Alucard (Hellsing)

Alucard is the main protagonist in the Hellsing anime and manga.

Alucard is the most powerful weapon of the Hellsing Organization which works against vampires and other such supernatural forces. Alucard is no mere vampire; it has been implied that he is the most powerful vampire alive and may be the most powerful character in the series, rivaled only by The Captain and Alexander Anderson.

Appearance
As commonly seen among vampires, Alucard possesses blood red eyes, which may glow when he is experiencing strong emotions. His hair length changes according to his release states from short to knee length. His usual outfit is comprised of a charcoal suit, leather riding boots, and an intricately knotted red cravat, covered by a full-length, and red frock overcoat (similar to a duster coat) with a cape. He also occasionally wears a red fedora with a wide, floppy brim and a pair of circular, heavily tinted, wire-framed orange sunglasses with goggle sidings. He also wears a pair of white gloves which each have a five-pointed seal adorning their backs. It appears that his clothing is part of his physical form due to the fact that when he regenerates, his clothing also repairs itself.

He appears in the same clothes that Sir Hellsing wore when he defeated Alucard when he was still Dracula. This is seen when Alucard has his flashback/nightmare.

One of Alucard's alternate forms resembles a little girl, which is often nicknamed "Girlycard." In this form, he is petite and slender and has straight dark hair that drapes to just below his shoulders. He wears a black office shirt with a white vest on top of it, white pants, white shoes, a red tie, a white trenchcoat, and occasionally, a fuzzy white cap.

Personality
Alucard fights with ferocity, and often, extreme cruelty, rarely shooting to kill until his target has been completely disabled and humiliated. However, he does seem to have some small shred of humanity left in him, as he is still capable of shedding tears, taken by Alexander Anderson to mean that he is not completely lost. As he is essentially immortal and invulnerable, Alucard is very egotistical. He freely taunts and belittles his opponents, often allowing them to inflict seemingly fatal wounds before healing himself and counterattacking. One of his favorite methods of fighting is to allow himself to be blown to shreds before simply flowing back together. An example is shown in volume 2 when Alucard fights Luke Valentine. When Luke gains an advantage over Alucard, victory seems within his grasp. The tides turn when Alucard transforms a part of himself into a hellhound. Alucard then blows off both of Luke's legs with his guns before telling him to regenerate them, pick up his gun, and fight back. When Luke fails to do so, Alucard devours Luke, declaring him as little more than dog food.

However, even with his incredible powers, it is possible to take Alucard by surprise, usually because of his arrogance. In his first meeting with Alexander Anderson, he assumed he had easily killed Anderson with a single bullet but was caught off guard when Anderson regenerated. Alucard also expressed deep disappointment that Luke was not a more worthy adversary. In the anime, he seemed concerned with finding a worthy opponent. In the manga, however, Alucard states that he wishes to find an opponent, a human opponent, with sufficient willpower to destroy him despite his strength.

Underneath his arrogance, Alucard seems deeply sad and appears to be envious of humans. Alucard also has great respect for humans who have the willpower to endure old age and death because he had none of these qualities when he faced death. All of these feelings are shown at various points throughout the series, such as when Alucard tells the Queen that she is that "same spirited young woman" from 50 years ago and that now she is truly beautiful. He became infuriated when Anderson stabbed himself in the heart with the Helena's Nail, as he viewed it as Anderson making the same mistake Alucard made. While facing off against Walter's younger, vampire form in chapter 74, Alucard said that Walter's old, aged body was "a trillion times more beautiful" than his new, vampiric one. Alucard is also capable of affection, as he shows a great deal of it to Seras and Integra on occasions.

In conjunction, Alucard also holds a great affinity for humans who take pride in themselves, often expressing his desire to die by a human/mortal. He often shows respect for certain humans for their bravery, such as the mortal Iscariot members who fought to let Anderson reach him. Alucard has expressed extreme disgust with the vampires he has been hunting for the last 100 years, especially when they kill without purpose. In chapter 3 of the manga (Murder Club), he lists the two vampires' pointless killing in his catalog of how pathetic they are. In the original Gonzo anime version (Club M), Alucard makes his discontent apparent, demanding to know the motivation behind their rampage.

Despite this, he is not entirely against immortality. Rather, he believes it is something one must earn. Presumably, he views his own transformation as an escape because he became one, in Anderson's words, so that he would "never have to cry again.” He happily gave Seras immortality (despite his self-reflection) due to her indomitable will and courage, for continuing to fight against the monsters in Cheddar and not giving up even when she was about to die. He also viewed Walter in the same regard for a time, even indirectly offering him immortality before Walter revealed his true colors.

