Here we are once again, traveling the road of darkness, fighting the very hell spawn we all know and love as vampires. The Hellsing story sure is getting the red carpet treatment of late. Those of you who are familiar with the original anime series will know that it is all blood and guts with a killer story to boot. But of course the anime series unpredictably split from the manga’s story line to end up in a totally different place. Thankfully someone has righted this travesty by pouring the contents of their wallet into the Hellsing Ultimate OVA collection, which follows the manga’s graphic story line much more closely. The result is an MA 15+ rated bloodlust romp into the very bowls of hell (South America).

OVA III concentrates on the aftermath of Hellsing’s headquarter invasion by the Valentine bothers. It seems the Vatican, Hellsing’s nemesis, knows more about what is happening in their little vampire world than their letting on. Of course we all know that good stories always manage to work in a crazy blonde haired, blue-eyed Nazi bad guy somewhere, and Hellsing is no different. Turns out the Vatican helped a Nazi group called Millennium escape to South America during World War 2 and now they are bit ashamed. Subsequently Alucard and Seras are sent to South America on a search and destroy mission to wipe the remaining remnants of Millennium, and let me tell you this is no fishing trip! Through all the blood and gore, they encounter a well-dressed man called The Dandy Man who has a certain fetish for playing 52 pickup.

Once again we have an example of what can be done when production values match the impact of the content. All the characters exude on screen personality and there’s one disturbing scene where Integra shows her real bloodthirsty colours when ordering Alucard to cut down all those who oppose Hellsing. I like to use the Hellsing OVA series, as a prime example of what English dubs should be like. The regular cast does a wonderful job even though most are clearly putting on fake accents. Both the Japanese and English tracks are in Dolby 5.1 and we are even given an English DTS 5.1 track to boot. The music is symphonic and perfectly matches to mood in every scene, no complaints there. Clearly there has been some time and money invested here. Even the glossy DVD packaging is something that will wow people who are easily distracted by bright colours. There’s the normal array of special features to be had. Voice cast interviews, art gallery and more interestingly a voice director commentary track for some more insight. If you live for blood and guts then you’ll love Hellsing OVA III. 4.5 buckets of blood soaked offal from me.