#but then i remember that kouta hirano never gave them names in the first place

[duhragonball]

Hellsing Liveblog Ch. 45-50

This is the “Soldier of Fortune” arc.  I thought there was a song by this title and there is!    Give it a listen.

This opens with a flashback to Pip Bernadotte’s childhood, where he finds out his whole family is a bunch of mercenaries.    His grandfather confirms it, and I should point out that Grandpa Bernadotte is the most mercenary-looking dude I’ve ever seen.   He’s wearing a friggin’ beret while he tells Pip about how his dad died in some war to raise money while Ma Bernadotte was pregnant with Pip.   Was Pip’s mother a merc too? 

I guess my point is that this whole scene feels really stupid to me.   Kid Pip grew up among mercenaries, but he’s literally the last person in town to find out about it.  How do the kids at school know?   Are the Bernadottes that well-known?   I always assumed mercenaries tried to keep a low profile.   Then again, they are entrepreneurs, so maybe the kids in school found ads about the Bernadottes in the phone book.  

Even so, was Pip’s family trying to keep this a secret from him?  Because Grandpa sure wasn’t.   Not with that beret he’s got on.   It’s like he’s been waiting Pip’s whole life to tell him, so why didn’t he mention it before?  You’d think he’d want to raise the boy to follow in his footsteps, the same as Pip’s dad.  Did Pip’s mom not want him to grow up to be a mercenary?  It just seems like she should have known that wouldn’t work out.  

Anyway, Grandpa Bernadotte waxes philosophical about killing people for money, which doesn’t seem like much of a justification.   Pip was very upset about the whole thing, and I don’t think Grandpa said anything to make him less upset, and then we flash forward to the present day, where Pip’s a mercenary.

I mean, what was the point of that flashback?  Pip was horrified to find out his family kills for profit, and then at some point he got over it and joined the family business.   Why didn’t the flashback show us that moment instead?  It seems more relevant.  

At any rate, I feel like the flashback is overlooking the true point of Pip’s character arc.  He starts out a soldier of fortune like his father and grandfather, but by joining up with Hellsing he’s now fighting for a much nobler cause, ridding the world of unspeakably evil monsters.  He still seems to look at it like just another job, but it’s still important.  His defense of the Hellsing mansion is a lot more heroic because he’s fighting against daunting odds with very little hope of surviving to see another sunrise, let alone his next paycheck.  

Back to the main story, when Millennium’s forces invaded London, they sent a company to the Hellsing HQ on the outskirts of the city.   Zorin Blitz was tasked with leading this group, but she was ordered to hold off on attacking until the Major gave the word.   The Major then fired rockets at the mansion, only for Seras Victoria to shoot the rockets down... and Zorin’s zeppelin.   Now, Zorin is trying to lead a ground attack on the mansion, except Pip has turned the entire yard into a minefield.   

Seras disapproves, but Pip doesn’t care.   In this sort of conflict, he and his men, the Wild Geese, are at a complete disadvantage.   Vampires, even the weaker, artificial vampires of Millennium, are faster, stronger, and harder to kill.  He hints at some sort of vampiric ability to read an opponent’s movements, too, which might have something to do with that whole “third eye” trick Seras and Alucard use.   Against all of that, landmines are a sensible precaution, since they’re powerful enough to kill a vampire in one shot and don’t rely on a human operator with killing intent. Seras can gripe, but if Hellsing had used mines back in volume 2, the Valentine Brothers never would have made it inside.  Pip clearly read up on that debacle, since it must have taken weeks for his men to bury all these mines.

The landmines do kill a lot of Zorin’s troops, and the Wild Geese lay down heavy fire from the mansion to keep up the pressure, but Zorin won’t give up so easily.   She uses he powers to create some sort of zany illusion, where everyone sees a giant Zorin Blitz attacking the mansion.

So what the hell is Zorin Blitz, exactly?   I thought she was a vampire, but reading this manga has revealed that Rip Van WInkle is a werewolf, which led me to suspect Zorin is a werewolf too.   But the manga is silent on Zorin being one or the other.  I check the Hellsing Wiki, but it contends that both women are vampires, and the term “Werewolf” just refers to the group of officers in Millennium.   This group includes literal werewolves like the Captain and Schrodinger, but not Blitz and Rip.   

Maybe it doesn’t matter that much, but I find it a little silly to call all four of those characters “Werewolves” and then only two of them are really werewolves.   Clearly, all four of them are a cut above the Major’s other troops, and none of them show any interest in drinking blood, or any other vampire-exclusive traits.   On the other hand, this whole battle takes place under a full moon, and none of them seem to be affected by it.    Unless the Major chose this particular night to launch his offensive because he wanted them all to be at full power.   Maybe Zorin couldn’t do this illusion thing otherwise.

