Sword Dancer
From Anime Indepth
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The third episode of the Hellsing anime.
Summary
In a Catholic public school, a young man, Enrico, has failed in an attempt to turn another boy, Mick, into a vampire. As Enrico is preparing to try again, members of the school and a priest barge in, sparking Enrico’s rage. Elsewhere, a tall, scarred priest descends from a train onto London soil.
Later, doctors operating on Enrico remove a small microchip from his skull, which is apparently inactive. Integra begins to accept seriousness of the situation, and the official from the previous episode mentions that a representative from Rome is arriving to claim Enrico’s body. Seras, returning to her room, has become extremely weak, physically, due to, as Alucard points out, her inability to drink the medical blood, the latest batch of which she flushes down the toilet. In Integra’s office, Integra muses, with Alucard nearby, what the difference is between vampires and these vampires with chips. Alucard goes silent and Integra notes that she knows that there is a great difference between the two, and Alucard, before vanishing, notes how he does not understand humans. As Enrico escapes the morgue, attempting to find Mick(who was cremated earlier), Integra receives a report stating that a member of the Vatican’s secret organization XIII, Iscariot, is in London, the agent being the same priest seen at episode’s beginning. Integra scrambles Hellsing, as well as Seras and Alucard, to the scene. At the hospital, the Iscariot operative appears and executes Seras’ commander, Gareth, and plunges a bayonet through Seras’s throat. As the operative prepares to execute Enrico, Alucard appears and kills Enrico instead. When the operative and Alucard begin to square-off, Alucard manages to shoot the man in the head, however, as Alucard makes his way towards Seras, Anderson rises and plunges several blades into Alucard’s chest, causing Alucard to realize Anderson is a man-made “regenerator.” As they begin round two, Integra appears, and declares that the man is Alexander Anderson, and that, since Enrico is already dead, his orders are to vacate at once. After Anderson departs, Alucard offers his bleeding arm to Seras, which would allow her to become a complete vampire, Alucard even calls her by her full name. However, Seras is unable to bring herself to drink, and Alucard asks her if this is really her choice? As he disappears, Seras admits she really doesn’t know.
Trivia
-In consideration of all the events that took place, is the official from the first episode working with Iscariot? Remember, at episode’s outset, the same official mentions some from Rome(Anderson?) is coming to claim(kill?) his body, which he adds with a wry smile. This same man also somewhat resembles (round-rim glasses, at least) the shadowy Millenium figure which appeared intermittently in the original manga.
-This episode is based on the original Hellsing manga’s volume 1, chapters 4 through 6, also titled “Sword Dancer.” The manga contains an extended version of this fight sequence, as well as a conversation between Anderson and another Iscariot operative, Father Ronaldo. Also, instead of using knives to pin holy scriptures and barriers against the wall, in the manga Anderson employs nails. The extended parts of this fight sequence spill over into a later episode, while this episode makes room for the freak vampire sub plot, as well as the addition of Anderson murdering Seras’ commander, Gareth, who appeared in the previous episode.
-In an animation error, when Alucard plunges his hand through Enrico he is no longer wearing gloves.
-Anderson’s gloves read: “Jesus Christ is in Heaven” and “Speak with Dead.” Likewise, Alucard’s Jackal 13mm, seen later in the series, reads “Jesus Christ is in Heaven now.”
-Like the manga on which the show is based, the characters, even when speaking Japanese, are partial to saying lines in English, such as “Search and Destroy” and “Yes sir, my master.”
-Iscariot is the last name of Judas Iscariot, the man who betrayed Jesus Christ for thirty pieces of silver.
-The two men who arrive to hold a secret meeting with Integra are the same men seen guarding the front door in the previous episode. They seem to appear just before missions take place, but their precise significance is a mystery…
-The painting Integra is watching is an older gentleman with blonde hair, who wears a similar uniform to that of Integra. As Alucard is also seen staring at the portrait, what is it’s significance? Had the anime taken place in the same order as the manga, we would have discovered his identity in the previous episode. However, later on in the series his identity is revealed.
-Seras first attempts to drink her blood out of a soup bowl with a spoon. This show’s her attachment to human mannerisms, when compared to the apparently ravenous appetite of the vampires around her.
-The train seen in the episode’s opening sequences, Euro-Star, is a real world service that connects to London, Paris, Lille and Brussels.
-Why is Mick dead? While this is never outright explained, being that Mick appears to have red eyes, my guess would be that Enrico, the blond freak vampire who has no relation to the Hellsing character Enrico Maxwell, tried to turn Mick into a servant vampire. However, servant vampires, among normal vampire breeds, must be 1) virgins and 2) of the opposite gender, and while the freak chip defies much of vampire law, perhaps it does discriminate in this case. On the other hand, Enrico appears fairly confident that turning Mick into a vampire will succeed, so, perhaps “they,” mentioned in the previous episode, have a method by which to create same-sex servant vampires, which Enrico was apparently about to commence before being interrupted.
-The Japanese voice actor, Kazuhiro Nakata, who plays a doctor in this episode, as well as the official in this and the first episode, goes on to play the Vicar in the Hellsing OAV series.
-This episode appears on the Volume 1 DVD, titled "Impure Souls," of Geneon’s release of Hellsing.
