Hellsing – Ultimate Volume 3.
Label: Manga Entertainment.
Release date: 26th January 2009
Certificate: 15
Discs: 1.
Running time: 50 mins approx
Video: 16.9 anamorphic
Sound: English 5.1, Japanese 5.1
Subtitles: English.
RRP: £14.99
Brief synopsis:
After their bloody decimation at the hands of the Valentine Brothers, The Hellsing Organization finds itself in dire need of more manpower. In response to this they call upon the services of The Wild Geese, a mercenary group generally accepted as the deadliest and most professional known to man. But, this time they will not be fighting against their fellow men. No, their mission is now to take on the undead; those foul monsters of the night that shrug off regular bullets like they were insect bites. It also doesn’t help when a single tame vampire, Seras Victoria, former policewoman and recently turned Draculina, can throw their best member clear across the room using just her middle finger.
A fortuitous lead from a highly placed, though not always friendly source, sends Alucard across the Atlantic to South America in search of a hidden group of Nazis who fled defeat at the tail end of WWII. Hiding out for over 50 years, they have built up their strength and their numbers until they are ready to step out of the shadows and pick a fight with The Hellsing Organization. Will Hellsing’s best agent be enough to take on the might of the Third Reich or will they send him packing?
Comments:
How on Earth this volume ever managed to get onto our shelves with only a 15 certificate is seriously beyond me. It’s like they took the gore level, body count and foul language from the first two volumes and rolled them all up into once nicely compacted volume and then stuck a bit more in for good measure. I guess one of the upsides of animating direct to DVD is that, as you don’t have to tailor your releases for the TV censors, you can put in as much blood and gore as you like and then see what the likes of the BBFC have to say about it later on. Not that I’m complaining of course. If there’s one thing a good vampire tale needs it’s plenty of gore. Otherwise it just wouldn’t be cricket now, would it? One of the other upsides of animating direct to DVD is that, instead of trying to restrain yourself to a rigidly scheduled series of 24 minute time slots, you can just keep on animating until you’ve finished the job and work on the running time and release date later. Certainly a tactic that this series has benefited from greatly.
So, apart from the extra “yuck” factor, what else does this volume have? Well it’s got more of the original author’s screwball humour making its way through to the screen than in previous volumes, and gives us a bit more of an indication of where this series is going to in the long term. Basically, if you enjoyed the previous DVD volumes or the original manga then there’s even more to be enjoyed this time around.
Onto the extras, what do we get? Well the previous volumes didn’t disappoint and this release certainly doesn’t either. As before there’s an Audio commentary track, a Cast and crew interview, a Textless credit animation and a Production image gallery. What we gain this time is a 40 minute video of the cast and crew’s panel at the 2007 Anime Expo as well as a video of the Hellsing signing booth at the same convention.
How about the dub track? Once again the ADR director, Taliesin Jaffe, has done a sterling job with both the script and his cast. The only real problem I have with the dub is that the voice actor for the primary series antagonist, Major Max Montana, seems to have developed his German accent by watching the likes of Carry on Hitler or Whoops, there go my Lederhosen for inspiration. Also, Pip’s French accent seems to be produced by channelling the spirit of Jean Claude van Damme and Maxwell’s Italian accent sounds like it should be coming out of one of Jim Henson’s Muppets whilst trying to flog pasta sauce to the British public. This is such a shame as the rest of the accents have been generally pretty good so far. Apart from that the audio experience is all very impressive presented and the music is suitably well crafted. We’ve lost the DTS option this time but there’s still glorious 5.1 available on both the English dub and original Japanese language tracks.
Hellsing – Ultimate Volume 3 available from major retailers including Amazon
Elemental Gelade Box Set.
Running time: Approx 650 minutes, 26 eps over 6 discs
Classification: 12
Distributor: MVM
Region: R2 PAL
Video: 4:3
Audio: Japanese 2.0, English 2.0.
Subtitles: English.
Release Date: 9th February 2009
RRP: £49.99
Synopsis:
Young Coud Van Giruet, or just “Cou” to his friends, dreams of being a legendary sky pirate and becoming the next boss of his group, the “Red Lynx Sky Pirate Squadron”. It’s unfortunate then that his pirating skills are almost as pitiful as his dreams are grand. Seen as a joke and a hindrance by his fellow pirates he’s routinely left behind to mind the ship while they go off on raids, pillage, loot, engage in skulduggery and generally have a good time.
Whilst skulking around the pirate’s ship after one such raid Cou finds a large casket buried deep amongst the spoils of the group’s last raid. With his curiosity getting the better of him, he accidentally releases from her entombed slumber a shy young girl by the name of Reverie “Ren” Metherlence. It turns out that Ren is one of a race of ancient beings, Edel Raids, who have the ability to merge with human partners to become powerful weapons.
There’s plenty of groups out there who’d like to get their hands on Ren and her powers, a few for altruistic purposes but most for their own greedy and selfish reasons and they’ll stop at nothing to obtain her for themselves. Even with these outside interferences, Cou’s made a promise to escort Ren safely to the legendary Edel Garden and, though he may be young and inexperienced, he’s the kind of guy who always keeps his word.
Comments:
Elemental Gelade is one of those shows where it’s kind of hard to place exactly who the target audience really is. At first it seems to be males in their early to mid teens though it’ll probably be just as popular with a slightly older audience of either sex. There can occasionally be a bit too much standing around talking or dealing with romance & relationship issues for the younger teens and at other times a little too much pointless running and jumping about for the young adults. But once you’ve gotten a little way into the show it’s actually all quite fun to watch with interesting characters and plenty of well-paced action. It feels at times like a strange combination of Last Exile, Outlaw Star and fellow “humans-metamorphosing-into-weapons” show Soul Eater, which I’ll hopefully be reviewing towards the end of the year. The animation is well produced and of good quality, the music is excellent and the original Japanese cast were top notch. The Dub track, well it’s not bad, not the best I’ve ever heard but nothing that would make it unacceptable. There are some inconsistencies in the translations but again nothing to really ruin the experience.
The music for this series is handled by the same composer behind the scores for Madlax, Noir and .hack//SIGNamongst others and hops easily from electro pop to grand orchestral to several compositions which wouldn’t be amiss at your average renaissance fayre. If you’ve allready heard Noir or .hack//SIGN, then aurally that’s pretty much what you’re getting again here.
So, if you fancy taking a spin on a romance sci-fi comedy adventure that isn’t too cerebral then you can do worse than giving this series a go.
Extras:
Being essentially a collection and repackaging of the 6 Elemental Gelade DVDs released individually over 2007/2008, it retains all the extras that were originally included on these discs. These being; a number of trailers, Commentary tracks featuring the English dub cast, Interviews with the original Japanese cast, Textless versions of the various opening and closing credits, line art galleries and more. All this is encased in 6 thin-pack DVD covers held within a sturdy cardboard sleeve with new box artwork front and back.
Elemental Gelade Box Set is available from major retailers including Amazon