Anyone who's paid much attention to anime and manga (Japanese animation and comics) recently will probably be aware of Hellsing (not to be confused with the dire Hollywood film Van Helsing). A vampire who hunts his own kind is one of the most overused of plotlines, but this uniquely Japanese take on such a plot has a flavour all of it's own. By which I of course mean.. it's totally, fantastically, and utterly mental. Why I am I writing about it today? I'll get to that in a minute.

Set in England (a rarity in itself in a Japanese series) it centers on the top-secret government backed vampire busting Hellsing institute (which for copyright purposes was absolutely not founded by Van Helsing of Bram Stoker's original Dracula novel) who among others have not one but two vampires on the payroll (one of whom, the incomparable Alucard, is for copyright purposes absolutely not Dracula in a cunning disguise). During the course of the original comics they face such enemies as Vampires, werewolves and Catholics. Most crazy of all though, they come to face with a load of Vampire Nazis trying to finish off what Hitler could never manage and invade Britain. In Zepplins. With Vampires. The original anime TV series never got as far as this story arc and finished after 13 episodes. However there is now a new DVD series coming out, that is going back to the start of the story and this time Hopefully doing it more faithfully, complete with Vampire Nazis. This new series is hitting (region 1 only, unfortunately) DVD in December and the website is now up and you can check out the trailer here. The UK release can't come soon enough!