Hetalia World Series

Overview:

Cue the squealing fangirls! Today I review the 2nd part of Hetalia.


Story and characters: 3/10

As a huge fan of history, I really liked the concept of Hetalia with people representing countries and felt it was a MASSIVE waste of potential. It has a lot of comedy potential because countries typically act only in rational self interest and often commit horrible deeds that they try to rationalize. If countries were people, almost all of them would be complete fucking assholes! A few notable exceptions would be China and India, who abuse themselves but haven't really been too bad towards anyone else...at least relative to other countries.

What ... problems did I have with Hetalia? Firstly, Hetalia doesn't even attempt to teach history along with the cheap laughs. It is 100% slapstick, fanservice for the girls, and cheap ethnic stereotypes. Although I enjoyed getting to see what stereotypes Japan has about other nations, since they are often quite different from those we have here in the US. The only problem is that the mangaka who created the original web comic never seemed to have a very good grasp of history. Some of the characterizations are simply, objectively wrong. For example, Germany is a loveable jerk who is portrayed as always being an asshole, but he is always just a mild asshole. Russia is portrayed as a schizophrenic psychopath who switches between sickeningly sweet to a psychotic killing machine and back without warning or reason. The writer basically swapped the 2 characters. Russia isn't sweet or nice to its neighbors...EVER! Russia is the consistent, lovable asshole. On the other hand, German civilization like The Holy Roman Empire, Prussia, and the 1st German Empire had the cleanest human rights record in Europe for 400 years and were the nicest, warmest, and greatest neighbors anyone could have... then suddenly went on a killing rampage that would make the fucking Mongols blush, killed 17 million civilians in cold blood, and actually formulated a plan to kill 80% of Eastern Europe or just over 100 million people following a German victory and enslave the other 20%. Germany even meticulously planned how they would slaughter some of their own allies like the Latvians, who killed their entire Jewish population without even being told to do so, just to impress the Germans and lick the Germans' boots. Someone bows down to you, worships you like a God, and you callously slaughter them anyways? Who the FUCK does that shit!? The same country that interbreeds with a neighbor for hundreds of years, then out of the fucking blue declares them sub-human and burns down their capital block by block until NOTHING of historical value is left standing and over 500,000 civilians are dead and bloody in the streets. Germany is NOT consistent! Germany is absolutely insane, completely unpredictable, and overwhelmingly horrifying. Just like Russia's character from Hetalia. How could the mangaka have fucked up this bad?! Also America needs to be WAY more of an asshole, as does England and Japan.

If the characters aren't going to reflect anything more than cheap stereotypes, why not have more characters? Where the hell is India? Iran? Brazil? Arabia? Korea? a single African country? I want to see America laugh at France for getting his ass kicked by Haiti and Mexico, or laugh at Italy for getting totally PWNED by Ethiopia! Then Italy and France laugh at America getting beat up by Vietnam, forcing America to remind France that he already lost a war to Vietnam and unlike America actually had a conventional war with large scale battles and simply got their asses whooped on the battlefield outright! At the massive conventional battle of Dien Bien Phu the French got got their asses kicked so hard they even lost in terms of kill ratio to an army of poorly armed, almost completely untrained peasants and farmers. Of course Italy at the battle of Adwa earns the record for the most incompetent, disgraceful performance in the history of warfare! It was as if the Italian general read Sun Tzu's Art of War and decided to violate EVERY fundamental principle of warfare! Italy lost the war against Ethiopia by losing a battle that in computer games like Civilization wouldn't even be possible to lose! They had an army of well trained soldiers with repeat fire rifles, cannons, and fucking machine guns and managed to get their shit WREKT by an Ethiopian army with 25% of soldiers possessing rifles and 75% with fucking spears! Let me repeat that, an army with fucking MACHINE GUNS, lost to an army with STONE AGE technology. I need to start quoting from the Jim Rome "Lions go 0-16" speech! "congrats guys, you did it. They said it wasn't possible but you did it! You manned down, you completely fell apart, and you completed the dream! My dream! The ultimate imperfection. Man's game gentlemen! Man's game! None of you fucking losers will ever have to buy a beer in my town ever again! Its all on me!"

Art and music: 2/10

The art is heavily moe and the animation is extremely basic. The music and incredibly annoying and redundant. I don't have too much more to say.

Entertainment: 5/10

Where the Hell did Hetalia get the points for a 4/10 score? Some of the jokes are so stupid they are actually funny. Also the English dub is amazing and features some of the best voice actors working in the US. Patrick Seitz and his wild screaming in a cheesy German accent took this series to the end zone. He put the whole fucking team on his back and he delivered! God bless that man!

Overall: 4/10

Although a massive waste of potential both in terms of comedy, actually teaching history, and pretty much everything else...it still had some cheap laughs and had excellent voice work. That was enough to give it about a 3.5 in my book and I round up.