And with that we reach the end of Hetalia Axis Powers. Yeah right, you know what’s going to happen now right? The new season will be listed as a separate anime on MAL and score far higher than the first season because obviously those that didn’t like it aren’t watching it anymore and therefore won’t rate it. Just look at Major or Kara no Kyokai for some of the more extreme examples of this phenomenon.
But enough of that, let’s just finish reviewing this episode first.
In one episode, Hetalia managed to restore my faith in this series. That’s the problem with Hetalia. I don’t think i’ve ever seen an anime as inconsistent as Hetalia. It jumps from painful laughter to chibitalia downright boring. This episode was a classic example of good Hetalia. Playing off the old idea of Englands obsession with evil magic and how it has no effect on Russia. On that note, why the hell doesn’t Russia show up more? The guy appears to be the fangirls favourite and yet he’s had about 4 jokes in the entire series, every single one being hilarious. This episode also showed how the America’s storage cleaning segment actually worked to a certain extent. England’s embarrassing drunken rant was made all the better once you’ve seen those earlier episodes.
As for what to expect in the next season? Unfortunately it sounds like more chibitalia. Prussia apparently shows up a lot more, exclusively in the chibitalia section. This includes the branched out Liechstenstein/Switzerland type stories. Of course I’m not sure why I’m trying to guess what’s in the next season. Most people who watch this anime seem to be Hetalia fangirls who already love the manga. Probably the most enlightening comment I got over the course of blogging Hetalia was when I had finally reached the end of my tether with chibitalia in episode 12 and criticized the show heavily (unsurprisingly, this was also the most commented post). I then got this
No one wants to know it’s flaws. We want to know what we agree is great about it. That’s the point of being a fangirl, isn’t it?
At it’s peak, Hetalia can stand proud next to the greatest comedy anime of all time.Germanys visit to the shop was probably the highlight of the entire anime, a sequence that left me gasping for breath. But when it came to it’s low points, Hetalia was dire and unwatchable. As I’ve said earlier, I’ve never seen an anime fluctuate as much as Hetalia does. But the fangirls seem to be able to accept the flaws easier than I can.
Studio Deen prove they are the masters of re-using old content
I enjoyed Hetalia, heck I still enjoy Hetalia, the thing is still airing next week. I’ll also continue blogging the thing because it’s only 5 minutes per episode. And I do enjoy blogging this anime as well. So cheers to all you folk who have read my posts (or if you just randomly showed up for this one) and I hope to hear from you lot next season too. We have such a long wait 🙂
blindability
Brian
Poro
jGLZA
Loba
TeamZer0
thaivuN
Bokutachi no BLOG 
No… the other skits with the other “little nations” that you call chibitalia, aren’t the same. They don’t rely in moe on ecchiness like Chibitalia, or with just moe (Which I hate and the Liechenstein one is the only story I didn’t like because of that.)They other have a looooot more comedy than that one, and are a lot shorter, except for the little America one, but almost all of the characters are adults except him, so it doesn’t rely on the cute factor.
Also yes, we NEED more Ivan.
Russia, I mean…he has at least 6 strips were he is the main char.; come on…
Also France, the fangirls favorite it seems, too bad Studio Deen will probably never animate his hilarious strips of him going naked and rampaging to the street and molesting the other countries…
Yeah, it’s even weirder than you imagine.
Actually there are dozens of hilarious (and actually principal…)characters than haven’t been introduced.
Sorry for my lame english, it’s not my first language.
…
Prussia BETTER SHOW UP MORE THAN IN JUST CHIBITALIA!!
I mean, I have a drop dead love of ShoutaPrussia, but I need actual Substinance and something that’s not been put through a fuzzy filter!
As for things I’d like to see animated, deffinitly the rest of Liechtenstiens Journal of Swiss Dopiness, the Boun San Valentino strips, and DEFFINITLY France’s Christmas strips. But they probably wont, seeing as Austria strips naked in public, which means I wont get my shirtless Prussia! D:<
As for the episode itself, I was watching this morning RAW, and I… I laughed so hard, I was crying, I seriously cried, haha, lame anit it?
Just…
RUSSIA IS MORE EVIL THAN THE CHAIR! But the joke was lost on people, because Russia wasnt explained. At all. They could atleast animated the Bloody Sunday strip
And at the end, England pops up Austria-Style in the water with the chair, and Russia makes it explode AGAIN!
@luffy
Nah, Russia evilness was made pretty clear from the beginning, that was not a hard joke to get at all. BTW the episode is out subbed, gg have always been fast at subbing Hetalia.
And as for chibitalia, if it stays as crap as it was this season in the new season, I’ll just skip those parts of the episodes. I started doing that towards the end of this season
Before I start, I must prewarn that I have just recently started reading your Hetalia blog, so some parts of this are kind of smooshed together…..
