DVD Review - Hellish rampage

It's an understatement to say that the second volume of "Hellsing Ultimate" is a gorefest. If an anime fan gets squeamish at the first sign of blood, then they really, really, really don't want to watch "Hellsing Ultimate."

Volume two of "Hellsing Ultimate" is filled with soldier decapitations, hundreds of chopped limbs and buckets of blood. It's not pretty, and the plot is somewhat stale, but the action and drama will keep anime fans on the edge of their seat.

The volume starts at the Hellsing Organization building, where Integra discusses with some executives about the recent increase in ghouls around Romania. But then two tough ghoul brothers decide to invade Hellsing by turning the entire army into ghouls.

Fortunately, Integra's professional killers are ready to take them all down. Seras Victoria has her powerful sniper rifle and Walter C. Dornez (codenamed the "Angel of Death") has invisible strings that can slice through bodies. And Alucard is, well, the most indestructable vampire I've ever seen.

To make a long story short, the Hellsing vampires make mince meat out of the ghouls. The last ghoul revealed that they are controlled by microchips to follow orders from a group called Millenium. And Millenium is somehow related to Hitler and the Holocaust. Yeah. It's really implausable, but considering how many people died in this volume, I'm willing to believe anything.

So far, "Hellsing Ultimate" doesn't really have much of a plot, even though it involves some creative storylines involving conspiracy theories and German Nazis. For the most part, "Hellsing Ultimate" volume is a big bloodbath, with body parts flying everywhere. One scene in particular almost turns into a rape scene, until Seras breaks out in a bloodthirsty vampire rage. Oddly enough, only Integra is able to calm her down by embracing her and telling her that everything's alright.

But "Hellsing Ultimate" is also confronting the serious issue of chaotic violence, rape and fear. Certainly violence and sexual violation is something worth fighting against. This makes Seras a rare character that possesses the dual-personalities that Nausicaa had in "Nausicaa: Valley of the Wind." She is compassionate, but she has the potential to turn into a violent monster when she needs to.

And Alucard is a veteran vampire warrior, who wants to die with honor. Some might call him insane, because of his immense power. However, he also has the psychotic desire to die from a worthy opponent. He's an insane undead man, tired of living through numerous wounds, who just wants peace of mind.

"Hellsing Ultimate" is a fascinating character study of masculine and feminine personalities. While the series' plot is a little too simplistic, the characters are so amazingly complex. "Hellsing Ultimate" is a series about violent wars against ghouls, and the vampire warriors who are traumatized by the wars. "Hellsing Ultimate" may be one of the surprise series this year. My only complaint is that each volume is only about 45 minutes long.

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The sagas continue...

I usually try to mix things up, but I didn't change my Netflix DVDs soon enough. I'm going to end up continuing my reviews of "Hellsing Ultimate" with volume two.

I'm almost done with "Simoun." I'll finish that up a couple days later. Depending on how everything else turns out, I may either finish the month with either "When They Cry" volume 1 or "Gurren Lagann" volume 1.

I'm probably going to make an early recommendation for "Gurren Lagann." No one can go wrong with 26 episodes on only three DVDs. That's a great bargain.

DVD Review - More yuri action and romance!

For a while, I swore that I would never review another yuri (girls loving girls) anime. However, "Anime Insider" magazine informed me that "Simoun" has one of the best conclusions so far this year, so I couldn't resist.

In the second DVD, "Simoun" increases the tension even more, with a religious faction hell-bent on destroying Simoun aircraft and causing mayhem. While "Simoun" still has unconventional Simoun dogfights, their dialogue is better than ever.

As in the previous volume, "Simoun" continues following the adventures of the Chor Tempest, a famous all-girl air squadron. The Chor's mission is to protect Simulacrum from Argentum, who wishes to steal the circular motors of the Simoun for their imperialist ambitions.

However, episodes five and six introduced a new enemy--the Plumbum Highlands. Although they propose to negotiate peace, their peace negotiations are not exactly peaceful. In fact, some of them killed themselves after shooting numerous guards with pistols. Others suicide bombed themselves to destroy Simoun aircraft.

