Upon watching the first 2 episodes of Hetalia: Axis Powers....

[laceblade]

This is what people have been excited about for the last couple of years? Seriously, what the hell?


Watch it streaming at Funimation.com!

Comments

[littlebutfierce]

Oh man, I have totally been meaning to make a post asking people if this series has anything redeemable about it--I've never watched it, just seen the squee (some of it problematic--like those Hetalia cosplayers throwing the freakin' Sig Heil at Anime Boston) &... been puzzled. The only reason I'd consider watching it is cuz they actually have a Finland character. Finland never shows up in anything! (though randomly in Darker than Black there is a Finnish character)

I'm gonna check back on the comments to this post for sure!

[mystickeeper.livejournal.com]

I mean.....each episode is only 5 minutes long, so you almost might as well try it.

But yes, each character is a personified country, complete with stereotypes.

[littlebutfierce]

Yeah... I can't watch Funimation's site from here (damn them), but I'm sure I could find it elsewhere. I just... even though it's only 5 minutes I'm still not convinced it's a waste of my 5 minutes, heh.

I'd read some of the character descriptions on TV Tropes (which is how I found out about the Finland character) & was just cringing. I just can't imagine there's a way to do that show w/o making it offensive.

I remember finding a post via my network about Hetalia cosplayers at a con right after that plane crash that killed so many Polish politicians, & the person who wrote the post (also a cosplayer) apparently made some sympathetic comment to a Poland cosplayer, which she answered in character (which, iirc, was a kind of ditzy, laid-back character? Don't remember exactly) &... ugh. Just seemed wrong.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

It's always sounded very, very dull to me,and the stereotyping I've heard about doesn't help.

[mystickeeper.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I can't really figure out what the attraction is.

As I said in my post, the idea of slash pairings is kind of hilarious, but the source material itself = :[

It seems that there is a regular "chibitalia" segment, so maybe it's the ridiculous character designs? Maybe I'll look for review posts to figure out what it is that people like.

[berzerker-prime.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

I've been trying to figure this out, too, because I see nothing about this show that is amusing in any way. Whose dumb-ass idea was it to go "hey, let's take one of the bloodiest and most shameful chapters in Human history and make light of it! Genocide? Yeah, that's hi-lar-i-ous! Oh! And let's be sure to make it's uber-cute because war being bloody is just gross and stuff."

And none of that even touches on the blatant racism inherent in the very concept of the show and every single character in it. I seriously want to go up to the next Germany cosplayer I see and ask them why they hate Jews?

[tigrin.livejournal.com]

What I want to know is why are all the countries bishounen. :T

I don't know, the original Hetalia comic strips were kind of funny, but about as funny as anything can be that bases its humor off of stereotypes. I'm pretty sure the only reason anyone likes Hetalia is to slash the characters. I saw a magazine at Mitsuwa today that had Japan and England touching their fingers together in an O shape for no particular reason I can guess... there were a number of magazines with Hetalia's Japan character... I guess Japan doesn't mind.

[nylorac15.livejournal.com]

Yeeeaaah, a good friend of mine is one of those fangirl squee-ers. She showed us an episode or two last spring. I don't get it.