Firstly, and I know this will sound really stupid, but before I got into Hetalia, I did some preresearch about the characters, which help with some of the jokes on the stereotypes….
Anyways, I wanted to applaude you on the fact that you not only talk about the good points in the Hetalia anime, but also the flaws and downfalls. I personally like to see both in a review.
I must say that I was fairly dissapointed with how the end of the season went, I had expected them to finish up the main storyline from the WebComic by the end of this season, and anyone who has read the comic should know what I’m talking about. I know that Germany made on referance to it in episode….augh..can’t remember number, sorry, and I thought they would lead on from that….and that was before they started the whole Liechenstein/Switzerland (spelling?) stuff…….I was surprised about that because that was the very last section in the comic, and it was at tops like maybe 3-5 pages long? I mean, that’s when Russia got his waterpipe, damnit!
Also, I really wish they hadn’t done Chibitalia……cute, but boring, in my opinion. Even if I am fangirlish, I really didn’t enjoy it….
Another thing I wanted to say is that I was very dissapointed with the reuse of the scenes……Maybe once, but the whole China/Wok thing kind of ticked me off, because that would be the 3rd time I believe they’ve used that scene……I half expected Grampa Rome to come in and start singing again like he did in Episode 16, I believe…..
Ah…I had a question, if you don’t mind….
Do you know if they are directly starting Season 2 next week around the same time? Or are they planning on having a gap inbetween seasons?
Thank you for writing these blogs, I really enjoy reading them…..let’s hope that they have more Russia in the next season and less Chibitalia…. once again I apologize to how long this is….
@Humanity_cat
Ah, a nice long comment, I love reading them 🙂
First off, as far as I can tell, the new season starts immediatly. No break whatsoever. Remember it’s an internet release so they aren’t held back by TV schedules.
I eventually did some research into the characters once I realised that Studio Deen assumed that you were already a rabid fangirl of the series. But all that really did was spoil some of the jokes, such as the Sealand gag.
But it can happen in an anime adaption that a short part of an original can take ages in the anime. Taking two more recent examples, Endless Eight in Haruhi is about 35 pages in the book ytet has taken forever. On the other hand, the new FMA took critisism for going through the first few chapters too quickly. Thats why I always prefer to watch the anime first and maybe pick up the manga later, which I’ll probably do with Hetalia someday.
BTW I think I know the end of the chibitalia that you are talking about and I completely agree that they shouldn’t have made it so cute. But if you read many other fangirl blogs like metanorn, they seemed to love the overwhelming cuteness of chibitalia.
there’s a farely long comment foryou to read too! And don’t worry, nobody spells Liechstenstein right
I do ;D
I made sure to memorise the spelling, actually :3
Liech-Ten-Stien
Was pretty easy after that *shrug*
Quick backstory, I was looking for Hetalia pictures, and blog after blog had small out of focus ones, and I ended up finding yours with the big crisp pictures(The whole Hetalia part of my hard drive is pretty much made up of your screencaps, and when I check the blog, I always think in the back of my mind “I wonder who he screencapped~”)
… That’s not weird, is it?
@luffy
You would probably to horrified if you knew that I delete a lot of the screencaps I take. I took about 8 for this episode and only posted 3…
But its actually fucking brilliant to know that people actually think of me when they watch Hetalia! I’ll still blog the second season too so you can still get your screencaps 🙂
Plus thanks to your comment, I probably will never spell Liechtenstein wrong again. What a useful ability, I should put it on my CV
I also(sickingly so) have all of their human names memorised, exept for the odd one here and ther ethat I’m too lazy to learn how to spell becase I know I’ll never use it.
As for the pictures… I guess that’s just incentivce to take more screenshots(Of Prussia) now isnt it?” ;D
Thanks for answering my question 🙂 Ah, so I was missing the T….Liech-Ten-Stien…
Hurrhurr….well hopefully they will continue with the mainplot in season two…….Russia isn’t complete without his pipe!
I’m hoping that they’ll show Russia more later on……as you’ve said earlier, Russia is definitely a big fangirl character (he’s even my favorite 😉 ), and you’d think they would have tuned into that…….hurr…..but I guess if they were trying to follow the webcomic, he didn’t show up a whole lot…….
Unfortunatly I think that’s why they’re bringing it back (Chibitalia), but they may have planned out the whole anime before hand as well…..I found the first few episodes kind of cute, but it was dragged out too long for me and it took up like 3/4 of the anime, damnit!
I also wish they would lengthen the episodes….with the theme songs lasting about a minute together and chibitalia you don’t have a lot left…..
(this is probably long again….)
Plot *snorts*
I just wish that it could gain some level ground, I mean, This episode nearly made me accidentially smash my head against a wooden desk from laughing so hard, but some of the other episodes… XP
As for Liechtenstien, For some reason, I really want cute little Gender-confused Hungary in, I so totally so. I also want more CANADA!
