Rip van Winkle (Hellsing)
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First Lieutenant Rip van Winkle (リップヴァーン・ウィンクル中尉 First Lieutenant Rippuvān Winkuru?) is a character in the manga Hellsing and a member of the Millennium forces. She is voiced by Maaya Sakamoto. One of Millennium's top soldiers, and member of the Werewolf special forces, her troops stole a VTOL carrier called the Eagle from the British. Along with Zorin Blitz and Schrödinger, she briefly makes a cameo in a flashback during Hellsing III, and also during the ending credits. She makes her full appearance in OVA IV.
She uses a long-barreled flintlock musket that fires magic bullets that "punish all without distinction", tracking targets of their own accord, and which are seemingly armor-piercing (they destroy helicopters, fighter jets and missiles with ease) and they are even able to change their trajectories in mid-flight repeatedly peppering a target with the same bullet. She seems to have a limited amount of these bullets, as she only uses one at a time. In fact, she uses only 4 on screen before death throughout the entire series and only 1 directly against Alucard (so far: she might use them again during The Dawn.) She doesn't appear to have any other powers beyond this however. She also enjoys singing operas, especially Der Freischütz, and she often compares herself to the character Kaspar from that opera. The Major even notes that she is very much like Kaspar and that Alucard is Zamiel, the antagonist of that opera and representative of the devil. Additionally similar bullets, that never miss their target, are used by Kaspar, who is taken to Hell by Zamiel at the end of the opera.
In several scenes she is also seen with an umbrella, which could be a reference to the practice of World War II German snipers to use umbrellas with camouflage foliage woven between the arms as light, adaptable and mobile personal camouflage.
Alucard instills a great deal of fear in Rip as he approaches, and inevitably kills her, despite her last ditch effort to force him over the edge of the Eagle's deck with a magic bullet. Alucard stakes her through the chest just left of her heart with her own gun and drinks her blood in the climax to Volume 5 of the manga before using his shadows to devour her body, killing her and making her his familiar.
Ironically, The Major would not permit the Doctor to fry her through the chips, and in fact, in a rare gesture of "generosity", requests other members of Millennium to Heil her, bidding her "Auf Wiedersehen." Her mission was to effectively trap Alucard on the Eagle because he cannot cross water without the aid of some form of external transport such as a plane or ship. By using the Eagle as a decoy, Millennium isolates Alucard in the middle of the ocean while the rest of Millennium makes its landing operation. Unfortunately for Millennium, Alucard took control of the ship and managed to return to coastline, though the Major himself seemed to be anticipating this.
Rip later shows up as a familiar after Alucard releases his zero restriction, merged with Tubalcain Alhambra. After helping shoot down Maxwell's helicopter and attacking Anderson, she is destroyed in a massive fire along with all the other familiars. This scene was not published in Young King OURs, but was added to volume 9.
In the most recent chapter of The Dawn, Rip also makes an appearance as a young, farsighted soldier, encountering Alucard after his initial defeat by the Captain and while he was smoking with his coffin. She appears in full uniform, wearing her hair in two braided pigtails, and bears the rank of Untersturmführer. The glasses she wears (which are not actually hers, but were mixed up in the confusion) make it difficult for her to focus properly, and Alucard spends some time trying to make her understand who he is and why he's in the building. Finally, realizing that he is an enemy, Rip tries to shoot Alucard, but is knocked unconscious by his sentient coffin in an amusing way: being Judo chopped and kicked across the hall.
Since The Dawn is currently incomplete, it is often debated among fans that she was turned into a vampire and given magic bullets by Alucard himself. This would seem to explain why they were familiar with one another in volume 5, and it would also make the comparison to Der Freischütz that much more literal.[citation needed]
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