And just when you thought things couldn’t get more divisive... Hetalia has returned for a new season! ;-D
For some anime fans, Hetalia was a flash in the pan years ago, one of those weird shows with five-minute episodes that you could safely ignore as niche and unimportant. Full of nations anthropomorphized as handsome young men, the target audience was clear, and yes, most of Hetalia’s fans are indeed teenage girls and young women.
Hetalia made a splash when it first came out. The creator, Hidekaz Himaruya, began Hetalia as a web comic series, which was followed by manga books and various anime series.
What made – and makes – Hetalia both hated and loved?
The original series, Hetalia: Axis Powers, set during World War II, features eight main characters: the Axis Powers – Italy, Germany, and Japan, and the Allies – America, England, France, Russia, and China.
Coming from a web comic format, you can see why Hetalia is an anime consisting of short episodes. Each episode is usually set up as a brief skit involving either the three Axis countries or the five Allied countries, and based on WWII events.
I was the copy editor for the first three volumes of the Hetalia manga for Tokyopop. It was one of the most difficult copy editing jobs I ever did for a manga, due to the fact that Himaruya put in a lot of historical footnotes that all had to be fact-checked.
At the beginning of the Hetalia fandom in the U.S., its female fans were notorious for being ultra-rowdy and screamy over Hetalia characters. The volume of fan-made merchandise overwhelmed the artist’s alley at all the anime conventions. For a time, Hetalia was hot in the anime world and it was everywhere.
Hetalia is a comedy series. About World War II. Written and illustrated by a Japanese creator. So... yeah. There were a lot of angry reactions to it at first, with many dismissing it out of hand without ever bothering to read a single web comic, manga volume, or watch a five-minute anime episode.
And that’s a shame, because the truth about Hetalia is that with its humor, its lovable characters, and its poignant moments – it’s about unifying people in the recognition that we’re all human and worthy of regard as such.
I stopped watching Hetalia quite a while back, and didn’t even know the anime had been continuing all this time until I read that Funimation was airing its latest season. So I’ve been catching up on the seasons I missed and enjoying Himaruya’s satirical world again.
On the heels of rediscovering Hetalia, in that odd way the universe has of bringing things of like resonance together when you’re on that path, I recently found a meme that is similar to Hetalia in its strange, humorous appeal.
One day back in 2009, a Polish guy on the Internet created a character image that was a simple ball covered in the Polish flag. Some Russians took up the idea, others got into it, and a whole genre of... something was born.
It’s known as Polandball, due to its origins, or in the alternative as Countryballs. Basically it’s the countries of the world drawn as balls made of national flags with eyes. As with all memes, certain conventions grew around the original idea. The U.K. ball is sometimes shown wearing a top hat and monocle, the America ball often wears sunglasses, the balls speak broken English unless they are English-speaking countries, and so forth.
Countryballs has a huge following on Facebook, Reddit, and other sites. I fell down the rabbit hole on You Tube (You Tube is nothing but rabbit holes, I have concluded). One video led to another, and I found myself spending too much of my time going from Countryballs video to Countryballs video.
The characters are unlicensed and freely available for anyone to use to create artwork, videos, and the like. As you might expect from that, the works made with Countryballs characters range from offensively racist and hatemongering to funny and harmless.
The meme reminds me of Hetalia in that its best use comes when people attempt to unify the audience in understanding other countries and their histories.
An example that genuinely touched me was a video in which modern-day Germanyball is at home one evening when his evil former incarnation Naziball pays him an unexpected visit, with a proposal for him. Note: for an animation of this sort, it has some pretty intense moments.
Title: Countryballs Animated #9 - The Greatest Enemy
Creator: LL
Like Germany, Japan invaded a huge number of its neighboring countries in WWII. When Hetalia first came out, most of the angry reactions came from those countries. I can understand that if Japan came in and killed and brutalized your citizens, a funny anime or manga about WWII probably isn’t what you want to see from a Japanese creator.
I understand it, and respect that opinion, but I also respect a creator’s right to go out on a limb and do the work he or she feels inspired to do. Himaruya received death threats at the beginning, but he weathered that storm, and his work continues.
If you still want to criticize Hetalia for even existing at all, you’re welcome to. But when you consider the virulent racist and misogynist works that exist out there, an anime about how we’re all the same underneath our surface differences is really pretty benign – even if it has to satirize WWII to do it.
Unless a work of art or entertainment spreads lies or incites violence, let it come forth. As simple as it appears, Hetalia has many layers to it, and the underlying intention of its creator shines through. As Germanyball says in the Countryballs video, let’s not forget about love.
