Jack Frost vs. Hellsing: FIGHT!

[telophase]

I mentioned in a post I made last night that the manhwa Jack Frost had too many elements - character design, character relationships, panel angles, weapons - ripped off from similar to those from Hellsing, and promised scans to prove it. Here they are.

Now, it's not plagiarism - I haven't found any panels where the Jack Frost artist deliberately traced, but you know he's got Hellsing open on his desk while drawing Jack Frost and frequently refers back to it I, of course, have never done that Death Note or Saiyuki. And while I don't actually mind using close character designs, etc. as long as the story is sufficiently different (it is, so far), unfortunately Jack Frost is nowhere near as good as Hellsing, which means that as you're reading it, you are irresistibly reminded of Hellsing and how much better it is.

So let that be a lesson to you: if you're going to copy character designs MAKE SURE YOUR STORY IS BETTER THAN THE ORIGINAL.




Hellsing panels on the left or the top, while Jack Frost panels on the right or bottom.

You, madam, are no Integra Hellsing.





And you, miss, are no Ceras Victoria. (Character design not the same, but placement in the story and relationships to other characters are the same.)





You, Jack Frost, no matter how much you cock your head and grin that evil grin, will never be Alucard. (Honestly, people, this is one of Alucard's favorite poses! How are we expected not to notice?!)





Even down to the improbable guns! (Hellsing the one on top, JF the three on bottom.) I kept expecting Ceras' Harkonnen Cannon to show up!





The panel on the right, occurring near the end of JF, is where I went OH DEAR GOD YOU DID NOT JUST DO THAT.





In conclusion: read Hellsing. It's much better.

Comments

Wow...

[(Anonymous)]

Ummm that's cause they're made by someone who works with the creator of Hellsing, if it hadn't been. they would have been sued forever ago. I don't mean to sound rude, but really, quiet pitching a bitch fit. It's annoying. Get your facts straight first. I could understand if it was like that one kid who made a book copying Bleach, he only got away with it cause his dad produces the show in america, but really, Jack Frost had permission, and is even called "the parody of Hellsing". GET OVER IT.

Re: Wow...

[telophase]

I think you're reading much more into my post than I wrote.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

He really does do good Integra and Alucard...

[telophase.livejournal.com]

As fanart it's awesome. :D

I wonder if Jack Frost started as a Hellsing highschool AU doujinshi (whatever the Korean term for that is)? That would make SO MUCH MORE SENSE.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

That was pretty much my thought.

[octopedingenue]

Korean doujinshi are donginji (hangul = ???), which I know because there are pretty Princess Tutu ones I cannot haaaave.

I would also love to read, well, everything on this page, but especially the third paper down.

[marith.livejournal.com]

I would like to teleport and attend that conference now plz. Thank you, those paper descriptions are *fascinating*.

[marith.livejournal.com]

teleport time travel

[octopedingenue]

I KNOOOW! Where are the conference publications I can look up on JSTOR?

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I did a quick search for the third paper and didn't find anything, but you could probably write to the author of it and ask if there's a text version available anywhere. :)

[octopedingenue]

You are wise and good, librarian lady!

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

...now I want to write an Hellsing highschool AU and I think I kind of HATE YOU ALL

Walter would be the vice-principal. 'cause everyone's always afraid of the vice-principal.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

_{Walter and Hakkai: long-lost scary relatives, Y/N/tickybox?}

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

::clings to her blankie and weeps in terror::

[nekonexus.livejournal.com]

wow. o.o Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but original thought should not be left by the wayside!

[telophase.livejournal.com]

And there are elements in it that are good - ripping off Alucard's charactrer design and poses is not necessarily a bad thing, as he's a character archetype (the monster you set to fight other monsters) - but the storyline is too confusing. It drops you in media res and fails to sufficiently fill in enough information to make you care about these people, what sides they're on, or the world they're in.

[nekonexus.livejournal.com]

*nod* Riffed archetypes can totally work, if you support them.

Sounds like fanfic with the serial numbers filed off, but no background filled in?

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Yeah. As I mentioned to meganbmoore above, it feels like it started as a Hellsing highschool AU doujinshi.

[keelieinblack.livejournal.com]

The eye panel is absurd. At that point even an oblivious artist should realize they've leapt from homage to ripoff.

