HELLSING

KOHTA HIRANO

THE MANGA AND THE ANIME

A Critical Study

By Jeremy Mark Robinson

This 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 resume 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 anime). 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. 212 pages.

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