Another important aspect of Alucard's personality is his relationship with God. As a human, he was raised by the Turks and was raped by the sultan as a prisoner and as a child soldier. As a warrior, he believed that words alone were not enough to establish one's faith. Rather, he believed that the only way to attract God's attention was to accomplish deeds in his name, a belief shared by his rival, Alexander Anderson. In accordance with this belief, he never asked God for favors, but instead did many great and terrible things. He became famous and feared for punishing evildoers and those who opposed his methods in his own lands and abroad, for waging a war against the Muslims in hopes of bringing down "the New Jerusalem," and for sacrificing his troops and his people to achieve his own goals. He believed that if he and his men put forth great enough effort and sacrificed enough, that God himself would intervene on their behalf. His actions caused even his own people to fear him, and subsequently, only a small amount of his peasants and soldiers showed up to aid him in his last battle. When he lost his war and was taken prisoner by the Turks, he realized that he had failed and that his country, his kingdom, his people, his friends, his family (his wife and his child) had all been killed because of his greed for revenge, war, violence and power, traits he actually shares with The Major. Feeling abandoned by God, he abandoned God in turn, and he drank up the blood of his scorched and besieged homeland and became a vampire, but his hate against God later deteriorated and he accepts the possibility that it was his own hatred against those who wronged him in his youth that drove his actions. That he used the name of God to mask his own hate and lust for power.

