Hetalia Axis Powers Movie: Paint it, White

Axis Powers Hetalia (or Hetalia: Axis Powers, if you prefer) has much to be proud of for itself. Starting off as a webcomic in 2006, it has since spawned a manga, a Drama CD series, an anime series, and now a theatrical film.

The movie makes several departures from the main series, most notably having a storyline as opposed to simple sketches, although a few appear in the beginning to ease the viewers into the movie. This new approach brings a few interesting twists to the Hetalia mold, but unfortunately, the movie tries too hard to stay true to its roots, giving very little new ... experiences to fans in regards to characters and humor.

Aside from knowing that Hetalia is about making cultural stereotypes of several countries into characters representing their respective homes, some of the basic quirks of each "nation-tan," and the fact that it's a comedy, there's not much need for prior knowledge to understand this movie. Being a fan might make you appreciate it more, however.

Story (no spoilers): (5)
The Hetalia movie stylistically deviates from its sketch-comedy roots in the anime for a plot-driven story, and this decision brings a few ups and downs. For one, seeing the characters outside of sketches and finally into a full fledged adventure can be quite a thrill for long time fans. Now, here's where the issues start, and there's (unfortunately) a few of them.

The plot of "Ginmaku Hetalia Axis Powers: Paint it, White" is a fairly typical alien invasion story, complete with faceless invaders, UFOs, and extraterrestials speaking perfect Japanese. Trying to balance plot and humor, the movie never gives the viewers a sense that the characters are ever in any real danger, and the resolution to the entire movie was rather anti-climactic with very little catharsis in the end.

Humor in the movie also took a hit. The focus on plot means that the edutainment aspect of Hetalia loses out to situational comedy, relying on the established character gags to make funny reactions when the time comes. The unfortunate part is that the movie never makes an effort to be funny without the established character gags. Virtually no jokes or gags in the movie haven't been done already in the anime (Canada's invisibility, China's numerous Chinatowns, so on and so forth), even though the setup in the movie is completely different. More on this in the characters section right up ahead.

Characters: (5)
What made the Hetalia series so successful has undoubtedly been its large, quirky cast of characters. Embodiments of cultural stereotypes made for hilarious interactions, especially in the skits. Staying true to the stereotypes, the movie doesn't spend much time developing each character, and that becomes a problem. The characters, completely driven by established quirks, become ridiculously predictable. While this isn't a problem in sketch comedy, watching the same character gags over and over for a full hour becomes a chore. Be prepared to watch the entire movie with England and France constantly beating each other up, even in the most crucial moments, America laughing for 60 straight minutes, Japan struggling to (and failing) to ever raise his voice, Italy running away from everything, Germany yelling at everyone, and so on.

The movie focuses almost entirely on the main players of World War II (Russia, China, America, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Japan) with very little appearances from anyone else aside from small cameos, which was a little disappointing. Iceland is the only new character introduced to the anime here, though he eventually made an appearance in Hetalia: World Series anime as well, so he's probably already well known to anime audiences in the West.

Art and Animation: (8)
Okay, since the last two sections have been a bit critical, let's look at some of the more positive aspects of the movie, shall we? The art-style remains virtually unchanged from the anime series aside from new costumes for the main characters, which means that for the most part, it's pretty good. The animation takes a step up for for the movie incarnation, though it's not particularly noticeable outside of the more fast paced scenes.

Sound: (7)
The voice-acting cast is the same as from the anime, and they still do an excellent job of portraying the personality of each character to a tee. The music takes on a more theatrical, epic sound for the movie as opposed to the usual happy-go-lucky pieces that are used in the anime (though they're still there in the light-hearted parts, don't worry). Whilst the music isn't very memorable, they do a good job of setting the mood, which is the most important part anyhow. With that said, the theme songs "WA! Wa!! World Ondo" by the 8 main seiyuus and "Mein Gott" are songs that will stick in your head for a while.

Enjoyment: (6)
Even with the promise of a plot, the Hetalia movie doesn’t do much to distinct itself from the series it spawned from, and gets repetitive quickly. While this may come as a disappointment for those who sought to see some completely new Hetalia materials, as I did, fans that are a-okay with a little more of the same of what they love will probably find the movie enjoyable. Chances are, that’s most of the fanbase.

