Crack-tastic! Random! Unique! And I don’t have an idea what to make of this anime.
(Note: This review is for both seasons of "Hetalia", and it is long. Don't tell me you haven't been warned.)
First that will come to attention with this anime is that each episode is literally only five minutes long. Quick to get through for all in all 101 eps plus movie, but the sheer number of eps might as well drive non-plus members into despair (… oops… I’ve been watching too much Zetsubou-sensei). Won’t be judging that any further, but everyone who hasn’t yet seen the anime now knows what to expect.
For the anime itself, the concept is absolutely amazing. Countries made into people are an amazing formula for clever parody of country relations, negotiations, internal strife, etc. Right? We’ll see about that.
Story -- A comedy/parody -- people might have guessed that much by now. It’s based on world history, in the case of this first season mostly WWII (the focus kind of gets lost during the second season though). Now don’t you go off saying “boring”, because it’s loosely historical, if anything. Where it cites historical events and facts, and gives dates or names, it gets them perfectly right and can even be counted as “educational” in that sense; but any attempt at learning history from this anime alone is doomed to fail hard. That’s because “Hetalia” is essentially scatterbrained, jumping around freely between dates, places, and even whole time periods in World Series. The one thing you would at least expect from any historical anime (a chronological string of events, that is) isn’t to be found here. All there is to “Hetalia” story-wise is a series of gags, resulting in something that can be rather confusing. To be frank, you’d probably have to be a master in both world history and Japanese to make any sense out of this anime if not for the sub. It’s not quite as bad as for example Gintama in that regard, but it’s something to count in.
Characters -- Doesn’t the title give it away? A mixture of “hetare” (useless coward) and “Italia”… that should give at least half this category away: Everyone present here is one big, bad stereotype. The jokes that result from that of course aren’t entirely clean. “Hetalia” is racist without end. And while this usually would be a rather touchy topic for me, it’s equally racist towards everyone involved, so it’s actually pretty hard to take any offence at all. A few cultural peculiarities are even retained despite all the clichés, although they tend to slip out of focus in comparison to the latter…
That being said, stereotypes rarely work in any form of art, anime included. And while they do so for a little longer than usually here, the characters being hopelessly charming and endearing in all their faults, they stay very much one-sided; and 101 eps all in all (movie not included) are just a little bit too long for stereotypes to work all the way through. By the second half of the first season, many characters appear like one-joke ones (the most extreme example is probably Canada with “Nobody’s paying attention to me” … but Italy shouting “PASTA” out of the blue doesn’t get funnier than it was the first time either). Character relationships aren’t much better. Due to the missing chronology, they can get rather confusing, and seeing hardcore historical conflicts reduced to skits where both sides poke each other with sticks, whack each other with woks, and kick up a bit of dust despite being friends at heart… may be entertaining to some, may even induce squeals of “cute,” but to me, it looks more inadequate than anything else. The main characters being Germany, Italy, and Japan during WWII doesn’t exactly make that better. A different take on a theme that’s not hilarious at all; sure. But there’s a delicate line between “hilarious retelling” and “inadequate ridiculing”, and “Hetalia” doesn’t always seem to see that line.
There’s a wide variety of characters. Most of them are male, though, count out a few margin females that barely show up in three or four eps all in all. I guess I don’t have a reason to complain, with the majority of countries having been patriarchic in the past, but not a single female… okay, I need to stop it.
Dialogue -- It’s not much different than what you’d expect from the characters. Highly quirky, at times random, funny at the beginning, and gloriously simple -- so much it can border on stupid, which in turn gets old rather quickly. Punchlines are worn out rather quickly, resulting in a kind of monotony that latest by World Series is entirely dead material, and where gutter humour is very much polished for the fact that it is what it is, it still belongs right there -- in the gutter.
Dub vs. Sub -- Here we are at the point that will forever be a matter of arguments among anime fans. As for me, I’m not too hyped about either. Both contain over-the-top voice-acting with intentionally awful speaking patterns see accents. The dub actors go even more all-out than the Japanese seiyuu, trying to be as ridiculous as possible and often succeeding; on the other hand, the dub contains more slip-ups in terms of accents (especially side charas tend to drift in and out of their speaking patterns, or have accents that don’t fit at all) and translation. E.g. at times, the dub opts to open up some sardonic and naughty tones where the sub goes for the “innocent” approach. And of course, stereotypes are re-written to fit the American rather than the Japanese point of view.