Romantic tensions reached a boiling point on volume three, episode 12, which covered a controversial side romance in the past between sisters Alty and Kaim. The story leaves no stone unturned--Kaim is furious at her sister, Alty. There's no doubt that this episode of "Simoun" will strike a nerve with many anime watchers, but the emotional performances given by the voice actors is incredible. "Simoun" covers the difficult subject of incest incredibly well.

And there is also tragedy. To my dismay, two of the coolest characters of the Chor Tempest disappear at the end of volume three. In some strange way, they both knew they were not coming out of this intact. I am not going to mention who disappears, but I wish that the creators of the series let those two stay for the end of the series.

The series is exciting to watch. It's definitely not as epic as "Last Exile," and the spacecraft still look a little goofy to me. However, this series is not about amazing air battles--it is a series about controversial romances that no one in America would dare to talk about. It is also a series that looks seriously at our elimination of cultural minority groups through warfare. "Simoun" is one of the most charming yuri series of the year so far.

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The bloody (but cute) horror show returns

In a surprising move, the anime company Funimation snatched up a number of great anime titles from the now defunct Geneon company. And one of the titles was the awesome horror anime, "When They Cry."

I wrote my very first anime blog entry on "When They Cry" in December of 2007. It is one of the most unusual horror anime series, mixing cute elementary school characters in a cursed town named Hinamizawa. Every year for the past four years, someone was murdered in the Watanagashi Festival, held for their town’s god, Oyashiro-sama.

However, when Keiichi learns about these crimes from the local police officer, his friends get suspicious of him. And some of them are holding secrets about the murders. But they couldn’t possibly be the murderers, could they?

That’s not the only mystery in the town. The series is based on a murder mystery game, and there are numerous retellings of the same story. Everyone dies in nearly all the stories, which might leave one to wonder whether there is a bright future for Hinamizawa.

Regardless of the grim, murderous nature of the series, each scenario is brilliant. In fact, the series was so brilliant that it ran for two seasons in Japan. Now Funimation is finally continuing the series from volume 4 onward. And now everyone will be able to watch more inconceivably scary stories. This is a must-see series that is coming out this September.

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DVD Review - What the hellsing?

"Hellsing" is one of the deadliest vampire action series ever released. This review is about "Hellsing Ultimate," supposedly the ultimate version of this bloodfest.

However, it reflects so many changes to the original TV series so much that previous fans might not appreciate the so-called ultimate version.

For the uninitiated, "Hellsing" is a series about the Hellsing organization, bent on keeping the bloodthirsty vampires from sinking their teeth into the citizens of Romania. The organization, led by Integra Hellsing, sends a special vampire to slice the chests of these other vampires. His name is Alucard, and as far as I know, even if someone chops off his head, he can come back to life.

The first volume of "Hellsing Ultimate" covers the first three episodes of the "Hellsing" television show. In a short summary of this disc, Alucard recruits Seras Victoria, a policewoman, as his apprentice vampire. Alucard and Seras also fight Alexander Anderson, a Catholic paladin. Yes, there is actually a clash between the Protestant Hellsing Organization and the paladins of the Vatican.

There are many changes that could keep old fans of "Hellsing" from watching the new ultimate version. For starters, the first DVD is a near-perfect adaptation of the original manga. Because of this, the ultimate version is missing the cool, collected style of the priest vampire, who seduced Seras Victoria in the TV version. Now the priest is a blatant pervert who grabs her crotch and declares that he intends to rape her.

Of course, the ultimate version of "Hellsing" is close to the manga, but the director sacrificed his own original take, which was admittedly much cooler. The original TV show had an awesome mix of honky-tonk pianos and funk music in the background. It felt like a dark version of "Shaft," with Alucard saying in Japanese "Keep your hands off her," and yelling "PUNK!" in English. And Alucard even had cool dialogue about his custom-made silver bullet pistol.

Then again, "Hellsing Ultimate" was made with a much more horrific mood in mind. The series has plenty of bloody action sequences where thousands of zombies riddle Alucard with a million bulletholes, and yet Alucard manages to come back to life. Of course, with a nearly invincible vampire, I wonder how dramatic this series can possibly get if Alucard cannot die.