It almost makes me wish someone would go through and Photoshop in dialogue that would turn it back into a Hellsing doujinshi, just to see how it reads that way. (And because High School Hellsing would be amusing in any case.)

[telophase.livejournal.com]

DO NOT TEMPT ME I HAVE NO TIME!!!!

[keelieinblack.livejournal.com]

I, I would never try to tempt you into doing something so frivolous!

Unless you wanted to save it as a potential time-wasting project for a dull evening or something. XD

[darksumomo.livejournal.com]

I, I would never try to tempt you into doing something so frivolous!

*evil chuckle*

[mscongeniality.livejournal.com]

BUT IT WOULD BE AWESOME!

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

You could just put up some panels and have us make up dialogue. Then you could photoshop in your favorite lines. :D

[ukoku.livejournal.com]

Dude. Vampire Zombies. Wat.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

The 'vampire zombies" are the exact same thing as Hellsing's ghouls - mindless corpses brought back to life by lesser vampires.

[octopedingenue]

I am musing about manga panel/posing copying-not-plagiarism done using a completely different story, artstyle, and/or characters. There was the mangaka who copied plagiarized lots of Slam Dunk for her shoujo manga, but I'm thinking more deliberate, like that Japanese Watchmen fanart with the Rorschach pedophile-murdering scene redrawn using 4chan lolis...which now I cannot find as scans_daily died. Wah!

[darkelf105.livejournal.com]

I almost bought this the other day. Glad I didn't, there looks like there is no faux-Pip and without a crazy french guy, your rip off has nothing, nothing I say!

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Give it time! Maybe he shows up in volume 2!

[darkelf105.livejournal.com]

I'd actually be tempted to read it if a knock off Pip did show up...or maybe not, because while I was flipping through it, I was really, really disoriented by the paneling.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

The art's fine. The story is incomprehensible. :)

[strigine.livejournal.com]

So does "she's already dead in the world she lived in" make any more sense, in context? Because standing alone, it makes my head hurt. o_-

Also, damn does this make me want to rewatch Helling for Integra. *fangirls*

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Slightly - she's dead in the human world, but alive in this one.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

Dude, yes. I wanna be like Integra when I grow up. Except for the virgin part.

[rather_crassly.livejournal.com]

Geez, I'm glad to hear you say that. I'm three chapters in, and still have no idea what's going on or why. I thought there was something wrong with my brain. I'll just go back to staring at the pretty art, then!

[errantimpulses.livejournal.com]

Wow. I can't believe you actually think the panels on the left are reference for the right. It seems like the popular thing to do these days is accuse people of using other people's art, I guess....

The closest thing I'll give you is the similar character design, but honestly, I could probably find 100 manga characters with long blond hair and glasses.

We all see what we want. Having read neither book, I see no similarity.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Please define "reference". You seem to be using it to mean "copying" or "tracing," which is not what it is.

[madame-manga.livejournal.com]

You know what this *really* reminds me of? That ripoff of Blade of the Immortal called Samurai Zombie -- okay, that artist DID trace -- but I don't actually mean the artwork itself. Just the way some people feel it necessary to defend the thief no matter how strong the visual evidence nor how widespread the "borrowing" from a single popular source.

In that SZ case I even put up a direct comparison of panels, with additional overlays in different colors that lined up precisely, and STILL some people couldn't see the resemblance, or claimed I'd somehow jiggered it to make them look like they matched. O_o

And we rely on eyewitness testimony to convict people of crimes? Please. :D

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Oh, lord, I'd forgotten about that one! XD

[chomiji]

That's an interesting comment. What makes you think "popular" has anything to do with her writeup here?

[harukami]

I can't believe you can look at the Alucard vs Jack Frost panels and not see that, with the addition of extra teeth, the lines of the mouth and angles of the face are identical. (And if you did know Hellsing, which is very well known and thus really hard to imagine an artist working in an identical genre NOT knowing, you'd know how hard that is to miss, since it's This Thing Alucard Does.)

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

Check mscongeniality's Hellsing icon above, too, which looks even more like the Jack Frost panels telophase shows.

[estara.livejournal.com]

Having read neither book, I actually see the similarities pointed out.

To each their own values of perception, I'd say.