Abilities
The following are Alucard's Powers gained from both his being a Vampire and due to several years of research by the Hellsing Organization. Alucard is a formidable and deadly opponent who can cut down most enemies without releasing the seals that contain his true power.
 * Regeneration: Alucard has the ability to perfectly and quickly recover from any physical injury. He has been torn to shreds by conventional weaponry and holy weaponry designed to kill his kind and has survived all of it. Holy weapons, while they do affect him more, are regenerated all the same if not as quickly.
 * Dark Composition: Though he generally dons a corporeal, humanoid form, Alucard is made up of a highly variable otherworldly substance that is black in core and reddish on its edges. This can be especially seen whenever he takes heavy damage, the darkness being immune to conventional weaponry. Along with composing his being, it can serve as a weapon. Alucard is able to form several limbs from it with which he attacks with.
 * Intangibility: Alucard has the ability to walk through solid objects, such as walls.
 * Immortality: It is unclear if Alucard is a true immortal, but he is at least biologically immortal, immune to withering and dying by way of age. Alucard has suffered all manner of injury to the most extreme degrees, only to reform himself. This seems to indicate structural immortality as well, but the vampire himself asserts that there is no such thing as a true immortal. This means his immortality is only biological, and there is a way to kill him. Anderson's words of him being "alone" and his duel with Walter implies that after his seals are removed, his heart is vulnerable to impalation if not other forms of destruction, which would in turn destroy him for good. After absorbing Schrödinger, his immortality may have been augmented, but if so it is not known how.
 * Hematophagy: As a vampire, Alucard has the ability to consume blood raw. He has long, conical fangs to assist in this job as well as serpentine-like tongue. His feeding habits have been seen to vary: from the traditional neck-biting to simply ripping people to pieces and outright devouring them. Alucard doesn't seem to need blood to survive, however if starved of of it, he will enter an inactive death-like state.
 * Aestivation: Alucard will enter a dormant state if he goes too long without blood. It is unknown if he can be starved to death, as he goes decades without a drop of blood before a young Integra finds him. It is never made clear if this is unique to him or if all vampires can do this.
 * Hemokinesis: Alucard has the ability to manipulate blood. This ability seems to be limited to blood outside of the body, as he is never seen influencing the blood of enemies while they are intact.
 * Soul Absorption: By draining a person of their blood, Alucard gains dominance over their souls and very forms. He also takes on whatever knowledge they possess, as he was able to find out about Millennium by draining Tubalcain Alhambra of his blood.
 * Familiar Control: Alucard can summon forth anyone he's taking the soul of at will. He has an entire legion dwelling within him but seems to favor using Baskerville, the Black Dog. Whoever he absorbs, their powers are at his disposal. While Seras gives her familiar, Pip Bernadotte, some free reign within her own soul, Alucard seems content to completely dominate everything living inside him. It is unclear if this is due to their individual wills or a lack of experience on Seras' part. It is unclear if Alucard is able to gain any familiars after consuming Schrödinger.
 * Shapeshifting: Though form is of no particular importance to him, Alucard claims to be able to change into anything. He has changed into a girl, several bats, an amorphous darkness, has several "default" forms, and can assume the form of a hellhound. It is unknown if he can take the shape of inanimate objects such as tables or chairs.
 * Mist Body: Alucard is capable of turning his body into some sort of dark reddish mist in order to render attacks against him useless.
 * Extrasensory: Alucard has senses that are not only sharper than a mortal's, affording him abilities such as perfect accuracy, but he has abilities that they completely lack. In particular he possesses a 'third-eye' which allows him to see things from far, far distances. Though he never uses it to do so, he can likely see through things that fool human eyes, as Seras does when facing Zorin Blitz. This is not an inherent ability and must be used consciously, as Alucard was unable to see through Tubalcain's illusionary clones. Similarly, Seras was unable to see through Zorin's illusions until told outright that's what they were.
 * Enhanced Strength: Alucard is quite strong. To start, his guns Jackal and Casull are far too unwieldy for a human to hold, let alone use, but he does both with ease. He has been seen going up barehanded against even some supernatural weapons and destroying them, such as Tubalcain's magic cards. The extent of his strength is unknown, though when it comes to raw strength, Alucard is often seen to outmuscle other vampires, or at least in his released form. Only Alexander Anderson and The Captain can match him that category, the Captain implied to be even stronger.
 * Vampiric Speed: Alucard is too fast for the human eye to follow, but other vampires such as Walter and Tubalcain Alhambra can keep pace with him just fine. Alexander Anderson, a regenerator, can also do this, near-matching him step for step and blow for blow in a fight.
 * Enhanced Endurance: Alucard takes most damage without flinching or making a sound, quietly allowing the enemy to attack before retaliating tenfold. He can even attack after being torn asunder by bullets. After Rip Van Winkle crashes his Blackbird, he exits the craft without a scratch and easily destroys everyone aboard, even as they use high caliber weaponry on him. He's been thrown through skyscrapers, bled excessively, and even Walter knows of no certain way to defeat him other than killing him again and again until he stays down.
 * Enhanced Reflexes/Speed: Alucard is very fast, able to dodge and catch speeding bullets.
 * Telepathy: Alucard is able to communicate telepathically with his fledgling, Seras. The telepathy doesn't seem to have a maximum range. He can also read the thoughts of others, if he wishes.
 * Telekinesis: Alucard showed said ability when he was able to move the HMS Eagle to London overnight. Said ability was also demonstrated in the OVA when he knocked away two of the queen's bodyguards without even touching them.
 * Daywalking: Other vampires operate in the dark, because of a presumed weakness to light. Alucard however seems to have no problem with sunlight, only complaining that being up during the day is exhausting.
 * Weather Control: The ability to control the weather to an unknown limit, as demonstrated by the fog created when he returned to London aboard the H.M.S Eagle.
 * Hypnosis: Alucard has the ability to control minds, doing so on exclusively with Humans. The afflicted human will enter a euphoric, stupor-like state and their eyes will glow red. They will be pliant to all of Alucard's designs, doing and speaking as he wills. This hypnotic link is established through direct eye-contact and does not waver, even when Alucard's attention is elsewhere.
 * Fire Manipulation: Alucard shown the ability to summon special blue flames. When he first released his restriction system to level 1, he was engulfed with blue flames, and later, in his final fight against Anderson, when their swords clashes, he summoned blue flames who burned Anderson's bible pages, showing that they can affect divine objects. Later, when Alucard and his entire army were burned down by Andersons's holy flames, Alucard put them out with a simple movement of his hand.
 * Madness Inducment: Alucard showed to be able to drive people insane from his presence. It was shown when he was able to nearly drive Rip Van Winkle insane just by approaching the ship she was at, and completely paralyzing her in fear when creating eye contact.
 * Gravity Defiance: Alucard, during his fight with Tubalcain, is shown not only to be able to stand vertically on a wall, but run backwards up it. This would indicate some ability to defy gravity. Also, during Seras' first mission, Alucard is seen floating behind Seras.
 * Omnipresence: After consuming Schrödinger accidentally and being lost within himself for 30 years, Alucard emerges with the Werekin's powers. He is both everywhere and nowhere-- Omnipresent.[22]
 * Supernatural Detection: The ability to sense supernatural activity. In The Dawn, a prequel to Hellsing, Alucard knew the Captain was a werewolf the moment he saw him, and in the OVA, he could see the blessings on Father Anderson's bayonets as well as the holy barrier preventing their escape.

