DARK HORSE HELLSING 10 REVIEW
The gripping finale of the sprawling epic we all know and love as "Hellsing" has finally come to an end, and now North America has caught up to the fold. Now, in the hands of fans everywhere are those final 192 pages of blood-drinking, Nazi-fighting mayhem! But what do we at Call To Arms think of this English localization? Read on to find out in our full written review!
[NOTE: This review will avoid major spoilers of the events of this volume for fans who have not yet read it. However, this being the 10th and final volume, the reviewers assume anybody browsing this review will have read the preceding 9 volumes, and will not pull any punches with regards to spoilers from those. You have been warned]
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HELLSING VOLUME 10 Story & Art By: Kouta Hirano Reviewed By: Demon Rin & Vladucard |
OFFICIAL SYNOPSIS *The back of the book actually mistakenly calls Pip "Australian" instead of "French". |
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STORY
The 10th volume of Hellsing picks right up where the previous volume left off. Walter and Alucard are locked in their struggle to the death as Integra and Seras board the Nazi airship to call the Major's hand and end this horrifying game of War once and for all! Integra has finally made it into the Major's chamber while Seras, with the help of the soul of Captain Bernadotte from within her, takes on what might be a losing battle against the fearsome Werewolf Captain of the Waffen-SS!
Seras Battles the Captain. |
Right away the story grips you in the thrall of battle as Seras and Pip continue their fight, and the story doesn't slow at all right up until the very end! Most everyone is given closure, and yes, the Battle of London finally comes to a close in the pages of this volume. It all ends on an epilogue that closes out some of the final remaining loose ends of the volume in a rather satisfying way. In particular, Integra and Alucard's arcs really stand out in what it shows. Going back to the first volume after reading, one can really see how far Integra has come as a character.
 Walter's Story Arc Felt Incomplete. |
The volume was not without its faults, however. One major problem with the writing of the final volume is Walter. Anyone who is caught up to at least volume 9 knows by now that He's gone traitor and has been vampirized for the sole purpose of being allowed to combat Alucard with hopes of defeating him. Also that Walter's body is giving out on him, de-aging and falling apart at every turn. Hirano effectively hammers home the point that he established in volume 9 that Walter really wants the No-Life-King dead, but he never takes a second to explain why Walter wanted that so badly that he'd done such a horrible thing to himself. Hirano has either flat out refused to tell us that fact or we're to believe Walter simply wanted to fight and kill Alucard for the sake of fighting and killing Alucard, and in either case Walter's story arc comes across as weak for it. Though everything else about his arc is resolved nicely by the second to last chapter, it just felt like Hirano could have done so much more with him. One or two pages explaining something that happened between Alucard and Walter that soured their friendship would have done the trick, it just feels wasted. Perhaps Hirano intended to disclose that information in the Dawn should he ever finish it, but we might never know that.
One of the Added Pages. |
Another plus for anyone who kept up with these chapters in the original Young King OURs serialization is that our dear author Hirano has kept to tradition and has added several pages to the story! The added pages are somewhat subtle and blend perfectly with the proceedings, but in total they add quite a bit to the events of the volume and help make the story somewhat easier to follow, especially the pages added to the fight with Captain as well as the final chapter. The Pages also add a bit more commentary to several parts, especially Integra's battle with the Major.
All-in-all, the volume was very well done, with the only major drawback being the missed opportunity with Walter's character.
SCORE: 8/10
TRANSLATION
First let it be said that it's common knowledge at this point that there are some in the fan base who don't like Dark Horse's transliteration of the characters' accents. However, this is the 10th volume. Anyone buying it should expect the accents by now and the reviewers' feelings on them will not affect the score.
 Good, Fitting dialog was used for most of the characters. |
Now, the translation of the volume is actually a mixed bag. On quite a few instances they did a really good job. They wrote in dialog that really fit each character, and nationality used. For example, Walter uses several bits of British slang that really lend themselves to his character. Occasionally however, they go overboard with this. during one scene, Integra barks a question at the Major, and while his answer was in Japanese in the original, meaning the reader was supposed to understand it, Dark Horse chose to make it "Alles", the German word for "Everything". It was quite jarring actually, as that seemed to be a somewhat important part of his reply, and that word not being one of the commonly seen German words like "Mein" or "Krieg", it becomes disconcerting.
Heinkel Was Difficult to Understand |
Another problem would be Heinkel's dialog. In the previous volume, the Captain shot the Iscariot agent in the face, so in this volume Hirano gave her a speech impediment to go with that fact. However, the Japanese version executed it far better. Originally, her dialog was written in normal, perfectly legible Japanese with a modified reading on the side that alerted you that she had a speech impediment, so there was never any confusion as to what she was saying. In English, they held true to the heavily warped dialog, but did nothing to make sure the reader could understand it. Only for one speech bubble did they offer a note in the margin, it would have been nice if they had done it every time.
