hellsing

Arkard (or Alucard as some think his name is, whatever floats your boat)

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Sorry, but Im pretty certain its Alucard. Try spelling it backwards and see what you get. Now, try spelling Arkard backwards and well, it just doesn't really make much sense theme-wise to the series. Not as much as Alucard's does, anyway.

Alucard is also the son of Dracula in the Castelvania games, if I remember correctly.

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Yeah, and he's the main charater in Symphony of the Night. There are very obvious cues to SOTN in Hellsing.  Well... the one I have in mind is mainly the end boss. Dracula's final form in SOTN is hilariously similar to Alucard's more advanced forms that he takes towards the end of Hellsing.

Jezus, I'm getting tired of this name discussion.

A friend of mine send an email to Pioneer Japan, and they said it's Alucard.

People who say it's Arkard, or Arukard are just bullshitting.

Regardless of what it really is, Japan needs to get their kana-zation of foreign words straight...

Castlevania: SOTN : アルカード = a-ru-ka-a-do = Alucard

Hellsing:  アーカード = a-a-ka-a-do = Alucard ... ?

Kana dictates that the Hellsing character should probably be "Arcard"... maybe they thought Alucard was overused?  (I tend to agree with that sentiment...)  "Dracula Backwards" be damned...

Edit: Okay... why the hell won't the kana post correctly... -_-

Castlevania: SOTN : アルカード = a-ru-ka-a-do = Alucard

Hellsing:  アーカード = a-a-ka-a-do = Alucard ... ?

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Ah, well, it can be be spelled the same and pronounced differently, after all! ^__^;;;;

Anyway, I think the name is generally spelled "Alucard" _or_ "Arucard" on the official goods.

And I seem to remember that a character says something like "I don't care what your name is, "aruka-do" or "a-ka-do", [...]", in the manga. So it looks like the writer knows there's a "aruka-do" kana spelling for the name "Alucard". But maybe he didn't know that when he created the character, so it doesn't really help us anyway.

Maybe he wanted the name to be slightly different ("Arucard"), spelling and pronounciation wise.
Maybe he did mean it to be "Dracula backwards" but made a mistake about the spelling of "Dracula" ("Dracura" -> "Arucard"), and then pronounced it "Arcard", something like that.
Maybe he wanted it to be spelled "Alucard" (and I don't want to translate the line I quoted above, then ^^; ) but wanted to pronounce it differently.
Maybe he wanted it to be spelled "Alucard", but he made a mistake about the pronounciation.
Maybe...

All the offical merchandise I've seen so far says "ARUCARD" (always in caps). Then again, my DVDs (the Japanese editions) say that Incognito uses a "sword-off" weapon.

I still stand by my belief that it's "Alucard" though. Simply because it seems too clear that he is Dracula, to me anyway. But he might not be.

One of my DVDs came with a little insert that, I think, details his past. It does make a reference to Vlad the Impaler, but I dunno what else it says.

http://www.geocities.com/wereallmad/LegendofVampireKing2.jpg

As far as pronunciation. "Alucard" is prnounced something like "Alcard" or "Allcard" (I've heard that Alécard is actualy the most accurate). So the spelling of "Aakaado"makes sense to me. But then again, I'm not going to even pretend to know enough about Japanese to make that call.

As far as the castlevania connection, there is none. Alucard is not a name that was created by Konami. I've seen it used in old Bela Lugosi style Dracula films that go back to probably the 1940s or 50s.

Either way, Arkard does seem pretty ludicrous to me.