Alucard (Hellsing)


Alucard is a fictional character and the anti-hero protagonist of the Hellsing manga and anime series created by Kouta Hirano. He is a vampire and is devoted entirely to the current head of the Hellsing family and good friends with Walter. He also feels admiration towards his fledgling, Seras Victoria. Alucard works with the Hellsing Organization against other vampires and evil forces. He fights with ferocity and cruelty, sometimes only killing after his target has been disabled and humiliated, while frequently allowing enemies more than one chance to kill him.
As revealed in volume 8 of the manga, he is Count Dracula. Soon after the events presented in Bram Stoker's original novel, Dracula was defeated by Abraham Van Helsing and became the family's loyal servant. Decades later, Abraham's descendant Arthur Hellsing gives the Count his current name: "Alucard". The manga is set over a hundred years later, where the Hellsing Organization is forced to fight the remnants of a Nazi battalion.
He typically dresses in a distinctive Victorian and western fashion, with a charcoal suit, leather riding boots, a red cravat, and a long red duster. He also wears a red fedora with a wide, floppy brim which he uses to cover his long black shaggy hair, and a pair of circular, wire-framed sunglasses. However, this form seems to be a part of his being as he can change it at will.
In the anime Alucard is voiced by Jouji Nakata.

Character outline

Background

Volume 8 features flashbacks of Alucard's life as a human. Dracula starts his career by fighting the Ottomans, believing that God does not reward prayer, but instead wants mortals to show their faith visibly. However, when his army is defeated and he is about to be executed, Vlad, believing he has been abandoned by God, turns his back on the divine. It is not explicitly shown or stated how he became a vampire, but in one scene he drinks blood from the floor in front of an executioner.
The series mentions the events of Bram Stoker's Dracula, but deviates at the point of Dracula's defeat. In Hellsing, he was staked in the heart but not destroyed. It is unknown if he was forced into servitude or was willing, but he became a servant of the Van Helsing family, who not only augmented his formidable abilities, but also placed shackles on his power. He, along with a young Walter C. Dornez, were sent to Warsaw, Poland to stop Millennium's vampire production program. Integra's father eventually imprisoned Alucard in a dungeon in the Hellsing manor, as he believed the vampire was too powerful to be used frequently. After 20 years of imprisonment, Integra, marked for death by her traitorous uncle, opened Alucard's crypt as a final resort. Her blood awakened and resuscitated the ancient vampire, who then executed Integra's uncle and his followers, and willingly entered the service of Integra. While the TV series does not include the same scenes to explicitly state that Alucard is Dracula, the end of the anime series implied that he is Vlad the Impaler, one of the original inspirations for Dracula. In the OVA series, however, it is much more explicitly stated that he is Dracula. In episode 8 of the OVA, he is shown as his former self wearing medieval armor, a long black cape, long hair, a mustache, and a long sword.

Personality

In most depictions, Alucard is violent, sadistic, and masochistic. He often taunts and belittles his opponents, allowing them to inflict wounds before regenerating and retaliating, as shown in his first appearance in the manga. He longs for battle and has been shown to become angry when his opponents kill themselves. His thirst for battle is fueled by a desire to find an opponent powerful enough to end his eternal life, although he really wishes only to be slain by a human, for "Only a human can destroy a monster. Only a human could dare hope to."
He expresses admiration for some humans, calling Integra's order to kill "splendid" and the determination of his rival, Alexander Anderson, to destroy him an example of the "fantastic" and "magnificent" qualities of humans. He recognizes Anderson as a parallel to himself, and pities him. He has great respect for these humans, going as far as to say he would have been proud if Anderson had killed him in his human form. As the manga continues, it becomes increasingly evident that Alucard is deeply depressed and is struggling with his nature as a vampire. It can be said that he considers vampirism a step down from humanity, and regrets the choice he made when becoming a vampire. Alucard occasionally expresses disgust with the vampires he hunts, notably when they kill without purpose. Commenting on the "Bonnie and Clyde" in the story, he mentions the two vampires' killing as unnecessary.

