The Undead
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The first episode of the Hellsing anime.
Summary
It is a cold, foggy night in London, England. In the sky, military choppers hover above, and in a room somewhere, a man is loading his gun, declaring that his control art restrictions have been reduced to level 3. As an elderly gentleman and his mysterious young lady friend enter a secluded room and the man begins to caress her body, he notices a mysterious person, clad in red, on the sofa, who claims he is from the Royal Order of Religious Knights. The elderly gentleman is taken aback, and the man in red levels his gun at the couple, telling the older man to move out of the way and, with a single shot to the head, the woman dissolves into dust, revealing a single, silver bullet among the remains. The man in red reappears outside, where a small battalion of armored soldiers, tanks, and helicopters await. The man in red states “limited release completed” to a car parked outside, and disappears into the fog.
Following the title card, three officials watch footage of a mysterious, vampiric priest, who apparently has attacked the village of Cheddar, turning the village and investigating police into what the blonde, female official dubs “ghouls.” The woman, identified as Integral Hellsing, scolds them for not calling in her organization, Hellsing, to deal with this matter, and confidently declares she has sent in a single person to complete the mission. Outside the village of Cheddar, we are shown footage of the mysterious man in red heading toward the village, followed by a scene where a young, female police officer, who is the only uninjured member of squadron, treating her comrades, who soon become zombie-like creatures. The officer, identified as Seras, is saved by the man in red, who Seras shoots after he states he’d like to suck some blood. After the man heals instantly from the wound, Seras flees. Trying to take shelter in a nearby church, Seras discovers the demonic priest, who puts Seras under his spell, deciding to make Seras a vampire like himself, however, as he is about to suck her blood, the man in red bursts through the front door. After identifying himself as Alucard, this man in red declares that he is here to dispose of trash, and the priest summons his hidden ghoul hordes, who tear apart Alucard with machine gun fire. Alucard reconstitutes his body, however, and uses his silver .454 Casull to destroy the ghouls, finally leveling his armament at the priest. The priest, realizing that Alucard is also a vampire(and in servitude to humans) holds Seras as hostage, causing Alucard to state that he’s going to shoot Seras through the lung to kill the priest, posing the question “do you want to some with me?” After a moment, Seras agrees, and Alucard fires, then holding up Seras’ body, telling her she chose this, and then biting into he throat.
As Integra stands outside Cheddar with her Hellsing troops, Alucard appears over the hill and, after a scolding from Integral, notes that he’s bringing Seras into the organization. Intregral, brushing off Alucard’s “order,” motions for the troops to move out.
Alucard states that it was, truly, a good night.
Trivia
-The ending episode preview features a character from the manga that is the ghost of Seras’ Hallconnen “Canon,” a weapon we see in the credits but not in the main series until episode 6.
-It is also worthy of note that the vampires in this episode are portrayed as having red eyes, where Seras and Integral have blue, however, after becoming a vampire, Seras’ eyes become red as well. This fits in with a theme of eyes that is a prevalent part of the show’s artistic style, which resembles that of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulu works.
-Most of the episode, from the conference room scene forward, is straight from the first chapter of the Hellsing manga, originally titled "Vampire Hunter," as opposed to this episode's title, "The Undead." The only major differences from the source material being, one, the scene where Seras flees and Alucard finds it quizzical that she shoots only because he’s not human. This is part of the show’s theme of drawing the real line between human and demon. Second, instead of Alucard asking whether Seras is a virgin or not, as he does in the manga, Alucard lets Seras decide whether she wishes to die here or live on as a vampire. This plays highly into the theme of “choice” that this animated adaptation of the manga tries to accomplish.
-The Japanese voice actor, Kazuhiro Nakata, who plays the official in this and the third episode, goes on to play the Vicar in the Hellsing OAV series.
-For a three second pan shot near the end of the episode, we see the TV-series only lead Fargason, who does not have speaking lines until episode 2.
-Alucard refers to Seras, throughout the series, as “fuke,” or police girl, this is very much a slang way in which to refer to a female police officer, and is rarely used in day-to-day Japanese.
-Though the vampiric priest appears in all three versions of Hellsing(Manga, TV, OAV), he is never specifically named, and is often referred to as the Vicar or Bokushi-sama(“priest” in Japanese). Only in the TV series does Alucard refer to the priest as an “instant vampire,” the significance of which becomes clear in later episodes.
-Alucard is the word "Dracula," spelled backwards, and is also the name of one of the leads in the Castlevania video game series.
-In the manga and OAV, Seras is portrayed in a yellow uniform of the same design, however, this colorization of her uniform may have occurred after the production of the anime, as the manga is entirely in black and white to begin with.
-Hendi Winzermans, the brand of small cigars that Integral Hellsing smokes is a play on words of the small cigar brand known as “Henri Wintermans.” In the manga, Integra smokes a brand of cigarettes called “Sippiany,” another imaginary brand name.
-In the manga, when a demon was executed through the heart or head, there would be large quantities of blood, in the TV series, on the other hand, the demon dissolves into dust. This was apparently the result of some conflict the director had with the violent source material of the manga.
-Alucard utters the line “Keeping the power restriction unlocked until the target has been silenced.” Throughout the series this line is used when he unlocks his Control Art Restrictions. Also, the event is listed as “Situation C,” indicating that it is of lower importance, by comparison to “Situation A’s” that appear later on in the show’s run.
-The bugs seen in the room during the opening scene are shown throughout the series, and usually indicate a demonic force is nearby.
-The characters of the elderly gentleman and the mysterious woman clad in black do not appear in the Hellsing manga series on which the show is based.
-This episode appears on the Volume 1 DVD, titled "Impure Souls," of Geneon’s release of Hellsing.
