Macksheath said:
I have never seen Hellsing, but I dislike how overpowered Alucard is.
From what I've read, he's virtually indestructable, a flaw which- in my opinion- kills the character almost instantly. He's immortal, so why should I care what happens to him?
However, he does seem to have a better personality by far than many other vampires, so he scores for that.
And uh...thats pretty much all I have to say. I might check it out.
Well, I think Alucard was not intended to be taken quite as seriously as a lot of fans of Hellsing do. I think part of the idea of his indestructability was sort of to make fun of both Vampire chic (overpowered "Munchkin" vampires in say Vampire The Masquerade) and mess with peoples expectations.
Simply put we're told Alucard is a vampire. Typically, the ways to kill Vampires involve staking and decapitation. Anyone who knows anything about vampires in fiction knows this.
So thus, they do things in the series like (*Spoilers from this point on* ) have his head chopped off, followed by dramatic tension as his sidekick runs away from the bad guy carrying his head while your wondering how she's going to get out of this since by all Vampire logic Alucard should be dead... only to have him reform and make it clear he was messing with his sidekick and enemy for yucks, just as the writers were messing with you.
Indeed this is a recurring gag through the series, where he basically gets stomped, dramatic tension flows, and then you find out ooops well, he's just too overpowered for stuff like that but likes messing with people. Heck the entire climax was simply re-using the same gimmick they used through the same series (he drains the blood from the tower of london to reform after near total destruction, and then fights not only another ancient vampire who up until now you THOUGHT was on a similar or greater power level, but also a god whom you found out he basically ALLOWED to be summoned because otherwise it wouldn't be a fitting challenge...).
The point here is that I think half the point of the series is that it's using Dragon Ball Z logic. Your not supposed to be taking this seriously. One step at a time they introduce something ridiculous, only to have it countered by something even more ridiculous, until your eventually sitting there going "WTF" when you look back at the whole thing.
Hellsing is entertaining, but I think that half the point is to spoof the whole "Super Vampire" thing as much as it is to tell an entirely serious story.
What's more one of the reasons why I'm not a big fan of games like White Wolf's "World Of Darkness" is that people play characters that are every bit that ridiculous. To see it visualized is well worth the lulz, especially when people take this seriously or claim "oh yeah, that's what Vampires should be...".
These are simply my opinions though. I rate Hellsing a little higher than the original reviewer despite the quality issues, simply because I see it as being almost ingenius in
it's absurdity.