By the way Scamp, if you want, I have the strips in my favorites, I could always give them to you, if you want to like, get into the strips.. or something ._.
On an unrelated sidenote:
Nice Gundam 00 header! I just got finished watching episodes 7 and 8 on Syfy(I tend to watch things dubbed if I can, No use watching subs if you’ve got a pefectly acceptable dub right infront of you, ya know).
@humanity_cat
Shorter episodes work for pure-comedy anime like Hetalia, although maybe 10 minutes might have worked better. Its only flaw lies when they drag out a chibitalia sketch which takes up an entire episode but that only happenned once.
@luffy
Thanks for the strips but I’ll wait until I’ve finished the anime before I read them. I’ve always preffered to go to a manga series after the anime.
AS for the Gundam 00 banner, Brian and Loba were huge Gundam fanatics. Plus we got a bizzilion hits from a Gundam 00 post so it was fitting that it should be the banner.
Yes, that does make sense….
And it would be nice to see more Hungary, or Belarus……hurr…
Glad I’m not the only one who grinned ear to ear during this episode… watching it made me remember why I picked up this show in the first place (besides doing it to tick off a bunch of Koreans xD) This was Hetalia comedy like it was created for, and I’m really happy that all these strips were animated. I really do love England and America, and there constant bickering and love/hate kind of friendship (if one could call it that) is very intertaining to watch. I miss this~~
I think that the reason for the inconsistancy is that Hetalia keeps jumping around. The manga is farely consistant (abeit it has more BL insinuations) but the manga has longer stories with several mini-jokes to go along with it. The anime just refuses to do that so all you get is a mini-joke that was intended for an intire story, so often it’s just not that funny. Also, Ivan (I’m sorry, Russia) is in much more of the manga so we get lots of lovely jokes from him. Plus, South Korea got left out, and although his county the cause of much drama for this show, his character is really, really funny (and chalked full of racist jokes, which brings us back to the drama xD). But once again, if they would animate the big stories (like they did storage cleaning) it would be so much better… minus the previews. There are several longer, very HILARIOUS stories in Hetalia left that I would just LOVE to see animated, so we’ll just have to see what happens 🙂
Oh, just checked the preview on the official website… Russia is in the new episode! xD
@kunikochan
I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see more time spent on the longer stories(?) in the second season. Unfortunately I also wouldn’t be surpised to see more of the BL stuff towards the very end of the anime, as a sort of farewell gift (yeah, I’m not really looking forward to that).
As I said, I won’t pick up the manga until I finished the anime but one thing I’m really looking forward to is seeing exactly what all the fuss over Korea actually was.
More Russia = Win 🙂
Korea is in “A German Simulater” and we lost that, unfortunitly. The entire time, he’s rolling around on the ground in circles XD
Hmmm, Wait. Tomarrow(Today where I live) the new season starts. HOWEVER, When looking for the new episode on Veoh, what do you think It’d be labeled under? Hetalia Season 2 episode 1? Hetalia 2 episode 1? Hetalia episode 27?
Ah. *raises hand* I stumbled upon your page just now.
Nice to meet you.
I read this review and i’d have to say, I’m impressed. It’s true, a lot of people don’t write about the negative sides of Hetalia, and let’s face it, every anime has flaws.
I like you views, even if they contrast mine. It gives me stuff to think about. Throwing a few ‘well, if you think about it..’s or a couple of ‘now that you mention it..’s really makes me able to appreciate APH more.
So, thanks for posting both sides to your review!
As far as chibitalia goes, I didn’t mind it much. Maybe I’m just not bored by scenes of nothing? I dunno.
Since I read the webcomic (and most of the extras) I found it pretty funny in most cases. Although I definitely think Busby’s chair cold have been a little more… I dunno, but it’s lacking something.
Apparently Koreans were upset that Hetalia’s Korea made fun of their country or something. Pfft. APH makes fun of EVERYONE’s country, not just yours.
(In response to Luffy)
You know, I was wondering that too…..so I’ve just been searching “Hetalia Axis Powers” on the anime site I watch them on (who’s name is escaping my mind right now….)……I usually just search “Hetalia Episode 26” or whatever episode we’re on, and when I did that, one of the suggestsion on Google was Hetalia Episode 27, but unfortunatly that didn’t come up very sucessful……-__- So I’m not sure yet…..I haven’t seen the new season yet……I don’t think it’s out yet, unfortunatly.
NO NO, IT’S OUT!!
I just watched the subs this morning when I woke up. It’s on http://www.veoh.com
The episode is soooooooo funny, but leaves a bad tastes near the end. Doiiitssuuuuu ;-;
Ahhh! Thanks for informing me!
“Or just randomly showed up for this one”
LoL. That’s me. There really needs to be more Russia. I misses him so.