Music -- Background music throughout is ordinary. There’s no opener (and no time for one), but the closer actually presents itself in slightly different varieties, one for each character. It also has the tendency to get stuck in people’s ears and be annoying on long term…
Animation and Art -- Bright colour palettes, fast-paced scene changes, and enough detail to get facial expressions across well enough. That’s the upside, anyway. On the downside, there’s a whole lot of still-frame panels with backgrounds that range from plain and unmoving to nonexistent, and the artwork is highly simplified (even goes to chibi lengths) and ultimately didn’t make me care in the slightest about it. In terms of character design, it’s decent enough for what it is, and costumes, as simple as they look, are chosen well, but there isn’t an infinite number of average-height blonde guys you can draw without it getting hard to tell them apart. AKA? Once the side characters get introduced, it can get quite hard to tell people apart from visuals only.
Entertainment -- Having said all of this, there’s one thing “Hetalia” absolutely is not: deep. Plot-less, quite obnoxious at times (I still have to stop a certain friend of mine from randomly screaming “pastaaaa!” …), and ultimately quite cheap. But it works. Despite the fact that it’s full of incredibly wrong jokes, it’s quite hard to take offence. The characters are quite charming, even given their one-sidedness. The voice-actors are so over-the-top that you can’t help but laugh. Sardonic moments actually work. For a while, that is. After a while, one-joke characters, recycled lines, clichés, and randomness get old. Must not mind randomness, some repetitiveness, or crazy antics. Nonetheless, “Hetalia” is surprising and fresh, at least at the beginning, and it’s not hard to see its charm.
As for me, I’m not hyped, however. “Hetalia” all in all stays a mixed bag to me. I expected something quite a bit deeper, along the lines of Gintama (which, behind sci-fi/history mix, randomness, and cross-references is a high-speed parody of today’s society and everyday life). Repetitions and stupidity annoy me. The animation didn’t make me care about it in the tiniest bit. And then, I have to admit that the first season pretty much rubbed me the wrong way; not for its ridiculous characters but for its setting.
I like the concept of “Hetalia”; I really do. But I’d much rather have seen it in a contemporary setting, or even a fantasy one. There’s so much in today’s society, economy, and politics that’s going the wrong way or falling apart completely; it’s more than enough material for a parody. And even if our influence on all of that may be small, it’s there. No matter how many time-travel anime there are by now however, we obviously can’t jump back through time periods and change history. Heaven knows how much chaos we’d inflict on the world if we could. And that’s right where “Hetalia” overstepped the line for me. It can be funny, alright -- but ridiculing a world war isn’t as much funny as it is inadequate, at the very least for somebody like me who takes the topics of history and war quite seriously. Hetalia’s second season World Series would have been a little better in that regard, but where new characters and settings provided small sources of new ridiculousness, and where the narrow focus on WWII was gone, the majority of the script was entirely worn-out material by then, resulting in something rather yawn-worthy than anything else.
That’s not to say there aren’t worse places to go than this anime. In fact, the results of both seasons are quite satisfying when there’s trivia to be learned or genuine anecdotes to be told. But it’s a spoof, and only a spoof. There’s nothing deep to be expected from this show; its only consistency lies in its inconsistency. It’s not inoffensive either; in places, it’s about as wrong as it can get. Its charm lies in its concept, characters, as stereotyped and faulted as they may be, and in the fact that “Hetalia” essentially is a show with ADHD, jumping around at hyper-speed in search of historical buffoonery, ethnic jokes, and stupidity -- not all of which work, but the combination of which might be enough to entertain those who expect a mere spoof; something simplified and ridiculous to lay back and loosen up, and for once not care about content. Must not mind randomness, stereotyped characters with crazy antics, some repetitiveness, or a ridiculing take on a serious topic. “Hetalia” is a show lacking in many places, but it’s certainly not the worst. Still: It’s definitely not for everyone -- and if you haven’t yet jumped on the bandwagon, I in your place would be careful in deciding whether I do. For those who are taking history lessons at school or university though and finding those very much snore-inducing, it can be said that the characters will help you over this tiredness though. (
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