Hetalia Axis Powers

I rarely drop shows as quickly as I dropped Hetalia. However, I feel like I’m making the right decision.

At 5 minutes an episode, this show isn’t much of an investment. But even at that short length, I was unwilling to continue. This show is terrible – first of all, its not funny, except to maybe someone with a 12-year-old’s sense of humor. The story is non-existent. The characters are shallow stereotypes. The “Chibitalia” segments are so boring that they make me want to hang myself.

Yeah, yeah, I know, “tell us how you really feel”. I tried to give this show a chance, I really did. ... I love yaoi, shounen-ai, and cute comedies, and this show looked promising. But after 11 episodes, I couldn’t stand it anymore. Watching this show felt like a waste of time, and I really regret even bothering. Don’t make the same mistake.

tl;dr: Hetalia is an unwatchable, over-hyped piece of garbage that stifled me with its stupidity.

The idea of creating a story with characters representing countries or aspects of a single country has been done many times in literature. Midnight's Children with India and Pakistan as Saleem and Shiva. The Tin Drum with Oscar Matzerath representing the German people during the Nazi period from 1933-1945. 100 Years of Solitude, where almost every facet of Colombian history and culture has a character devoted to it. Where does Hetalia fall when matched up against the aforementioned 3 novels. Well...nicht so gut. Hetalia relies on very simplistic stereotypes and slapstick humor that isn't really that funny. You won't actually learn anything about history from ... watching Hetalia either. According to Hetalia, WW2 was about the saintly Germans and Japanese fighting the moronic Americans and evil Russians, all while protecting the unbelievably stupid Italians. Amazingly this isn't actually the most extreme example of far right Japanese nationalism and historic revisionism in anime. That dubious honor belongs to Code Geass. Why is Hetalia so darn popular among anime fans where I live? The answer is Yaoi and Yaoi fanfics. That's pretty much it.

This has to be the absolute worst anime I've ever seen.

The animation is total crap. The animators were trying too hard to make this series look 'cute'. While I don't have anything against cute-looking animation, they seriously overdid it with Hetalia. I've seen anime that were from the 80's, 60's, and even the 50's that had better animation.

As far as story goes, I wasn't expecting much, since from what I can tell, this is supposed to be a parody of World War II. However, what I got was nothing. That's right: nothing. There wasn't a story to drive it forward and keep you interested.

When it ... comes to sound, the music is average. There's nothing too interesting or poor. However, the ending theme is probably the worst I've ever heard. Voice acting is an entirely different story. I like Funimation as much as the next guy, but even their skills at dubbing can't save this miserable pile of filth and vomit.

The episode length is a goddamn joke. Only 5 minutes? Seriously? I've seen porn videos that were longer... not to mention better.

Characters... oh god... can we even call them characters? The 'characters' of this series are representations of countries, since this is a parody of WWII. However, almost every single character is either A) completely boring, flat, and devoid of any life and personality or B) absolutely and aggravatingly annoying. Also, if your expecting characters such as Italy, Japan, Germany, and Prussia to be full of character development, prepare to be disappointed. This series gives the 'characters' absolutely no development at all. Seriously, I've seen more character development in the Sentinel robots from the X-Men cartoon. It's really sad that almost every character is just there for the sake of being there. The only exception to this is America. However, he only has very little development, and it's dragged out to about 5 episodes. A competent anime such as Rosario + Vampire, Corpse Princess, and Gun X Sword would've given ALL the characters development and would've done so in 1 or 2 episodes for each character.

Overall, if you want to watch something that's entertaining, go watch Rosario + Vampire. Go watch Gun X Sword. Go watch Street Fighter II V. For god's sake, watch anything other than Hetalia, because almost anything is better. If you haven't watched Hetalia, consider yourself extremely fortunate.

I can't do it. Hetalia has been recommended to me several times, but try as I might I just can't find anything substantive in it to latch onto.