If you've never watched Hetalia before, then you are guaranteed not to have the slightest foggiest on what is happening. Even if your Hetalia-crazed best friend is sitting beside you and giving you a running commentary on what is going on. #experience

That aside, this was actually a decent movie - but again, if you've never seen Hetalia before, you won't get a lot of the inside jokes (e.g. best friend is laughing out loud at random pieces of dialogue that you didn't really notice). If you're a fan of Hetalia, then you shouldn't miss out on this.

Overview:

I'm VERY happy to finally write this review of the Axis Powers Hetalia Movie. Why? It means I will never have to review anything else Hetalia related ever again!

Plot:

Wait a minute...does this mean APH actually has a plot?! For the movie adaptation of Hetalia, yes it does! Do they finally do what the series was allegedly created for and finish telling the story of WW2 with our anthropomorphic Yaoi countries? Hell NO! Instead we get a plot about aliens invading Earth. So Hetalia went from being all about WW2 to being about space aliens? (Insert joke about the History Channel here)! The aliens wish ... to end conflict on Earth by erasing all the world's unique cultures and making every nation completely bland and homogeneous. Yes, the Hetalia movie is a long rant against the forces of globalization and the erosion of traditional cultural heritage. (slow clap). It may have been a REALLY obvious allegory that would make even Frank Herbert facepalm, but at least the Hetalia writers tried harder than usual this time. That is to say the Japanese writers tried harder. The American script was written entirely by Funimation voice acting legend Chuck Huber, who just makes gay joke after gay joke. Honestly, at least Chuck appreciates who the fanbase is and WHY the show is actually popular. Chuck gave the fangirls exactly what they wanted, so I can't really blame him.

Art:

The art and animation for the official movie was honestly WAY better than the series. The use of CG was surprisingly well done and we even get a fight scene that looked decent! I'm serious, it looked better and was better choreographed than some of the later episode fights in Bleach!

Entertainment:

"Italy...WHY DID YOU BRING A CAT WITH YOU!!!" Literally about 95% of Hetalia's entertainment is derived from Patrick Seitz's absolutely incessant yelling and over the top German accent. I'm not quite sure why Americans seem to believe that Germans just yell at the top of their lungs all the time. Probably because of that one short, Austrian guy that died 70 years ago. The closest the movie gets to honestly being funny was when the various countries tried to impress the aliens with their own native cultures. America takes them to Vegas, China cooks for them, Russia forces them to watch ballet against their wills, and England nearly causes the annihilation of mankind by trying to give them a sample of his horrible cooking. That was almost funny!


Overall: 3/10

Was it a surprise to anyone that this movie wasn't very good?! The art is an impressive upgrade, the voice acting is fine, and the bare bones of a decent allegory and cultural commentary on globalization are...almost there at times. The latter being sort of like a rejected episode of South Park that was never quite finished. However, the humor is pretty awful and the movie quickly gets tedious and annoying. Honestly, if you want to watch a stupid comedy featuring ethnic stereotypes and horrible German accents, I would recommend Beerfest. At least it is WAY better than Hetalia.

Hetalia is an interesting success story. It began as a webmanga by Himaruya Hidekaz. Due to its popularity, it was adapted into a manga and published by Gentosha. This was quickly followed up by an anime version by Studio Deen and the series is still going strong. It's on it's fourth anime series, had a PSP game, a movie and a ton of merchandise. I may do a proper review of one or more of the series eventually, we'll see. That being said, I do have reservations about the film. The anime themselves are made up of short episodes that are made up of a ... series of short sketches, which may or may not be connected to each other, based on historical and political subjects. With a five minute runtime per episode, that kind of thing can work. However, this film is slightly over an hour and a quarter long. How could it possibly maintain the aesthetic of the series? And even if they do manage, is it really a good idea to do so for that long or does it overstay its welcome? Let's look at Hetalia: Paint it White and find out.

Story:

A group of aliens invades Earth with the intent of turning all of humanity into faceless, bland looking beings like themselves. Our main group of countries, America, England, China, Russia, France, Japan, Deutschland and Italy meet to discuss the situation while Canada is in the room going unnoticed because that's pretty much Canada's schtick in the series. The group immediately starts arguing and goes their separate ways to try to fight the aliens off on their own, or surrender to them in the case of Italy. Shenanigans quickly ensue.

The major problem with the film is that the main plot is really stupid. Which could work for the franchise, but it's also largely devoid of funny moments. There are a few but it's mostly just uninteresting and dull. They also clearly didn't have enough ideas for what to do with it since it's padded with a large amount of short gags. It wouldn't be so bad, except that all the short gags they pad it out with are ones taken directly from the anime proper. They seriously were so devoid of ideas that they couldn't even come up with original jokes for the film. They had to take jokes wholesale from the series. That's pretty inexcusable even if the padding gags are the funniest part of the film.

