Written by: Shiro the Commander
Story/Art - Kohta Hirano
Licensed by - DarkHorse
Page Count - 192
Rated - 14 and up "I think DarkHorse should give a MUCH higher rating"
Suggested Retail Price  - $13.95 US

Note to the Readers: This manga is not for the squeamish when it comes to gore or people who are concerned with violence and religion being mixed together.

Description:

Alucard, Seras Victoria, and crew have a new assignment from Hellsing headquarters. That assignment is to go to South America and meet up with Millennium Project, an old Nazis organization with secretive origins. War among them is about to start and Alucard is ordered to "Search and Destroy".

Packaging: A

On the cover we have the bad ass vampire Alucard himself, wielding his infamous hand guns while having a cross in his mouth. Behind him is Lady Interga Hellsing herself holding a rifle. There is Japanese kanji on the right of the cover and the title has bats flying around it. Turning over to the back cover, we have a brief summary of what to expect in volume 3 and some notes. The inside cover has some extremely goofy images of the main characters, similar to the animation in the episode previews of the anime series. In the back the manga-ka has some random notes about production "during the time", character descriptions of the three characters he drew inside the back cover, and some notes on the bonus story "Cross Fire". There is of course DarkHorse manga ads for The Ring, Trigun, and Beserk. And finally in the inside back cover we see artwork of the three creepy characters the manga-ka described.

Artwork: B+

The artwork to this manga series has some nice touches to it. The characters are fully detailed from the wrinkles in their clothes, to the shading in their faces, or the equipment/accessories they have at their disposal. The scenery which consists mostly of building interiors is in full detail as well. The violent scenes filled with blood, gore, and the misery of the victims are of high quality which will leave some squeamish people gasping. There is a minor flaw in the artwork involving the comical scenes "yes there are some". I have no particular problem with them, but they come at random sometimes with awkward designs that take some time getting used to for certain people.

Text: A-

The text isn't awkward on most occasions making it easy on the eyes as you read along. This can be explained by how the words aren't too close together either and aren't too small nor too big in size. Some of the characters do have accents in their English and take some getting used to, in order to get the flow together. Other than that, no biggie in problems with the text. There as also some terms with asterisks shown that some people aren't familiar with in the text, but there isn't any worries for the words/phrases/etc are explained on the page.

Content: A- (Contains Spoilers)

Things start off with Walter and Alucard having a discussion about Millennium Project and their past with them. Meanwhile Seras and company are showing their comic relief during training. I really didn't expect comic relief considering there was only a handful in the anime series. New orders from Integra Hellsing are given to Alucard and crew. Their mission is to travel to South America and basically slaughter members of the New Millennium by any means necessary. Seras Victoria falls asleep before the mission and has a dream about the spirit of her gun the Harkonnen "remember that fat old guy in the anime episode previews?". Pretty creepy comic relief if you ask my opinion. Seras wakes up to find that loads of swat team/news crew are around the hotel she's in with Alucard. As the manga progresses we get pages upon pages of decapitations/gruesome gory deaths to Alucard's victims. Seras has her moment of humanity "despite her being a vamp", but it gets ignored by Alucard. This shows exactly how evil Alucard can be as a character showing why he is the perfect weapon of Hellsing. Throughout the events we get to see some dialogue from members of New Millennium causing some curiosity for me to be honest. They could very well be interesting characters giving this manga a plus. The suspense increases when Alucard meets up with Tubalcain Alhambram "The Dandy" for a fight vampire vs vampire. During the fight we get a bunch of deaths occurring among the viewers of the fight "Brazilian Police/News Crews" from missed shots. We are left with a cliffhanger to the fight when its reaching it's peak.

After the actual chapters of Hellsing itself, we are also treated with a bonus comic by Kohta Hirano. This is the bonus comic titled "CrossFire" pt 3 which is about these two female Vatican Assassins by the names of Heinkel Wulf and Yumiko Takagi. There was an assassination attempt on The Pope, by a British Cult called The One Messiah Path of Truth Church. During this short bonus comic, we get to see Heinkel and Yumiko go all out and pretty much slaughter their opponents. A really nice relaxing break "if someone can consider it that" from complex plots. Every person needs some short comic, of just mass killing don't we? Now if only I read CrossFire in Volume 1 or 2 to see what else Heinkel and Yumiko have done. Also, we get a very shot comic relief comic of Luke and Jan's talking about completely random stuff.

Other Comments:

This manga took me by complete surprise because of the major differences among the anime and manga. I was an idiot, to think that I didn't have to read any prior volumes when I borrowed this from my friend. Any fan of the Hellsing anime should pick up the manga because of how many differences there are in the manga. The story arcs exclusive to the manga are worth reading for action buffs who love gory massacres. Aside from what the action buffs would love we also get a bit of comic relief. Although some elements could take some getting used to, but nonetheless a fun read for gory action buffs.