Story - 6
The fundamental principle of Hetalia is a sound one, and it should provide infinite situations for the characters to interact. The writers seem torn, though, between, on one hand, writing an anime and just having the characters go at each other in various situations, and on the other, writing a historically educative series in which everyone learns about 20th century geopolitics. Thus we are left with the former, but with lengthy footnotes to match the ... latter. The disconnect is palpable when there is a comic situation on screen half-covered by explanations of the Congress of Vienna.

The ONA format is not kind to Hetalia, but neither do its writers seem intent on using it to their advantage. A 5-minute episode will only sometimes have 3+ minutes of the actual anime, with the rest taken up by irritating, half-drawn chibi skits. The OP is mercifully short, otherwise there might have been no Hetalia left to show.

Art & Sound - 7
The art of the series is rather well-done and fitting for its lighthearted approach, which I guess is needed considering it is about war on some level. As I said, the disconnect between the lighthearted antics of the characters and the reality of the war and suffering they were based upon was really noticeable and detracted from my enjoyment; I feel like these could have been integrated better visually. The sound and music are average on the whole, but like most other aspects of Hetalia they become a bit oppressive after a while. The voice acting is acceptable in the actual show, but the grating squeaks in chibi segments made me fumble for the "next" button.

Character - 3
Each character hews so closely to their national stereotypes that it's difficult to imagine any character progression at all. Their reactions to different situations is so totally predictable that absurdities inserted by the writers (Italy hiding in a crate labeled "tomatoes," Japan building a WWII mecha submarine) are the only changes of pace in the series and really the only source of actual humor.

Overall - 4
Hetalia isn't bad and I don't hate it, in fact I feel kinda sorry for it. The concept of the series is brilliant, but I wish it had been executed better. A bigger slice of time, a wider cast of countries/characters, a different setting, and especially a deeper and more respectful treatment of its characters and subject matter could have all aided this series, but despite its oppressive cheer, Hetalia still strikes me as being dead on arrival.

Enjoyment - 2
Hetalia isn't really an anime, it's a high-school history lesson masquerading as one. All said, I'd rather just read the Wikipedia entry on WWII than spend more time trying to find a foothold on something so disjointed and disappointing.

So after making a deal that if I watched this my girlfriend would watch Steins;Gate I started this series and right away it starts off with Nazi and holocaust jokes so there is that. The characters are just annoying and aren't funny in the slightest. The art is mediocre it's not bad but not good. The only music I remember from this is the 15 second opening theme and the god awful ending song. The voice acting for the dub is all over the place but as an English speaker I would recommend it over the sub for the accents. Overall this show is not ... worth your time and has one of the worst fanbases I have ever encountered.

Hetalia was a phenomenon. It cannot be overstated how popular it was during the tail end of the 2000s up through the mid 2010s. Cosplayers online and at conventions, roleplayers, fan content on Livejournal, DeviantArt, YouTube—it was practically inescapable. You couldn’t move five feet without bumping into some friend group’s cosplay photoshoot or an AMV. If you’re watching Hetalia as of the time of writing this review, it’s a safe assumption that you’re either nostalgic, a general internet or fandom enthusiast, or fourteen. And if you’re fourteen, I implore you to please seek out better gag anime such as Lucky Star, Azumanga Daiou, Way of ... the Househusband, or, if you’re well versed enough in anime tropes, Saiki K.

That being said, I will not sugarcoat this. Hetalia is… not great, to say the least. This isn’t a hot take by any means; you’re far more likely to find people saying Hetalia is bad than people who say it’s a masterpiece modernly. But the reason *why* they say it’s bad is, almost always, the sin of being kind of cringe and popular with young girls. You’ve seen it with Twilight, you’ve seen it with Divergent, and, of course, you’ve seen it with Hetalia. Instead of an actual deconstruction of the issues present, people gravitate towards simply dismissing a piece of media as “cringe.” But Hetalia is far worse than cringe—it was outright harmful to its primarily teenage audience. Hetalia personifies countries and uses them to retell historical events as if they were interpersonal drama, which is a perfectly fine concept on the surface, but pull back the layers and you’ll find a myriad of problems that hint at a creator with some very concerning political views.

