First Lieutenant Zorin Blitz (ゾーリン・ブリッツ中尉, Zōrin Burittsu Chūi) was a character in the manga Hellsing and a member of the Millennium forces. In the OVA, her Japanese seiyuu is Yoko Soumi, and her English voice actor is Rachel Robinson, save for in OVA 4, where she's voiced by Helena Taylor.
Appearance
Zorin is a female vampire with dark brown skin and short, spiky orange hair. She is very tall and muscular, giving her an imposing presence. She has narrow green eyes, with the right eye being much darker in color. She has a third eye in the palm of her right hand, which only opens when she is using her illusion powers. In addition of having a muscular body and androgynous appearance, her breasts are more conical like and bulky.
Zorin's most notable features, however, are her tattoos. They consist of a large pentagram on her forehead, a purple spiral on her right shoulder, and innumerable letters covering the entire right side of her body (or at least her face, neck, and arm). When she uses her illusion powers, the tattoos on her arm appear to slide off and spread out from her hand, being quickly replaced by more tattoos on her skin.
Zorin wears a dark green halter top and the bottom half of a standard Letzte Batallion combat uniform (pants and boots). She also wears black gloves on both hands and is rarely seen without her silver and dark grey scythe.
History
Although first seen with The Major and the other members of the Letztes Batallion, Zorin's first mission shown is her attack on Hellsing Mansion during Millennium's invasion of London (Operation Seelöwe 2). Zorin attacked Hellsing manor with roughly 1/3 of the Letztes Batallion, though the attack was initially a disaster. Seras Victoria was easily able to shoot down Zorin's zeppelin with the Harkonnen II's AA cannons, forcing the surviving members to carry on on foot. Despite this, the survivors, behind halved in number and having lost all their heavy equipment, continued to attack, only to fall into a minefield set up by Captain Pip Bernadotte's Wild Geese troops. Ultimately, the Millennium forces were able to bypass the mine field with the help of one of Zorin's illusions and breached Hellsing Manor. Zorin joined her battalion of troops in the destruction of the Wild Geese; killing all those in her way with her painful illusions and massive scythe. Eventually she encountered Seras and although Zorin was easily able to kill her she instead left her alive after scraping her eyes on her scythe, slicing off her left arm, and paralyzing her with a blow to the spine. Captain Pip Bernadotte, already severely injured, tried to save Seras, but was instead killed by Zorin, leading the injured Seras to drink his blood and awaken her latent vampiric powers. Seras then healed herself (save for her left arm, which now spews shadow matter) and effortlessly destroyed the remaining members of Zorin's Battalion, leaving Zorin alone.
Zorin then attempted to wield her illusions against Seras again, but was instead confronted with an unfamiliar landscape: instead of only one soul to focus her power against, she found Pip's soul inside also, merged with Seras' own (represented by many shards of memories contained within the two of them), making it impossible for her to fool either, and she subsequently lost her power as Seras shattered the shards, confusing Zorin and allowing the young vampire to deliver the deathblow. Seras subsequently killed Zorin in a spectacularly violent and bloody manner, scraping her face across a wall and wearing it down like an eraser on paper.
Right before Seras did kill her, Schrödinger appeared and informed Blitz that her inevitable death will come in Seras' hands instead of being burned, as The Major and Doc are too busy working on vampirizing Walter and had no time to activate the microchip, abandoning Zorin to a painful, humiliating death at the fledgling's hands. Her orders were to treat Seras as much as a valuable enemy as Alucard himself - orders Zorin ignored by leaving her alive. SAs such, Zorin dies in a complete contrast to Rip van Winkle; an un-glorified death that Schrödinger later describes to the Major as like "a gnat", ironically the same words she used to describe Pip. At the end of Volume 10, Zorin's scyth is seen at a shrine alongside items from other characters killed in the series.
Personality
Zorin is extremely sadistic and bloodthirsty, often enjoying using her illusion magic to mess with her victim's minds before she finishes them off. She is shown to be quite cruel, as she gleefully shows her enemies illusions of painful past events, such as showing a man an illusion of his dead daughter, and Seras flashbacks of her parents being murdered. Like many of the other monsters in Hellsing, she shows little to no respect towards her opponents, calling the Wild Geese mercenaries "sad meat sacks" and Seras a weakling. She is also quick to anger and impulsive, which led to her going against orders and attacking Hellsing manor, resulting in her demise.
