, but it being one long battle really through me off. I was really expecting there to be a little more build up and mystery to the nazi army before things hit the fan, but that was clearly not the case. Nevertheless, I really want to watch Ultimate now.