Still, this is a solid second rendition of a good vampire series. Some people may want to steer away from this super-violent series, but if anyone is in the mood for violent anime, "Hellsing Ultimate" is a must-see.

DVD - Gotham Knight's hits and misses

The short films on the "Batman: Gotham Knight" DVD provide a wide variety of anime styles that either hit or miss.

The "Batman: Gotham Knight" DVD was released at the same time that "The Dark Knight" played in theatres. It consists of seven anime shorts by various anime directors. Unfortunately, the film doesn't give enough credit to the actual Japanese directors, or the previous films they directed.

Most of the stories are fairly basic. The first short anime, "Have I Got a Story To Tell You," was directed by Shijirou Nishimi, who drew character designs for "Tekkonkinkreet." The film consists of four skater kids retelling the time in which they saw Batman. Each kid sees Batman as a different creature. For example, one sees him as a shape-shifting reptile and another sees him as a flying bat.

The second short, "Crossfire," follows two detectives transporting a criminal to Arkham Asylum. One detective sees Batman as a hero, while the other sees him as a vigilante. Of course, their perceptions quickly change after Batman saves the detectives when their car is caught in a crossfire between the Russian and Italian mob. Although the animation is a little stilted, Batman looks truly menacing in this anime episode, in the directorial debut of Futoshi Hagashide,who did in-between animation for "Air."

The third anime, "Field Test," was directed by Hiroshi Morioka, who directed the animation for "IGPX" (Immortal Grand Prix) on the Cartoon Network. It was one of my favorites in the collection, because it was well-scripted, and Bruce Wayne literally looks cool as a shonen pretty boy. In the film, Bruce Wayne's inventor, Lucius Fox, shows off a new technological device that deflects bullets. Bruce Wayne has some fun with the device at first, using it to his advantage at the local golf tournament. However, in one of Batman's confrontations with the Russian and Italian mobsters, the device deflects a bullet into a gangster's chest, and Bruce ends up taking the guy to the hospital. After this encounter, Bruce gave the device back to Lucius, so that he won't endanger other people with the device.

The fourth anime, "In Darkness Dwells," was a simple story about Batman fighting Killer Croc and Scarecrow. While it didn't offer many thrills, it was somewhat frightening to see one of Batman's bones crushed. But apparently Batman didn't mind. After all, he saved the archdeacon without a sweat. This lavishly animated action episode was directed by Yasuhiro Aoki, who directed the pilot episode of "Tweeny Witches."

The fifth anime, "Working Through Pain," was directed by Toshiyuki Kubouka, who was the animation director for "Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket" and "Gunbuster." It follows a series of unconnected events at first. Bruce Wayne gets shot in the sewers, and is headed to the surface. Suddenly it switched to a graphic scene in which Wayne is performing surgery on guys in Africa. Gross. However, soon we discover that Wayne is simply searching the world to find ways to relieve his pain. And Wayne comes across an Indian guru, who teaches him to...work through the pain. Although that surgery scene was too graphic for me, I enjoyed watching the last action sequence, where Bruce Wayne takes a board of wood to the head without flinching.

The sixth anime is a cool piece by Madhouse studio, the Korean group who directed "Gunslinger Girl" and "Boogiepop Phantom." Bruce Wayne is collecting guns to do research on Deadshot, the deadliest sniper in Gotham City. He's bent on assassinating lieutenant Gordon from a nearby train. And, somehow, Batman comes just in time to deflect the bullet in slow-motion with his metal wrist guard. Even if it's a show-off animation sequence, it does set the scene for an awesome fight between Batman and the gunslinger, who's also packing a chain gun on his arm.

While these are all completely different episodes, most of them look fantastic, except for the somewhat silly first anime, "Have I Got a Story To Tell You." Overall, this is a great combination of some good anime directors and one great anime studio. Honestly, I loved the third anime the best. There's nothing more hilarious than the pretty-boy depiction of Bruce Wayne.

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