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 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 first 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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Robinson, Jeremy Mark: - "JEREMY ROBINSON has published poetry, fiction, and studies of J.R.R. Tolkien, Samuel Beckett, Thomas Hardy, André Gide and D.H. Lawrence. Robinson has edited poetry books by Novalis, Ursula Le Guin, Friedrich Hölderlin, Francesco Petrarch, Dante Alighieri, Arseny Tarkovsky, and Rainer Maria Rilke. Books on film and animation include: The Akira Book - The Art of Katsuhiro Otomo - The Art of Masamune Shirow - The Ghost In the Shell Book - Fullmetal Alchemist - Cowboy Bebop: The Anime and Movie - The Cinema of Hayao Miyazaki - Hayao Miyazaki: Pocket Guide - Princess Mononoke: Pocket Movie Guide - Spirited Away: Pocket Movie Guide - Blade Runner and the Cinema of Philip K. Dick - Blade Runner: Pocket Movie Guide - The Cinema of Donald Cammell - Performance: Donald Cammell: Nic Roeg: Pocket Movie Guide - Pasolini: Il Cinema di Poesia/ The Cinema of Poetry - Salo: Pocket Movie Guide - The Trilogy of Life Movies: Pocket Movie Guide - The Gospel According To Matthew: Pocket Movie Guide - The Ecstatic Cinema of Tony Ching Siu-tung - Tsui Hark: The Dragon Master of Chinese Cinema - The Swordsman: Pocket Movie Guide - A Chinese Ghost Story: Pocket Movie Guide - Ken Russell: England's Great Visionary Film Director and Music Lover - Tommy: Ken Russell: The Who: Pocket Movie Guide - Women In Love: Ken Russell: D.H. Lawrence: Pocket Movie Guide - The Devils: Ken Russell: Pocket Movie Guide - Walerian Borowczyk: Cinema of Erotic Dreams - The Beast: Pocket Movie Guide - The Lord of the Rings Movies - The Fellowship of the Ring: Pocket Movie Guide - The Two Towers: Pocket Movie Guide - The Return of the King: Pocket Movie Guide - Jean-Luc Godard: The Passion of Cinema - The Sacred Cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky - Andrei Tarkovsky: Pocket Guide."