 Some Awkward and Wrong Translations Were Used. |
The only other mistakes were some mistranslations and oddities that squeaked into the book. For example, there is a scene where Seras recalls when Alucard sucked her blood in volume 1. She points to the bite marks on her neck and says, basically "He sucked my blood after all". However, Dark Horse translated it as "See, my blood's being sucked!" despite the fact that Alucard isn't even in the room and nobody is actually sucking her blood. As they have it, the line appears to mean Alucard is somehow telepathically sucking her blood, and it comes off as really awkward. Not to mention that they still appear to be translating Alucard's dialog as "Count" when he refers to Integra, as it should be in the feminine as "Countess".
Overall, the translation was good. The wording was solid for the most part, but as said above, there were some really odd mistakes that kept it from being perfect.
SCORE: 7/10
EDITING
This is the part where the book really falls apart. There are several major editing mistakes that look rather awkward.
A Shot from Vol. 6 Of Pip's Hat |
First off, as said before, the synopsis on the back of the book made the mistake of calling Pip Australian, which is strange because the book itself keeps up the tradition of giving him a thick French accent. It was most likely made due to Pip's Australian hat, but it's a strange mistake that simply should not have made it into print. While on the subject of the cover though, one thing both reviewers noticed was that the image on the front cover appears to have been darkened quite a bit to the point where everything appears a tad too red, especially the characters' skin tones, which were more normal looking on the Japanese volume, but these problems aren't even the worst of it.
 The Missing Title Page Click To See The Full Page. |
Anyone who has collected the Hellsing manga in either Japanese OR English will notice that in volumes 1-9, the books feature a volume title page at the beginning of the book with the number, in roman numeral over a grayscale version of one of the Hellsing illustrations done for Young King OURs as well as a full table of contents for every chapter in the book. Volume 10 was no exception in the original Japanese, and Dark Horse themselves made sure to preserve those two pages for every other volume they have released, but strangely enough they are completely absent from this edition of Volume 10. A glaring omission that also keeps information from the reader. In both Japanese and English, the final chapter "Romancia" isn't actually named in the chapter itself, that was removed entirely for the reprint in book format. Therefore, the only way to know the name of the last chapter is to look at the table of contents, which as said earlier, are omitted. Put bluntly, this simply shouldn't have happened.
Oddly Misspelling the Author's Name Click to See The Original. |
Possibly the biggest mistake however, would be on the final two pages. Being as this volume ends the story of Hellsing, Hirano treated readers to a splash drawing of Hellsing House at the end with the words "HELLSING Written By: Kohta Hirano - THE END" all in perfect English in the Japanese edition. The editors felt the need to completely redo the lettering, for seemingly no reason, as the fonts and text effects used were all the same. This oddity leads to a rather obvious and jarring mistake. On the final page announcing the end of the Manga, they spelled the author's name wrong. Hirano's given name can be properly romanized as either "Kouta" or "Kohta", however on that final page in this volume it was spelled "Kohota". It just comes across as sloppy, and out of place. This book had two editors, one of them should have caught this typo!
Other than those major mistakes though, the rest of the book is pretty solidly put together. All of the text setting looks nice clean and legible, there are no other glaring smudges or misprints in the book. It just strikes so odd as to how so many big errors could slip by them. It's enough to anger the completionists out there who would want those few missing pages back.
SCORE: 4/10
PRINTING AND PRESENTATION
This is actually where the book shines!
Right off the bat, the cover appears to be much sturdier and better printed than previous volumes. It appears almost as if they changed the thickness of the material its printed on. It's really quite nice! The pages and printing quality also appear a step above the rest. Almost as though they decided to go out with a bang and splurged on using higher quality paper and better printing presses. The paper is brighter and clearer, it's just so very nice!
The only possible problem would be the aforementioned darkness of the front cover. It's unclear if that was a mistake in the editing process, or if it was something that went wrong in the printing of the cover, so that's a potential downside of the printing, but overall it's spectacular, their best work on the series by far.
SCORE: 10/10
IN CLOSING
It's truly been a long and winding road. Thirteen years after Kouta Hirano introduced readers to this twistedly dark yet amazingly epic series, it finally comes to a close in the West. Dark Horse and DMP have taken the North American fanbase all the way through. The course was sometimes rocky with some fans disliking some of Dark Horse's translation practices, but overall it was a pretty satisfying ride.
Their English edition of this final volume epitomizes that journey with some really odd glaring errors and oddities, yet in the end, it's overall satisfying and definitely gets the job done. Hellsing fans should definitely enjoy the work done on this, the end of Hellsing!
FINAL SCORE: 7/10
Note: Unless otherwise stated, all images used in this review were taken from the Japanese version. Any images featuring Dark Horse's translation were recreated using the Japanese images specifically for this article.
The opinions presented are those of Demon Rin & Vladucard only and may not represent the other members of CTA staff.