Which Hellsing anime should you watch?
For the manga’s story, watch Ultimate. For a moodier, stranger alternate version, the 2001 series is worth its thirteen episodes.
There are two Hellsing anime because the first one ran out of manga. Gonzo’s television series began in October 2001, when Kohta Hirano had published barely a third of his story, and television in Japan could not carry the manga’s wartime villains in any case. So its writer, Chiaki J. Konaka, built a different story around the same cast. Five years later the producers started again as OVAs, with the time and freedom to do the books properly.
THE TWO VERSIONS
Side by sideTwo adaptations, one manga
Ultimate is the manga on screen · the 2001 series is an alternate take
Hellsing · 2001 · Gonzo
Thirteen television episodes, Fuji TV, October 2001 to January 2002. Script by Chiaki J. Konaka, music by Yasushi Ishii. Follows the early manga, then invents its own enemy, Incognito, and its own ending.
Hellsing Ultimate · 2006 to 2012 · Satelight, Madhouse, Graphinica
Ten OVAs of 42 to 68 minutes each, made outside television so the manga could be followed closely. Starts the story over and carries it to the manga’s actual ending.
They are not two seasons. Ultimate is a second, separate adaptation of the same books, and watching the 2001 series first is not required for any of it.
WHY THE TV SERIES DIVERGES
An honest production storyIt caught up
The series uses the manga’s opening movements, then diverges around its middle. The main villain of the books never properly arrives; an original vampire, Incognito, takes his place for the final arc.
Television had limits
The production record notes the practical reason plainly: the television format made the manga’s Nazi villains difficult to portray, so a different story was written instead of a diluted one.
What it kept
Its own assets are real: a loose, nocturnal mood, Konaka’s writing, and Yasushi Ishii’s jazzy score, which many viewers still rank above the OVA’s. As a variation, it holds up; as the story, it stops halfway.
Why Ultimate exists
Producer Yasuyuki Ueda, a fan of the manga, chose the OVA format precisely to escape television’s constraints and adapt the source thoroughly. Three studios carried the ten episodes across six years, 2006 to 2012.
THE PRACTICAL ANSWER
What to watch, in what orderFirst time
Watch Hellsing Ultimate, episodes I to X. That is the complete manga story, in order, ending where the books end.
Then, optionally
The 2001 series, watched after, reads as an alternate-universe digest of the same opening. The three short Dawn specials, bundled with the limited editions of Ultimate VIII to X, slot in as a prequel whenever curiosity strikes.
Where they live now
Both series moved to Crunchyroll in 2022, when the Funimation catalogue was folded into it. Ultimate also had a full Blu-ray release in 2019 collecting all ten episodes.