To start with what was the primary draw for a lot of its original fanbase, the characters—in a vacuum—are fine for the most part. They’re all based around stereotypes of different countries, with some standard anime fare thrown in for good measure. A good example would be England’s British stuffiness being mixed with the standard tsundere archetype, or Italy being a great cook and artist while also being a ditzy genki boy. There’s an odd glorification of the United States that’s especially prevalent in the jarringly serious segments on the American Revolution, but is mostly mitigated with WWII era to modern America being portrayed as a stupid, obnoxiously friendly attention whore gloryhound. Though, the word “characters” is misleading. They don’t really work as characters, given they’re more representations of the citizens of the countries they’re personifying than actual people, they work much better as vessels for jokes. The most notable part of the characters, at least in the dub, isn’t their personalities or the stereotypes they embody—it’s their voice acting.

While I can’t speak for the Japanese cast (and really, why would you watch a comedy subbed anyway?), the English cast is star studded. Hetalia bolstered the careers of nearly every actor involved due to how popular it was at the time, but they’re all talented in their own right and were mostly getting plenty of work prior anyway. Todd Haberkorn, J. Michael Tatum, Patrick Seitz, Eric Vale, Maxey Whitehead, and Cherami Leigh are just a small fraction of the cast members with impressive resumes. Jerry Jewell even used the exact same voice here as Russia as he would for Victor in Yuri!!! On Ice just a couple years later. If you’re planning to watch it in spite of this review, go ahead and see whose voice you recognize.

In any other show, I would be frothing at the mouth and excitedly pointing out every actor I recognized, looking characters up and seeing what else they were a part of. In Hetalia, I’m just disappointed they weren’t playing characters in a better show. Though, despite some of the material they were given to work with, the voice acting was absolutely not one of Hetalia’s many, many issues—though they really shouldn’t have hired white people to voice the Asian countries.

Based on that list of voice actors being nearly entirely men (and one of the two women being best known for playing a young boy in Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood) you can probably guess that Hetalia does not have a lot of female characters—and yes, we will get back to the obvious effects of a cast of almost exclusively pretty anime boys later. It would honestly be less insulting if there were no women in the cast at all instead of just very, very few. Even if you don’t want to acknowledge this as an issue of misogyny for whatever reason, it’s still a problem because it severely limits the character designs. Giving France or Russia estrogen wouldn’t have made Hetalia a better show, but it would have at least added a little more distinction between the million different blond men. I never want to see another blond anime boy in my life.

The misogyny is blatant, but it pales in comparison to the racism. While eventually more South Asian countries were designed, Hetalia, to this day, has exactly three African countries if you don’t count ancient Egypt. And one was likely just picked as a leftover to serve as the player character in the PSP game. To put that into perspective, there are over fifty African countries in the real world, and there were just as many in 2009 when the anime was released. South America has even less, with only two. That’s not even going into the lack of Mexico or presence of any Native American nations despite having multiple episodes showing the colonization of the Americas. I could tell you exactly why they did this, but you’re not gonna like the explanation. And again, this is a modern issue (how Hetalia is still around is beyond me), this isn’t just because the show is from 2009 and the webcomic is even older.

Speaking of, while Hetalia does manage to have some funny gags, some of it is… dated, to say the least. Ignoring any outright offensive or harmful content, some gags are very randomz rawr XD, for lack of better terminology—the type of thing teenagers with “roar means I love you in dinosaur” shirts and a MySpace page would laugh at. While this isn’t necessarily a drawback if you’re nostalgic for that era, and comedy is always subjective, it’s just… really not funny. This is especially true for the movie which forgoes the historical comedy entirely to focus on that sort of humor.

