ヘタリア/ Hetalia

When did I first hear about Hetalia? Hrmm, a few months before the anime. I enjoyed a web-manga called Afughanisu-tan, and after it was all translated people online compared it to Hetalia. A few girls I know started talking about it, saying it was adorable, and then all of a sudden it was an anime, it was dubbed…it was huge.

Hetalia personifies the countries of the world, almost all of them as pretty or cute boys. A few countries are girls, but…well, none feature very prominently. The first season concentrates on the Second World War and the relationship between the Axis powers, while the second is more general, mostly twentieth century but with a bit of variety.

Its success is astronomical. Teenage girls in particular latched onto the characters and the numerous homoerotic hints and begun to draw, write and enact all sorts of perverted things. There can be few anime fans now who have not heard of Hetalia, and as with many popular things, it now attracts a lot of hatred. Much of this is directed only at the fans, who tend to be loud and obnoxious, and do things like have pictures taken doing Nazi salutes on Passover, or disrupt veterans' parades and drag flags around indifferent to whether they go on the floor or not.

This doesn’t bother me, but a lot does. I mostly get frustrated at how it just doesn’t seem like the writer really understands any of the history he is writing about (and yes, the mangaka is male). I accept that Hetalia is supposed to be about stereotypes, and how a Japanese person (presumably also influenced by life in America, where he spent three years) sees other nationalities - often very differently from how we do in England - but too much just doesn’t make sense. How is carefree, stupid Italy compatible with the Fascists and Mussolini? (There are occasional references to orders from ‘bosses’ but I’m talking about national characteristics.) Why is only Italy (and right at the end Germany) split into two separate parts, when other countries have at least that much difference between their different regions? Does he know about Finland and Russia’s war? Does he know about Italy’s campaigns in Africa, a continent almost entirely ignored here? The invasion of Libya and slaughter of the Bedouins? Does he think that the Holy Roman Empire was around at a time that it could interact with anything resembling modern Italy? Does he think that ‘Splendid Isolation’ meant the UK was politically alone…during the British Empire when it ruled half the globe (as opposed to isolated from the great powers of Europe)? Does he really think that Japan’s arguments in favour of whaling are eloquent and persuasive (even put in the mouth of a cat)? There were just too many little irritating mistakes or misinterpretations: I’d probably have liked Hetalia if it just stuck to stereotypes interacting and funny little nuggets of information, but superfluous and inaccurate bases for plot points just irritated me too much.

The only part that worked really well was Sealand. Not just because he was adorable, but because Sealand is just so simple and easy to understand, as well as fundamentally funny, so he couldn’t really get things wrong.

Otherwise, well, episodes were only five minutes long, and most of the humour was just character-based – if repetitive – so there was no great horror to watching it. But too much irritated me to recommend Hetalia.

I bet the feature-length film will be terrible, too.