HELLSING

HELLSINGKOHTA HIRANOTHE MANGA AND THE ANIMEA Critical StudyBy Jeremy Mark RobinsonThis is a study of the manga and anime of Kohta Hirano best-known for the Hellsing series.Kohta Hirano was born in Adachi Tokyo on July 14 1973. He worked as a manga assistant. His resumé of comics is rather thin – it’s mainly short works and his major opus Hellsing is only ten volumes long.The Hellsing manga (a.k.a. Hellsing: The Legend of a Vampire Hunter) was written and drawn by Kohta Hirano. It was published in Young King Ours magazine owned by Shonen Gahosha) between 1997 and 2008. The format is a b/w manga with a regular layout of typically 3 4 or 5 panels per page (and most of the action’s contained within the panels). The chapters range from a regular length (19 pages) to 35 or more pages (so the 89 chapters of Hellsing form a longer manga in all – 95 chapters if you include Hellsing: Dawn). The chapters have pop culture titles such as Sword Dancer Dead Zone Elevator Action Age of Empire Final Fantasy and Soldier of Fortune.Like Bleach Blade of the Immortal and Naruto Hellsing is not a talky manga – instead the emphasis is on style design atmosphere and of course action. (And in those areas of design and style of mood and texture and of action Hellsing is hugely successful.Without question the second Hellsing anime series is a remarkable piece of sustained insanity and ultra-violence in animation (even by the standards of Japanese animé). It corrected most of the flaws with the ?rst Hellsing series and went all-out in rendering the second half of Kohta Hirano’s manga including the Nazi invasion of Great Britain.So Hirano-sensei has been very lucky in having not one but two great animated series adapted from his work: Hellsing 2 and Drifters and one entertaining TV season. (Lucky because some adaptations of manga are poor).Fully illustrated with images from the Kohta Hirano’s manga and anime.With filmography bibliography and notes. 204 pages.www.crmoon.com