That being said, it’s not all bad. Aside from some of the characters being genuinely fun (whether by virtue of the actual writing or just because they happened to get a charismatic and funny voice actor), Hetalia’s biggest upside is being legitimately funny at times. Episodes are only around five minutes each, and the characters talk fairly quickly, so gags are rapid-fire. For every actively awful joke about how fat America is despite him being designed as the world’s most fuckable twink, they take another five chances to throw something genuinely good at you. And it works. Just about every episode has at least one gag that at least got a snort out of me, if not actual laughter, and everyone I’ve talked to about it has said something similar.

Now, Hetalia could have been an alright (if dated and racist) gag comedy focused around portraying world history as family drama if it weren’t for the elephant in the room: the titular Axis Powers. Yes, *those* Axis Powers. Hetalia jumps around the timeline a bit, but the main focus is World War II.

The Allies are portrayed as incompetent and unable to work together at best, and outright villainous at worst—with a gag about France spreading “rumors” about Germany, and the dub taking it a step further and explicitly saying that those “rumors” were about Germany killing Jews. It’s ambiguous exactly what those rumors were in the original Japanese, so it’s nowhere near as bad there (which is the case for just about every mention of Jews in the dub), but that doesn’t mean it’s off the hook. The lax view of Nazi war crimes present in any language you watch it in is what bred an environment that allowed those jokes to be written in the first place. To say it louder for the people in the back, that’s Holocaust denial! Hetalia is a show that perpetuates Holocaust denial. Suddenly, the stories of cosplayers doing Nazi salutes make a whole lot more sense.

Italy’s war crimes were downplayed at best and outright erased at worst. Italy, as stated earlier, is portrayed as a lazy ditz, and his first instinct is always to give up. So, to put it simply, he’s harmless! Mussolini who? Japan doesn’t have it much better, and may be even more egregious once you remember that *this is a show from Japan,* portraying the Axis (that, remember, Japan was a part of) as a quirky trio of friends. Yes, trio—other members of the Axis, such as Romania and Hungary, are never implicated. I have no doubt the original mangaka knew about them due to how much research some gags would’ve required, which means this is yet another case of historical revision. Hetalia seems to love doing that.

Speaking of, while Hetalia tries to take a “nobody is safe, we make fun of everyone!” approach to its comedy, it’s obviously scared to make fun of its home country. While it does make jokes around Japan, they’re all about rudeness masked by politeness, excessive apologizing, and emotional unavailability, and they’re told in a fairly kind way. Contrast with how scathing some of the other countries get it (like jokes about China keeping his citizens poor, or France sexually harassing the rest of the cast) and it becomes clear how much Hetalia doesn’t want to target Japan despite how easy it would be to make a joke about something like Japan’s work culture, suicide rates, or criminal justice system.

Now, the portrayals of Japan and Italy are concerning, but by far the worst one is Germany. The very first scene of the anime has Germany shutting all those other obnoxious countries up and getting the world meeting back on track, and he’s portrayed as exactly the same during WWII. Because if there’s one thing the world was missing, it was the Nazis portrayed as one of the most serious and level-headed members of an ensemble cast! It wouldn’t exactly be good if they completely skipped over Germany’s war crimes, but what makes it even worse is that they don’t. While kept to only a couple lines, there’s multiple times where Nazi crimes or eugenics get referenced, like when he asks Italy if he “wants [him] to gas [him],” or when Italy lists him being “whiter than anyone” as a compliment.

The historical revisionism and Holocaust denial is even more concerning when you remember that there is a legitimate, genuinely educational side of Hetalia. It could never be a primary source of history of course, but you could seriously learn some things by paying attention and maybe looking it up later—which is bad considering *the primary audience was teenagers,* who aren’t exactly known for being able to pick out misinformation from what they consider to be trustworthy sources. While you obviously can’t pin all the blame on Hetalia for that— especially since it wasn’t created with the intention of having an audience of kids—it would be wrong to say it has no responsibility in separating its misinformation from its actual historical fact, and it’s not okay to spread misinformation just because you think your audience is full of adults who may be able to tell the difference. You should always be cautious of the information you’re giving and the messages you’re spreading, regardless of who you’re catering to. It’s hard to focus on a good joke when two minutes later, Italy and Germany have a gag about just how much they love eugenics.