Trivia

 * Below the star on Alucard's glove it has the German words, "Gott Mit Uns", which translates to "God With Us". Interestingly, those words were used by the German military until the end of World War II, and during the Nazi era by the Wehrmacht (the regular German army) whereas the Nazi Waffen-SS used "Meine Ehre heißt Treue", which means "Loyalty is my Honor", instead.
 * In the original fan-translation of the Hellsing: Volume 2, the translators incorrectly translated Walter's line referring to the Jackal, making him call it the "Joshua" even though the Katakana reads "KASURU", which would be the correct Katakana for "Casull". Since then, many fans have perpetuated the name, so much so that ADV (the Official European Distributor for the TV Series) called it "Joshua" on their Official Website, the Special Features, and the booklets on their DVD release. Regardless, this name is incorrect as it never appears in the Original Japanese version of either the Manga, TV series, or OVA, or any official Translations of Hellsing, not even ADV's, as they use Geneon's dub and subtitles.
 * Interestingly, in the English commentary for the first Hellsing Ultimate OVA, Crispin Freeman notes that he was originally going to give Alucard a Romanian accent, but decided on an American accent instead. Most likely, the Romanian accent heard in the intro of the English OVA 2, and the one in OVA 8 upon unleashing level 0 is what Alucard was originally going to sound like. It's also likely that Alucard is meant to have a Romanian accent in the manga.
 * In many of the sequences after Alucard receives the Jackal, he is seen using it alongside the Casull in a dual-wielding style. The Jackal has a left-facing case ejector, something most guns do not have, and this makes it appear as though the gun was meant to be used with the Casull. However, Alucard is almost always shown in the Manga and the Anime holding the Jackal in his right hand and the Casull with his left, causing the case ejectors to face each other (which would throw spent shell casings into his face). This is most likely an error on Hirano's part, as Alucard (with his extensive experience with guns) would know to face the case ejectors outwards; in the OVAs, this is exactly the case.
 * Considering his personality, it's also possible he purposefully does this to challenge himself, making the bullets blind him. It's also possible this isn't even a factor for Alucard, considering his 'third eye'.
 * It has been noted by some that during Alucard's flashback, Prof. Abraham Hellsing is wearing a similar red outfit to Alucard's usual dress.
 * This could have been the inspiration for Alucard's well known "Count" form.
 * Hirano has admitted he drew inspiration for Alucard's appearance off of Vash the Stampede from the manga and anime series Trigun (with similar jacket and glasses shared by the two characters). This is most notable in Volume 1, back when Alucard's art design was vastly different from the rest of the Manga.
 * In some scenes of the manga, the pentagram on Alucard's gloves changes to a hexagram or sometimes disappears entirely.
 * It is stated in the official guidebook that the term "The Bird of Hermes is my name/Eating my wings to make me tame" etched on his coffin is his pledge of loyalty to serve the Hellsing family after his capture. So his coffin not only serves as his resting place, it also serves as the promise and contract he made to the Hellsing family.
 * Alucard has two Paganism references on him. The obvious one is the Pentacle symbol on his gloves. The second is his epithet "The Bird of Hermes." Hermes was the Greek messenger god, noted for his winged sandals and ability to fly. Hermes was also noted for transporting souls to the Underworld, while Alucard, in contrast, devours them.
 * "The Bird of Hermes is my name/Eating my wings to make me tame" is also part of the Ripley Scroll, a medieval work about emblematic symbolism. George Ripley was an alchemist who lived around about Vlad the Impaler's time and is also said to have known the formula to create the Philosopher's Stone.
 * Oddly during the final episode of the anime, during the brief moment when it shows half of Alucard's face as that of Vlad Tepes, his skin is paler than that of his vampiric self, despite this form being able to go out in the sun.
 * At the end of the credits of OVA 1, Alucard's girl form is shown, but with a dark greenish-brown jacket instead of white and the hair is purple instead of black.
 * In the manga Alucard's gloves hold an easter egg, one of the words readable was "Excel Saga" which is the name of an anime/manga made by Rikdo Koshi.
 * Before becoming a vampire, Alucard's eyes were a bluish-purple in the OVA. However, in his famous portrait, Vlad Tepes has brown eyes. There are also historical records which describe him as having "threatening" green eyes.
 * The character Solomon from Genndy Tartakovsky's Sym-Bionic Titan cartoon is a visual reference to Alucard.