Anyway, the Wild Geese see this giant woman slashing at them with a scythe, and they all panic.   Seras sees it too, but she somehow intuits that it can’t be real.   Then she sees Alucard, who reminds her of her third eye.   I’m not sure if this is a flashback or Alucard is using telepathy to coach her from the deck of the H.M.S. Eagle.  

Either way, Seras uses her third eye and not only sees through the illusion but lines up a shot on the illusion-caster.  But it only grazes Zorin.   It disrupts the illusion, but it doesn’t end the threat.

And even though the illusion is shattered, it still distracted the Wild Geese long enough for Millennium troops to enter the mansion.   Seras manages to shoot them down, but there’s more where that came from.

Because the Nazi bastards figured out a way past the mines.   They just threw a bunch of knives on the ground and played hopscotch to get across.   I guess this means they can only get in one at a time, but it’s still bad news for the good guys.

So Pip adjusts his tactics accordingly.  He and his men will regroup and hold up in a defensible location, while Seras roams the building to take the fight to the enemy.   I guess the idea is to divide Millennium’s focus.   They can attack the Geese or watch out for Seras, but not both.   For some reason, Seras calls Pip “sir”, like he’s in charge, and maybe that is appropriate in this situation, but I thought Seras was in charge of their training.  

Then one of the Geese pats her on the butt and Pip steals a kiss.   I’m not sure what the hell this is about.   I guess they were trying to lighten the mood before they go to face certain death, but if my life depended on some vampire girl killing all the bad guys before they can rip me to shreds, I probably wouldn’t sexually harass her, or do anything else to tick her off.   But that’s just me.

Pip seems resigned about their chances.  He’s confident in Seras’ ability, but there’s only one of her and like... 30?  Let’s say 30, thirty Nazi Vampires heading their way.  If even one of them gets past Seras, the Geese will all die horribly.   But they took this job and the risks that come with it, and besides, there’s nowhere for them to run anyway.    He seems to accept the situation with a mercenary sense of honor.   Like, a mercenary should expect to die in some unwinnable battle, and they shouldn’t complain about it, since it’s the nature of the business. 

Anyway, it doesn’t go well.   The nature of the comic doesn’t really make it clear how the Wild Geese are operating, but I get the impression that they’re doing sort of a fighting withdrawal concentrating their forces as they give ground.    But they suffer a lot of casualties in the process.

This leads to the Geese holing up in the big conference room where Integra met with the Royal Order of Protestant Knights before the Valentine Bros. attack.   One guy panics and wants to bug out, but Pip reminds him of what I said a minute ago.   They’ve got nowhere else to go, and they all got into this for the action, so they should stick to their principles, even in the face of death.

There’s this one guy from “B-block”, who I guess was covering a certain hallway, but B-Block got cut off before they could join the others in the Round Table room.    Zorin Blitz decides to have some fun with him, so she uses her weird powers to make him see himself back home, with his dead daughter.  

This seems especially cruel, because it’s not like Zorin needed this diversion to kill one dude.   She’s just really sadistic.

Meanwhile, some other Millennium guys are eating the Wild Geese they already killed, and one of them shows off his ability to tell blood types just by taste.   It’s this really sick moment, but at the same time it humanizes the characters, which is a weird thing to say when discussing Nazi vampires, but you know what I mean.

Then Seras blows the dude’s head off, which is extremely satisfying.

So Seras is holding up her end, and growing more resolute with each kill.   She’s really improved a lot since the last time she was in action.    Yeah, these Millennium vampires probably aren’t that much tougher than the vampires she killed back in the summer, but there are a lot more of them, and they’re trained soldiers on top of that, and she doesn’t have Alucard backing her up like she did before.

By now, all that’s left of the Wild Geese are in this barricaded room, and they’ve run low on silver bullets, which means even the few shots that don’t miss will have almost no effect.   Pip is determined to hold out, confident that Seras will save them, but...

She runs out of bullets before she runs out of enemies to kill.   When she arrives to save the day, she’s still has to go through Zorin Blitz.

But Zorin doesn’t see this as a problem, and she uses her freaky mind powers on Seras, forcing her to relive memories of her days at the orphanage.    Yeah, Seras was an orphan, remember?   Alucard asked Walter about her parents a while back, and Walter said they were both dead.  How did they die?

Well, Zorin Blitz is about to find out...