Nazi apologism is a lot to take in, so let’s take a breather and talk about something I alluded to earlier: the effects of a cast composed almost entirely of pretty anime boys. Now, if it were just fujoshis fighting over which blond men should kiss, that would be notable in a paper on fandom history, but not a review of the actual show. That is to say, Hetalia has queer content. This is not a case of fandom doing what fandom does best and shipping their favorite hot guys together—it’s not even queercoding. Hetalia has actual gay representation. Italy is just… canonically bisexual. Not teased at, not ambiguous bisexuality, not bi lighting and hint-hint wink-winking the audience. He flirts with women and gets an actual, on-screen kiss with a man. There is not a single twist in media that will ever recreate the shock of learning that Hetalia has actual queer content and the fujoshis were not lying or exaggerating. I’m still stunned. Hetalia is written by a man, by the way. The manga is seinen. This isn’t yaoi. This is gay content by a man for other men. Contrary to what the majority of the other negative reviews say, this is actually one of the better parts of Hetalia, if only for making it more entertaining.

Fun fact! In the webcomic, they talk about gay marriage! Not in a ”getting married for political reasons” way like the anime, the actual human rights issue of gay marriage. I could not make this up if I tried.

Overall, I cannot in good faith recommend Hetalia to anyone besides maybe people who are very into fandom or internet history, and even that has more to do with its impact than the actual content. Hetalia has some good elements, whether that be some fun characters or the occasional funny joke, but a couple good bites of an apple can’t fix a rotten core, and a couple fun elements don’t change the fact that Hetalia contains historical revisionism and portrays the Axis Powers as the good guys more often than not.

Don’t watch it, it’s really not worth it. You have far better options for both historical shows and gag comedies now, so take advantage of them.

It's probably a good thing that these episodes are five minutes long, because that's about all one could take of this without there being a plot. I thought that many of the episodes were amusing, but the fact that there is so much commotion going on at any one point in such a short amount of time made me struggle to keep up. Talk about speed-reading.

I think that as something to amuse purely because the characters are bishounen and hyper, it does it's job. But that's about it. There isn't anything especially witty and if this is trying to be a satire, it has failed ... incredibly on many levels, least of all historical accuracy. But then again, I'm probably taking it far too seriously and expecting too much.

Guess I should pop some speed with the rest of the tweens if I really want to enjoy watching this.

Oh, man. Never in my life have I seen such a large neckbeard gathering. I was going to watch it since I heard a lot of praise about it. The fanbase is even more terrible than this anime. The concept sounds unique. Nations are represented with a single character, going through historical events such as WWI and WWII. The art is good enough, I suppose. However, everything else just makes me want to vomit. You know those anime that are just there for shipping and yaoi and other stuff like that? Yeah, this is one of those. Except Hetalia takes it to the extreme. This ... anime's sense of humor comes from people loudly yelling "baka" a lot and terrible punchlines. They don't even do the stereotypes correctly. Honestly, how could you mess that up? The soundtrack is so terrible I want to cut my ears off. The ending is one of the worst I have ever heard. The rhythm is just so off and cringe inducing. Also, random does not equal funny. That's a twelve year-old's concept of humor. This anime thinks being random makes it enjoyable and funny, but it doesn't. It just makes it a bunch of irrelevant nonsense. Overall, this is a terrible anime. Save yourself the trouble of watching it.

Hetalia was my favorite anime for a good portion of middle school. I've seen every episode multiple times over, and watched the whole movie for a birthday party with friends, so I am more than capable of saying that this anime is absolute dog shit.

It has great entertainment value on an ironic and nostalgic level for me, but when it comes down to actual content it's..... bad. Zero plot, little to no character development, awful pacing etc. Not good. Though, the voice acting is enjoyable, and the theme song is debilitatingly catchy.

