Hellsing, mostly
Today I have to spend my class time working on a written & oral report, so I'm waking my writing muscles up before I begin.
We saw all of Hellsing over the weekend--almost all in one day, but it was slightly too late to get past episode 12 the day we mainlined it, so we had to come back to the last episode on Sunday. This is the last show of the many unseen ones that I have lying around that I could point to and say "I've had this series for THIS LONG and I still haven't seen it" (in this case, almost a year and a half). I'd heard lots of good things about it, too.
Now that I've seen it, I think my main reaction is vague frustration. It was a fun series, if periodically a bit too bloody for my taste, but I didn't get at all attached to any of the characters. That's usually a death blow to the odds of me getting into something. The frustration aspect is that enough things were left unanswered that I'm curious--just not curious enough to go hunting the manga down and find out what happens. I would like to know why and how Alucard is bound to the Hellsing Institute, and what the nature of the controls on him are (and I was very entertained when he would periodically unrestrain himself--I agree with the boyfriend that he was probably in some sort of communication with Integral and she *was* authorizing the temporary relaxation of the restraints, but it was still cool).
And, yes, Alucard himself is bloody cool. I did start to appreciate Integral (Integra? Need to see some official spellings . . . ) toward the end, but overall she didn't really do anything for me. Still, it may be a bad sign that the single coolest thing, to me, was just when people *said* 'Alucard' in that lovely, careful Japanese pronunciation that came out more like 'aa-karu-dou'. ^_^
I would also like to know if he's actually supposed to be Dracula or not. When we were watching it, someone said that there's a video game (I forget which) where 'Alucard' is the son of Dracula. But in this anime, at least, there was no real clue--maybe it comes up in the manga. Sadly, as I said, I probably won't find out. Ah well.
If I ever want to screen the series again, I may want to hunt another copy; the .avi files we have are pretty choppy. But I really have no interest in picking up a legit copy. C'est la vie.
We saw all of Hellsing over the weekend--almost all in one day, but it was slightly too late to get past episode 12 the day we mainlined it, so we had to come back to the last episode on Sunday. This is the last show of the many unseen ones that I have lying around that I could point to and say "I've had this series for THIS LONG and I still haven't seen it" (in this case, almost a year and a half). I'd heard lots of good things about it, too.
Now that I've seen it, I think my main reaction is vague frustration. It was a fun series, if periodically a bit too bloody for my taste, but I didn't get at all attached to any of the characters. That's usually a death blow to the odds of me getting into something. The frustration aspect is that enough things were left unanswered that I'm curious--just not curious enough to go hunting the manga down and find out what happens. I would like to know why and how Alucard is bound to the Hellsing Institute, and what the nature of the controls on him are (and I was very entertained when he would periodically unrestrain himself--I agree with the boyfriend that he was probably in some sort of communication with Integral and she *was* authorizing the temporary relaxation of the restraints, but it was still cool).
And, yes, Alucard himself is bloody cool. I did start to appreciate Integral (Integra? Need to see some official spellings . . . ) toward the end, but overall she didn't really do anything for me. Still, it may be a bad sign that the single coolest thing, to me, was just when people *said* 'Alucard' in that lovely, careful Japanese pronunciation that came out more like 'aa-karu-dou'. ^_^
I would also like to know if he's actually supposed to be Dracula or not. When we were watching it, someone said that there's a video game (I forget which) where 'Alucard' is the son of Dracula. But in this anime, at least, there was no real clue--maybe it comes up in the manga. Sadly, as I said, I probably won't find out. Ah well.
If I ever want to screen the series again, I may want to hunt another copy; the .avi files we have are pretty choppy. But I really have no interest in picking up a legit copy. C'est la vie.