The History of Hellsing
Eleven years, ten volumes, and one of the slowest burns in manga.
Hellsing ran in Young King OURs, Shonengahosha’s seinen magazine, from April 30, 1997 to September 30, 2008: 95 chapters in the magazine, condensed to 89 in the books, collected in ten tankobon volumes between 1998 and 2009. It is Kohta Hirano’s vampire story rebuilt from his own doujin-era work, and it made his name.
THE TIMELINE
1996 to 20251996 · The one-shot
Hirano publishes a 16-page story titled simply “Hellsing” in the October 1996 issue of Comic Kairakuten. He later calls it a failure: readers took it for an adult comic, not the daring action story he intended.
1997 · Serialization
The concept is rebuilt for general audiences and Hellsing begins in Young King OURs on April 30, 1997. Because the premise is unusual, the publisher tests reader questionnaires first, and Hirano has said the early chapters feel “a little disjointed” for it.
1998 · Volume 1
The first tankobon arrives on September 24, 1998. The early volumes run short, so Hirano’s older side story Crossfire is folded into volumes 1 to 3 as extras.
2001 · The TV series
Gonzo’s thirteen-episode anime runs on Fuji TV from October 2001 to January 2002. The manga is nowhere near finished, and the series tells its own story to its own ending.
2002 · The Dawn
Hirano starts a prequel, Hellsing: The Dawn, in the magazine’s special issues: Walter and Alucard in Poland, September 1944. Six chapters appear by 2006; the magazines carrying it fold, and it stays unfinished.
2003 · English volume 1
Dark Horse Comics, which took the series after another American publisher passed on its content, publishes the English first volume in December 2003.
2006 · Ultimate
Hellsing Ultimate begins: ten long OVAs made to follow the manga closely, produced at Satelight, then Madhouse, then Graphinica. It will take until December 2012 to finish.
2008 · The final chapter
Serialization ends on September 30, 2008, roughly on the schedule Hirano had planned: a decade of story at about a volume a year.
2009 to 2012 · The tail
Japanese volume 10 lands in March 2009, the English volume 10 in May 2010, and the Official Guidebook in March 2012, the year Ultimate also completes. By 2009 the manga has sold four million copies worldwide.
2020 · The Deluxe Edition
Dark Horse reissues the whole series as three oversized hardcovers in the original magazine page size, July 2020 to June 2021.
2021 · Hollywood calls
Amazon Studios announces a live-action film with John Wick writer Derek Kolstad. No director, cast, or date has been announced since.
2023 to 2025 · The paperbacks return
Dark Horse reprints the ten single volumes in a second edition with new ISBNs, rolling out from November 2023 to April 2025.
HOW IT WAS MADE
The craft under the storyDesign before story
Hirano has said character design comes before story development for him. Most of the Hellsing cast was designed years earlier, in his doujin-era works, and carried into the series.
A hardcore analog artist
Hirano describes himself as a hardcore analog artist who writes his lines first and works without rough drafts. For the London settings he travelled to England to photograph reference himself.
Chapter titles from games
The chapter titles are borrowed from video games Hirano liked: Sword Dancer, Elevator Action, Castle Vania. The manga’s furniture is otaku furniture, and he has never pretended otherwise.
An otaku’s library
The history, mythology, and pop culture references were not formally researched. Hirano calls himself “just an otaku” whose knowledge comes from what he consumed passionately.