On an unironic level it's a bad show, BUT, if you're looking for something ... that'll really send you back to your cringey problematic middle school past, this hits the spot.

The story idea was very interesting when I read the description and I was very excited to start the series; however, I was very disappointed when I did.

While the art is fine and I have nothing against it, the constant Chibitalia scenes get to be annoying by the time you get past episode five. They're not funny at all.

The voice actors are mediocre. Again, nothing special for me to get excited about.

When it comes to characters, they are written to be very straightforward and full of stereotypes. To me these stereotypes are about the only funny thing within ... the series but they can only carry the series so far until even that can't save it.

I didn't find the series enjoyable at all. I didn't find anything funny about it except for a couple of the stereotypes said throughout the episodes I watched. I really tried to like the series a lot because I had heard good things about it from other people but the humor seems more childish then for adults. (i.e. Chibitalia bits)

Overall I found the series very poor.

Minor spoilers? Maybe? From like episode 1. Seriously like from the first 30 seconds.

Full disclosure: I dropped this series after episode 11, I can't speak for what happens after that, but from what I hear from people who are fans of the series it is more of the same.

Story: In short, it's non existent. But neither is it episodic, it is a loosely strung together series of "historical events" written as if each country was a person. I'm a history buff who is especially interested in the 20th century, so I honestly expected this series to be a fit for me, but I was sorely ... disappointed. WWII is a situation where there is plenty historical irony ripe for the picking, but this show neglects to even approach that, instead relying on the characters quirks, which would be fine except for that the characters are countries. Additionally, the axis powers are pretty heavily promoted as the more appealing side, so..... Honestly, the best part was what they call "Chibitalia" and I'm not normally a fan of stuff like that.

Art & Sound: These were both fine, I use subtitles exclusively so I can't speak for the dub. The art was nothing spectacular, but nothing was terrible either.

Characters: The characters are terrible. Each character is created cantering on one or two stereotypes. I'm not an overly sensitive person, but... Well I'll put it this way, if an American firm put these characters out on a mass scale, every cultural association would be up in arms. Allow me to demonstrate with America. If you believe the series Americans are: stupid enough to suggest creating a giant super hero (we're not), always eating hamburgers and drinking bladder buster sodas (we're not), and still bickering with Britain over our colonial heritage (this one was the most ridiculous even as of the 1940s). This ignores the ridiculousness of the actual history of America's involvement in WWII, which they twisted and corrupted. Unless you're German or Japanese, your character is based off of a negative stereotype (until episode 10ish France is also an exception).

Conclusion: Allow me to summarise:
Historical content is barely existent
Praise heaped upon the axis countries
Negative historical stereotypes
Why do people love this series? I don't know, but the reason the friend that originally recommended it to me gave (aside from it being "historical") was that the boys were cute... Not really having an eye for things like that, I will neither confirm or deny, but there are definitely some yaoi undertones. Very very strong undertones.

Recommendation: I'm struggling to reccomend this for anyone.... I really do miss the appeal. I guess the fit of for people who A) Enjoy yaoi, B) don't mind derogatory national stereotypes, and c) Know enough history to laugh along at the "historical" references, but either don't understand or don't care about the nuances of each event...

I have friends that really like Hetalia, so I honestly though that I would like it too. However, after watching some episodes, it seems that I and my friends have watched completely different shows.

Contrary to my beliefs, "Hetalia: Axis Powers" is not a satyrical and intelligent comedy about geopolitics,. it's more of a random series of gags with lots of fanservice to please fujoshis. Some gags were funny, but others were excessively nonsensical. And I also didn't understand all those "Chibitalia" segments: I'm sorry if you think they are cute, but for me they were just boring and useless to the ... ( nonexistent) plot.

