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Director: Tomokazu Tokoro, Mamoru Enomoto (episode director) Starring: Crispin Freeman, Victoria Harwood, K.T. Gray, Ralph Lister, Patrick Sietz, Josh Phillips Screenplay: Yosuka Kuroda, Taliesin Jaffe (English version) Music: Hayato Matsuo Tagline: The Bird of Hermes is my name, eating my wings to make me tame Country: Japan

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Sir Integra Hellsing hosts a Round Table conference at the Hellsing Estate, informing the various Government officials of a disturbing development in their enemy: micro-chipped vampires - evidence of a sinister puppet master pulling strings from the darkness, his vicious marionettes cutting a path of carnage across England. This discovery entails a new breed; the next evolutionary step of bloodsuckers! Their worries are soon realised as an army of faceless footsoldiers launch an assault on the Estate, and the castle is soon overrun by desiccated ghouls devouring all the souls they find. This second chapter exhibits a more visceral edge than before as the haemoglobin gushes onto the screen in a Grand Guignol spectacle of orgiastic violence: arteries explode, ligaments are torn, sinew is stripped from bone, limbs are ripped from their sockets and bodies are eviscerated, garrotted, or else reduced to a formless pile of red. And of course, it's all executed with casual nihilism by grinning sadists looking cool-as-fuck whilst doing it.

Visuals have been given an octane boost, and there's more variety than was previously on offer: high velocity splatter, intense gunfights and slow-motion intervals call to mind the cinematic athleticism of the Wachowski brothers at their most kinetically stylish; there's even an impressive Hitchcock/Argento flourish as the physical space itself collapses and the walls close in a gesture of terror. However, all these cinematic allusions cannot disguise Hellsing's comic book heritage: in a climactic scene, Alucard unleashes a disembodied, mutant terror that reminded me of Todd MacFarlane's Spawn or the demon hordes in The Darkness. Nothing exceeds like excess, as they say, and the animation team have truly flexed their creative muscle, surpassing even the last episode's bloodbath with more refined monster effects and pronounced character design. New colourful characters populate Hellsing's Gothic universe: Luke and Jan Valentine are Hellsing's latest smirking villains, all arrogant posturing and outlandish costumes that owe their flair and style to contemporary B-Boy culture as much as neo-romantic period garb (think Bram Stoker's Dracula-meets-Ali G) and their quirky design and unique character movements endow Hellsing with the illusion of a living, breathing and voluptuous universe rich in variety and texture. Although this sort of cultural pastiche is fairly commonplace in anime, the originality with which the elements combine and emphasise each other in a baroque and hyperactive spectacle is stunning; even small touches like Luke's cellular phone hidden amongst his flowing white cloak contribute to the overall unique visual signature of Hellsing.