Characters:

They include all the standard Hetalia characters and give most of the side characters small cameo appearances, at least. The trouble is that they don't really take advantage of them. They have a really zany cast in the main series and yet most of them ultimately do very little and a lot of the character gags they do have are just recycled running gags that you could get by watching the main series.

Art:

The artwork does look like the series and it looks pretty good. My only real issue is with the aliens and their technology. They look really bland and their flying saucers look equally boring, inside and out. I guess that's supposed to provide tension since these dull beings want to replace all of these zany and visually interesting characters with boring carbon copies of themselves, but therein lies the problem. We know that it's not going to happen because it's a comedy and not anything resembling serious. Even if the comedy does fall short. Studio Deen could have at least given us something visually interesting to look at under the circumstances.

Sound:

If you've seen Hetalia then you know what to expect from the actors. The performances veer into over-exaggeration quite a bit but they're all solidly done and they do suit the characters. The music is pretty good as well with the same style that you'd expect if you'd seen the series.

Ho-yay:

Italy and Deutschland get quite a bit of homo-eroticism. To the point where one of the other countries comments on it. There's also a little bit between England and France, playing up to their love/hate relationship.

Final Thoughts:

As someone who generally likes Hetalia, this film is a major disappointment. Most of the jokes that work are directly taken from the main series and used for padding. Trying to have a longer story could have worked, but not with the execution they have here. They simply don't take advantage of the comedic potential of the situation or of the individual characters. What you ultimately get is a stupid, lazy film that doesn't even seem to be trying. My final rating for it is a 3/10. If you're interested in Hetalia, I would recommend watching one of the main series and just skipping the movie since all the really funny bits are in the series proper anyway. I'll continue film festival week tomorrow with a look at Hoshi wo Ou Kodomo.

For me being a fan of Hetalia. I did not enjoy the movie that much.
One reason was that they kept showing past episodes in the movie. Which one, I did not enjoy, second I was more interested in the movie that episodes I've seen.
The story was okay, it didn't seem much there was much thought in it.

I love Hetalia and just recently got into watching it. I sort of binge watched it and obviously finished the whole thing relatively fast since the episodes are so short. Then I found out that there was a movie and I thought, well... This is going to be interesting, since the episodes rarely have actual plots that lasts for longer than half a minute. I feared that the movie would be chaotic, pointless and that it would make no sense.
I was right.
The movie is funny, sort of, but the fact that it's main plot is interrupted by these small sketches from the episodes is just ... SO confusing! I mean, the original show is confusing but you get used to it - that's just how it is; it's not supposed to have a storyline. So when they try and do a movie with an actual plot, but still with the odd 30 second sketches, it's just weird and... makes it incredibly boring to watch. Especially since all those little clips are from the show, which, I assume, most people who watch the movie have already watched, so I wonder, why put in so much old material that has nothing to do with the actual plot of the movie? When you make a movie from a popular franchise, you wanna create NEW material! I mean, why would you pay for a movie that is, what, 40% clips from the episodes?
If they wanted to keep the 30 second sketch thing that the show is known for, I'd been totally fine with just half an hour of random history shit, I mean, kinda like putting together a bunch of the episodes. Totally fine. Or they could've focused on the events of one specific war. Why the made up alien stuff?
I just found that having a plot, does not work for Hetalia. It was not really funny... At all. It was odd.
After all this is said and done, I am a HUGE Hetalia fan, I think the show is hilarious and I'll keep watching it, but if someone asks me ''should I watch the movie'' my answer will be; ''Only if you've watched the whole show and feel like you wanna sit through 1 and a half hours of pointless stuff just for that extra bit of mediocre Hetalia. Then go for it.''
(The dub is great though, as always. You could just watch the movie for Todd Habertalia and Jacque Michael Tatum. That's what I did after the 30 minute mark XP) ((I apologize for the name puns...))

The movie itself had a plot that made no sense making hard to endure, honestly Hetalia is best as short ridiculous 5 minute video's. The movie never really explained why the aliens were there or have much story to them at all. The movie had nothing to do with the rest of the series and was honestly a let down. The art was mediocre and the characters weren't at there finest. The comedy was bland (like any other Hetalia show). The only thing this movie did right were the references. Okay, okay, the cat was good too. This movie is probably not what ... you should watch if you are new to Hetalia, it will probably just discourage you.