Unfortunely, I can't say something positive about the art: it seems that Italy has his eyes shut all the time because it would be too difficult for Studio DEEN to animate them. The only interesting concept of the anime is the personification of the countries, but even this concept ended up executed poorly, mostly because of the short duration of the episodes ( 5 minutes).

In general, I think Hetalia had a great premise but wasted it's potential. This show could've been much better if the writers worried more with the plot and less with fanservice.

There is nothing worse than wasted potential...

This is the most disappointing anime I've ever watched. Not kidding, this was a great idea, but the execution was so bad!

Good

The great thing is the idea of the story. The idea of countries being personified and represented by humans is so unique and refreshing. I've rarely seen it done in any media, and I think it's the only one in anime. It could have gone in many directions. It could have been an amazing educational and fun thing that would've merged well together. It could have been a hilarious satire of our ... modern day world. It could have gone in other directions that I can't even think of. They instead chose THIS for the direction to go in. I literally can not. I still rate it a 4 because it's a great plot bunny. I just wish someone else would have had it.

I guess the art is okay. The art itself is cute and there's nothing unpleasant about it. However, the characters look like the same people with different hair and eye color. I understand why America and Canada look similar since they're brothers in this anime and we're neighboring countries (so we look similar to Canadians). Though English should not look like Japan, with the exception of hair and eye color. South Korea looks so similar to Romano that it's not even funny at this point. Seychelles, an African country, looks similar to Taiwan, an Asian country. This is just sad at this point. Now the art itself doesn't look bad, but they look so similar that I had to rate it a 4.

Bad

The sound itself is not memorable at all. It's a 1. Not only that, but I remember thinking that the music sounded unpleasant; I'm going off of my gut feeling of what I remember thinking at the time since I don't even remember what it sounds like. I think of the actual movie and hear some rock beat, but I remember not liking it.

The characters suck. They are basically stereotypes of the countries. Take Italy for example. He's a coward, obsessed with pasta, and acts gay. A good thing would be to give him more depth. Nope! He's as shallow as they come, but he's not the only one. All of the characters are one dimensional. They try to give them depth by going into their history, but it falls flat. Like going back into America's past did nothing for his character, and it didn't even explain it. There was an episode basically going into America's past while he was cleaning. It showed his time with England from when he was "discovered" to the Revolutionary War. You would think those events would have a huge impact on him, right? Wrong. He's still as shallow as ever and nothing really changed. He acts the same way right after and the episode after that. Nothing changed!

Still on characters... None of them even seem like countries. This was the wrong anime for them. They seem like characters from a comedy, school, and harem anime. Like you have the shy one, Japan. You have the serious strong one, Germany. You have the romantic one, France. You have the tsundere, England. You have the lovable idiot, Italy. You have the arrogant rich guy, America. You have the yandere Russia. and more... It doesn't even seem like an anime about countries. I personally think they should have made an anime about a girl attending a school with people from different countries. That's essentially this anime, minus the girl.

Then you have the obvious problems with the characters. It's about countries, yet it's missing the global south. The countries with people of color are white washed. An African country, Seychelles looks white. Turkey and Egypt are extremely pale. Cuba is the best representation and that's tragic.

In general, I rate the characters a 1.

Enjoyment was bad, a 1. I've read some great fanfiction of this anime, and it's the best thing to happen to this anime. I've read stories about historical events, I've read romantic stories, scary stories, and even a mystery. The stories were good, but it's still bad. How can you let fanfiction stories outshine you? I don't even mean like a few good stories, I mean the majority of them!

Not only that, but awkward time period. WW2 is not the best time to make a comedy anime about. That was a bad time period. A genocide happened, millions died, people starved, people were fighting. Not only that, but they shine a positive light on Germany and Japan. I get that people who made the anime live in Japan, but talk about an atrocity. I don't want to go into why this is wrong because I shouldn't have to explain why making an anime about a genocide that puts the main perpetrators in a positive light is bad. It's like making a comedy about slavery, with attractive characters, that puts the slave masters and the south in a positive light.