|
 Rip van Winkle is a relatively minor antagonist in the manga series of Hellsing. She's a vampire working for the Nazi Millenium Group, and has attained the position of First Lieutenant. Whether she supports Nazi ideology or whether she's with the Millenium Group for another reason is not revealed (but possibly hinted at in Dawn). Her weapon appears to be an 1800's flintlock musket. When she shoots, her bullets go exactly where she wants them to, and explode at her command. Her sniping abilities are certainly supernatural, and the Major compares her magic bullets to those of a hunter in Der Freischütz, a fairytale opera. It's possible that his comparison set off her obsession with Der Freischütz, but I suspect that she was already a Caspar fangirl. Rip is rather eccentric, but probably not psychotic. Her odd behaviour is mainly manifested as Ophelia-like singing.. she bursts into song at innapropriate times, but what she sings is always relevant (supposedly her songs are from Der Freischütz, but I'm not sure since I haven't found a good enough English translation of the opera yet). As well as her singing, she appears to have unusual outbursts (such as when she laughs and claps her hands), rapidly changing moods, confusion between fantasy and reality and an occasionally childish demeanor (as evidenced by the pale (possibly pink, turns out to be yellow in the OVA) love-heart umbrella when a plain black one would have been better at keeping the sun off, the chibi clock when a wristwatch would have been more practical and those ..er.. charming turned up trousers and pale sneakers). Painting that blood swastika on the deck of the ship is probably more due to her vampirism than any madness, she wished to mark the ship as captured and, having run out of paint, used the first alternative that came to mind. (I would have painted 'All Your Base Are Belong To Us' as well.) She has risen to the rank of First Lieutenant, and that is plenty of evidence that she is sane enough to live successfully.  Ophelia: Rip without the badass? I admit it, Rip had her arse handed to her. Many people seem to take this as evidence that Rip must be a young, weak or artifical vampire.. it might just be my fondness for snipers, but I believe that the outcome of that one fight does not necessarily mean she is. A sniper, though an expert in taking out enemies at range, will sacrifice efficency in close-range combat. I suppose that Rip controls her bullet by linking her mind to it telepathically, and if she's conditioned herself to do it almost as an immediate action after pulling the trigger, she might involuntarily do it every time she shoots. If Rip has developed her ability to control bullets by herself (they're not Samiel's.. he only gives you seven, and he directs the last one), she probably hasn't spent much time training in close combat. She doesn't carry any sort of melee weapon, and I'd expect that controlling the bullet would make it very hard to use a gun on someone nearby. In Planetside, a game I play often, there is a missile launcher called the Phoenix that fires missiles you can literally fly to the target.. it's great for aeroplanes or distant vehicles, but it's very awkward to use it on the MAX Unit in the corridor in front of you if it's not on dumb-fire mode.  Alucard is immaterial enough to be bullet-proof.. shooting him is (quite literally) like trying to nail jelly to the ceiling. Not a good opponent for a sniper. As we all know well, throught most of her battle with Alucard, Rip was - as my Mum would say - 'having kittens'. She believed he was Samiel, the main villian of Der Freischütz. Seeing herself as Caspar, she is certain that Alucard is Samiel coming to get her. The first time I read the Rip and Alucard fight, it instantly seemed to me that her delusion played a part in her defeat. If she hadn't seen him as the Devil himself, the personification of death, she may have had a better chance to hold him off until she could escape. As a fan of Anne Rice, I'm sure that not all vampires are as good at close combat as each other.. I'm sure that vampires have talents as diverse as the rest of us. Alucard is so powerful because he is nigh 600 years old and is full of Hellsing enchantments and modifications. Seras manages because she has inherited some of his power. Primarily, Rip was destroyed because she was a minor villan. Her role in the storyline was to be distubing for a bit then get killed while making Alucard look all ruthless and badass. It doesn't mean that her character can only be interpreted as a weak fighter and scared madwoman though. Her Name Rip Van Winkle is likely to be her birth name (or a variant of) and not a psedonym. Unless it's something to do with the rifle preferance, or a nickname bestowed upon her by someone else, I have no idea why she'd choose to go by the name of a lazy old country bumpkin. Chances are that 'Rip Van' is a set of diminutives related to her real name, and 'Winkle' is her coincidental real surname. It does seem that the 'Van' part is a middle name and not a surname prefix, as Schrödinger, who we can assume knows Rip well, calls her 'Rip Van'. My personal idea is that it may be a corruption of something like 'Ripchen'.. '-chen' being a diminutive suffix which can used in the same way as the Japanese '-chan', and 'Rip' being a diminutive form of her real name. Her Age Rip could possibly be a hereditary vampire, maybe quite an old one. My primary reason for thinking this is in the way she is drawn. Her fangs are prominent enough to be seen almost every time she opens her mouth, as opposed to the dentition of the artificial vampires who have either sweet little tiny fangs or a full set of pointed teeth. Her hair appears to defy gravity, and no amount of hairspray could keep that curl in place. Her eye colour changes with her emotion, and she has that 'demon face' thing. She's nowhere near as immaterial as Alucard, but definately shows a few little involuntary alterations of her reality. 
Another piece of evidence is the Major's Freischütz speech. It doesn't sound as if he's discussing an ability that his scientists gave her, but more like he's offering his thoughts on a talent she already had. I suspect that it might be her magic bullets that made the Major notice her in the first place.Then there's her gun. It's a flintlock musket that must still work as a flintlock because all the mechanism is still there. Anyone who's ever tried using a flintlock gun knows how awkward they are to use. You half-cock your hammer, stuff black powder and a bullet wrapped in cloth down the barrel, put some black powder on the flash pan and close the frizzen, cock it all the way and fire. If you're lucky, the flint on the hammer will hit the frizzen, both opening the flash pan lid and making a spark to light the powder on the flash pan. The flame will go through the little hole on the barrel, lighting the powder and shooting the bullet. If you're unlucky, you get a 'flash in the pan' that doesn't shoot anything. Now, it would be fine if Rip just liked the tempermental little buggers, but to actually use one in modern combat is entirely a different matter, even if you can direct your bullet. To me, this suggests that she uses a flintlock gun because it's what she's used to - it's what she learnt to shoot with. Flintlocks were in use from the 1600's to the 1800's, so Rip would be around 400-200 years old. The original Rip van Winkle lived in the time of the American Revolutionary War, so I'm tempted to put Rip's birth at around 1750, making her about 25 at the time of the Revolutionary War and about 250 when she fought Alucard. Idiot Hair The little curl that stands out from the rest of Rip's hair is called 'ahoge' or 'idiot hair'. In Japan, idiot hair is the term for what we'd call a cowlick. Our term originates from the idea that sticking-up hair looks like a cow licked it, while in Japan, where 'the square peg gets hammered down', hair that won't join the rest is called stupid! In anime and manga, ahoge signifies someone who's literally not very bright. Rip is no aho, but another purpose of idiot hair is to indicate that a character is somewhat childlike, carefree or an ingénue, and I can certainly see that in her.  Skuld from Ah! My Goddess demonstrating idiot hair. Why is Rip Van Winkle dear to me? She comes closer to being me than any other character I've heard of.. she's an exaggeration of me. Snipers, millitary history, madness, the undead, mythology and several thousand songs have run about in my mind like hamsters on caffeine for as long as I can remember. I have an active imagination, to the extent of evoking my favourite characters and storylines to aid me when I'm distressed.  [Hellsing and Rip were created by and are copyright of Kouta Hirano.] |
|
Home Gallery Washington Irving's Old Peculiar Rip's Survival? Rip Rumours - Is Rip Van... A werewolf? Alucard's fledgling? |