OK let me start this off with saying I'am a big Hetalia fan. I think the movie was very good and the plot fitted the general atmosphere of the show with it being random and at points hilarious and providing great entertainment to any fan. A nice touch was that the creators made Tony ( the alien) make an appearance. The ending song of the movie was fantastically done and is one of my favorite Hetalia songs. The movie did a great deal to slightly expand on the characters and kept nicely to the canon. The art is in the style of Axis Powers and ... World Series meaning its not as 'shiny' as Beautiful World and World Twinkle. A slight problem i had with the movie that the main story was cut at moments to make way for reused content from many of the episodes, but this also made way for more characters to make an appearance in the movie. Overall I really enjoyed watching the movie as it was a fun expansion to the Hetalia universe and a great way to just a laugh at the anime I like as the movie was not historically based.

Ok,So with this movie{Which i havent watched for a few months may i add,im a lil rusty}was one that i actually enjoyed.

I liked how the story may not have been the most original one used but they made it into their own and made it enjoyable.The art style like always was unique,clever and pleasing to the eye.The sound is something i unfortunately cant remember to well but i think it was decent.The characters included were very good for me because i love them all in the end,apart from the few who are a bit off to me{ahem france ahem}.

Overall i found it very enjoyable but ... the story could have been amped up a little i guess?

Being a Hetalia fan, I was super excited when I found the subbed version of this movie. I was expecting so much of it, and I have to admit I was a tad disappointed with what I got.
By no means am I saying it was bad - it wasn't. As expected, it's super funny and wonderfully animated, so I've got nothing to complain about there. However, I feel like the plot could've been better.
Now, not spoiling anything, I think it started pretty well, but the ending seemed kind of rushed. I didn't quite buy how easily such a big issue was resolved.

I recommend this to ... all Hetalia fans, of course, but I also suggest that you don't start watching with high expectations. I, who started watching it expecting a funny, kick-ass action movie, ended less happy with the movie than I'd be if I hadn't been expecting so much out of it.

The hetalia movie, despite being a comedy anime directed at fujoshi with poor attention spans, is actually a very solid metaphor for the dangers of white supremacy, hence the title "Paint it White". The film tackles historical elements of each country's past and ties it in with very tasteful satirical commentary of both the axis powers and allies as they unify and tackle the issue of racism and white supremacy at a global scale. Perhaps presenting us with a utopia that could never be, Hetalia: Paint it White is truly a call to arms. Through queer baiting and pasta-based humor, I believe this film has ... successfully radicalised young audiences to aid the revolution against white supremacy.

As you can see, it would be almost criminal to simply reduce this down to "gay anime human poland balls fighting aliens". We must call it what it is: one of the most important weapons we have against fighting organisations like the KKK or groups such as the neo-nazis

Hetalia Axis Powers: Paint it, White is a movie based upon the webcomic/manga/anime Hetalia Axis Powers.

While the main series mostly takes place around the time period of World War II (with occasional episodes/scenes taking place before that and in the present), Paint it, White takes place during the present day.

Overall, the plot of the movie is what would be expected from this series, silly and fun for laughs. The animation of the movie is relatively the same as the animation from the television series. Normally, this would be a bad thing, but seeing as the movie has random cuts to the series, it actually isn't.

The ... only bad things about the movie are the fact that about 20 minutes of it are footage from the series and the climax takes place upon the infamous island from the TV series as well.

Overall, Hetalia Axis Powers: Paint it, White is a very funny movie and if you're a fan of Hetalia, then you should definitely watch it.

Movie? This counts as a movie?!?! Well, get the bleach, cause I'm gonna need it! This movie is an absolute disgrace to such an amazing anime, I could get more entertainment out of staring at a globe for 2 hours! All the characters I've come to know and love have been dumbed down and made annoying at an offensive level (like China, America...) and the characters I already despised with every part of me are...somehow even worse! (like England, Italy...) The plot made no coherent sense and the random clips didn't help, you're just taunting the veiwer with the fact that they could be watching ... the anime, which is much better! And the absolute worst thing about this is...France! Now, France, in the anime is an amazing character who just wants everyone to be loved and wants to be loved back, and if he can't get that, he's perfectly fine knowing others can be loved. In the movie, he is some vain assfuck who doesn't care about anything but himself and his image. And my favorite character, China, isn't much better but that would take too long to say why. All in all, this movie sucked so much dick