Abilities
- Agelessness: Being a vampire, Zorin remains at her physical prime forever. While she is ageless, she is not immortal, and was killed by Seras.
- Superhuman Strength: Zorin had a degree of superhuman strength, as she was able to lift her massive scythe with ease.
- Superhuman Speed: Zorin's speed was enhanced to the point where she could run across a field to the Hellsing Manor in mere seconds along with her battalion.
- Regeneration: Zorin was able to heal wounds such as getting her cheek scraped by the Harkonnen and being shot five times in the chest by Pip.
- Illusion-Casting: Zorin's power was her ability to create illusions, seemingly facilitated by the third eye of her right palm. These illusions include creating an enormous copy of herself (taller than the Hellsing Manor) and showing her victim illusions of painful past events. They are extremely realistic to the point of physically tangible to her victims. However, sufficiently trained vampires can resist or outright negate the effects. They can also be broken if Zorin is distracted or injured while casting them.
- Mind Reading: While a victim is trapped in an illusion, Zorin is capable of reading their mind/soul, seeing which illusions would work better.
- Scythe Proficiency: Zorin's weapon of choice is a massive scythe with enough power to slice a man in half. She is equally dangerous at range, being able to throw it great distances with impressive accuracy.
- Self-Disintegration: As seen among the most powerful members of Millennium, her body was capable of being remotely cremated via her implanted chip
Zorin and her mysterious eye.
Trivia
- In the James Bond 007 movie A View to a Kill, actor Christopher Walken plays a villain named Max Zorin who was a chemically engineered superhuman created in late World War II by Nazi Germany and who possessed a zeppelin-based flying HQ. He also had May Day, a giant, muscular female bodyguard. It is entirely possible that Hirano drew from these elements in creating his Hellsing character.
- Her last name, Blitz, is German for "lightning". It is likely a reference to Blitzkrieg (Lightning War), a military tactic used by Nazi Germany in the early days of World War II that involved overwhelming enemy lines with a single massive offensive combining infantry and tank regiments.
- "The Blitz" was also the common term for Germany's campaign of bombing raids on Britain during WWII.
- Zorin's tattoos are known to change between scenes and panels (in at least one panel of Volume 7, her pentagram becomes a hexagram, and the number and arrangement of letters changes frequently), but it is never stated if they actually change or if Hirano simply didn't bother trying to maintain identical patterns of hundreds of letters and images. The latter is more likely, as Hirano occasionally snuck in references to other works (such as "Trigun Maximum," "Gungrave," "Mission Impossible", and "Band of Brothers"). and comedic phrases ("Elvis Lives"). In one panel of the manga, the tattoos bear the phrase "Comic Master", referring to an online comic-making application.
- Zorin Blitz is one of the few major characters in the series to not wear white gloves. She is also the only major member of Millennium who lacks such gloves.
- While she has green eyes in the OVAs, in the first trailer for OVA 4, she had blue eyes.
- She has heterochromia iridum.
- Interestingly, despite Schrodinger telling her the Major and Doctor had no time to activate her death switch, it is seen activating later, after Seras had killed her. It is likely that it activates in response to her death, though it is also possible that The Major and Doctor merely left her to a painful death for having proven herself to be incompetent.
- Intentionally or not, Zorin's outfit bears an extremely close resemblance to the one worn by fellow manga vampire Dio Brando in part 3 of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure.
- Zorin's scythe bears a striking resemblance to the weapon form of Soul Eater Evans from Soul Eater. Mainly in the design of the blade. The only notable differences being the lack of an eye on Zorin's scythe and the colors of her weapon's blade. While hers is a dark and light grey, Soul's weapon form is red and dark grey, separated by a similar zigzag pattern on the scythe.
- It is notable that the jagged design on the scythe is relatively common on hand forged blades such as this one Dynasty Forge - Katana Blade and reveal themselves through the used metal metallurgy, folded smithing of 2 different steel hardenings and the polishing.
- Interestingly, Zorin's design bear's similarities to the anime-exclusive villain Incognito. Specifically, they both have a disfigured eye and tattoos covering one side of their body.
Gallery
