天下制覇

Is a trap really a trap before opening the ‘box?’

Impressions:

You know… this blog didn’t even exist when the previous episode was released. That proposed 7 year release schedule doesn’t work out too well when you’re almost a year and a half behind after four episodes.

Anyway, I don’t really have too much to say about this one, as it covers a portion of the manga which is almost nothing but exposition and setup for the big London invasion that’ll probably cover the next episode or two. This one covers I believe the end of volume 4 up through most of volume 5. We get to see the Major’s personal Werewolf forces, including the "everywhere and nowhere" catboy/werewolf Schrodinger, and the first glimpse of Zorin, who we’ll be seeing a lot more of in the next episode. He declares war on Hellsing, and then deploys Rip Van Winkle to lure Alucard into the middle of the ocean (recall that he can’t cross water out of his coffin) in order to leave Hellsing without him for their real attack.

Alucard’s enemy this time was the sharpshooter Rip Van Winkle. They did a really good job of animating her magic bullets, but there’s just no way to make the fight particularly interesting, especially if they want to stick closely to the manga. Rip Van’s method of attack is to shoot a bullet which then spirals around and seeks out its target and will tear through it multiple times. It seems cool, but the entire fight is just her shooting once, then Alucard getting hit a ton of times, then he catches the bullet and then eats her. She spends more time cowering in fear of Alucard than she does actually fighting him. While appropriate, it doesn’t make for particularly interesting drama. They did do a really good job with a number of other things. I’m glad that the scene between Alucard and the Queen of England made it in, as did Anderson and Alucard wailing on eachother just for the sake of smacking eachother around when he delivered his message. I also did really like how they handled Integra forcing Seras to drink her blood. There’ll be more badass Integra and Seras next episode too.

At any rate, as somewhat expected, this was mostly a ton of exposition and setup in the manga, and ended up being a ton of exposition and setup here too. Now that god-mode Alucard is trapped on a boat though, the real fun can begin as Millenium invades Britain in the next episode and Seras, Integra, Walter and Pip have to fight back on their own. Well, Anderson is still roaming around there too. *hint hint nudge nudge*