Abilities

Alucard is not immortal but he does not age. In reality, Alucard's lack of senescence comes from the number of humans whose blood he consumed over the ages, which is a number in the millions. As many come to realize, whenever he drinks his victim's blood, Alucard also sucks out the soul of that person to obtain their memories while converting the victim into an extension of himself referred to as a Familiar. When he retains all the claimed souls within his body, Alucard can easily regenerate from near fatal injuries in seconds. His regenerative abilities took even Anderson by surprise in their first encounter; Alucard was able to reconstitute himself within minutes of being decapitated and having his heart pierced, injuries that would kill an ordinary vampire.
Alucard exhibits incredible accuracy when firing his twin large caliber handguns, and is capable of accurately shooting targets while looking the other way. He can tear humans apart with ease and move faster than the eye can see. He is seen passing through walls and moving up vertical surfaces. He shapeshifts into various forms, including bats, arthropods, demonic dogs, amorphous masses of darkness, and humanoid forms. He communicates telepathically with Seras and can hypnotize other characters. He is also immune to the harmful effects of sunlight, though he avoids it due to it weakening his powers; he misses the sunlight. He sees the same sunrise each time he dies and, every time, remembers how beautiful it is.
Alucard's power is restrained by a series of seals presumably made by Hellsing. Alucard can release the seals up to Level 1, where numerous eyeballs surround his body and can manifest a massive "Hellhound" named Baskerville. He also trades his traditional red fedora and duster for a black straight jacket with a large eyeball coming out of the center of his chest. When Integra Hellsing releases Level 0, the final seal, Alucard can assume the form he had in his previous life while manifesting all of his familiars into an undead army of over 3 million. Though this is his most powerful form, it also leaves Alucard vulnerable to attack, as the souls he consumed no longer reside in his body to give him regenerations; though he can draw familiars back into himself, any that are destroyed must be replaced through feeding.
Anderson, augmented by the Nail of Helena, managed to critically injure Alucard during their final duel, which created a chain reaction that destroyed all Alucard's familiars except Luke Valentine and the Hellhound. Although Alucard recovered thanks to Seras' intervention and successfully defeated Anderson, he was then attacked by Walter, who had undergone vampirization by Millennium in order to kill Alucard when he was most vulnerable. However, Walter was tricked into killing Valentine instead; before he could get another chance to land a fatal blow, Alucard began absorbing the blood of the millions who died in the Battle of London, thus giving himself an indefinite number of regenerations and a new army of the dead. Unknown to Alucard, Schrödinger had killed himself and fallen into the river of blood on the Major's orders; mixed in with the millions of other souls Alucard had consumed, he was unable to recognize himself and therefore neither he nor Alucard was able to exist, causing Alucard to vanish.
However, after Alucard destroyed every additional soul except Schrödinger's in his body, he gained the ability to exist "everywhere and nowhere".

Reception

In the Society for the Promotion of Japanese Animation Awards from 2008, Alucard was nominated as one of the best male characters. In an interview with Anime News Network, American voice actor Crispin Freeman stated that he enjoyed voicing Alucard, stating that he loved "characters who are on the edge of madness for one reason or another". Various merchandise based on Alucard's appearance has been created, including action figures, bust figures and key-chains.
Anime News Network's Mike Crandol praised Alucard for being "a refreshing change from the traditional, mopey, woe-is-me vampire anti-hero", and called him "quite the cool figure". T.H.E.M Anime Reviews describes Alucard as "anti-hero through and through, but you just can't help rooting for him even when it's obvious he's not really a good guy at all..." Carl Kimlinger also from Anime News Network said "Hellsing's greatest attribute, without doubt, is Alucard. He's one of the scariest, and most unspeakably cool, anti-heroes to ever slaughter his way through an anime." Jason Thompson commented that when the manga started "Alucard looked too much like Master of Mosquiton, or another badass manga character with John Lennon glasses" and thought he seems like Vash the Stampede and his backstory is similar to Vlad the Impaler. IGN ranked him as the 21st greatest anime character of all time, saying that "There have been many vampires in anime, but none have been as deliciously sadistic as Alucard."