After what feels like decades of waiting, a key installment in one of the most long-delayed anime properties is finally on its way to being released in the U.S.: the eighth chapter in the Hellsing Ultimate saga.
In a blog post that went up earlier today, FUNimation Entertainment announced it had acquired U.S. home video rights to all eight Hellsing Ultimate OVAs. "Eagerly anticipated" doesn't begin to describe how much enthusiasm has built up over time for having this series restored to availability.
Hellsing deals with a group of vampire vigilantes locked in combat with "Millennium," a group of Nazi-descended baddies. Violent and outlandish through and through, it's also terrific fun, and one of the more prominent entries in our list of best vampire anime and best action anime.
An original TV series was also released by Geneon back in 2006, but it deviated somewhat from its source material (Kouta Hirano's 1997 manga), and the Hellsing Ultimate OVA series was created to follow the original storyline that much more closely. A vaguely parallel situation occurred when Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood was created as a way to answer criticisms that the original Fullmetal Alchemist TV series deviated enormously from its own source manga as well.
The Ultimate series has been in limbo for some time pending the reorganization of its Japanese distributor, Geneon, which closed its American arm a few years back and left many shows incomplete, unlicensed or in disarray. Hellsing was one of the casualties, along with a number of other excellent shows: Haibane Renmei, Serial Experiments Lain.
FUNimation did rescue some of Geneon's titles right after the closing of the American division, but allowed those licenses to lapse due to low sales. Sadly, many of the expired shows are excellent and well worth the trouble it would take to track them down: The Story of Saiunkoku, Paradise Kiss, and Kamichu all come to mind.
Hellsing Ultimate will be released "starting in 2012," but no more specific release information (or release formats) have been announced yet.
Image: Hellsing (Geneon Signature Series). Image courtesy Pricegrabber.
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