Review for Hetalia Axis Powers: Complete Series 1

Introduction

The national stereotype as a form of humour isn't exactly refined or highbrow. It's a basic form of us versus them humour, which when taken to extremes can be very politically incorrect, or even racist. But done with style, care and a little heart it can prove to be very funny as well, and British comedy at its finest has national stereotyping down to a fine art. Let's face it; we have a head start, in a United Kingdom consisting of four nations to begin with, and with a whole gaggle of variously antagonistic neighbours across the channel to choose from. You almost have to feel sorry for the poor colonials, who only have the Mexicans and the Canadians to ridicule. So when I heard that Hetalia Axis Powers was going to be released in the UK, I was a little nonplussed. It's like selling steel to Sheffield, coal to Newcastle, Burberry to Essex. But Hetalia Axis Powers is Japan's take on national stereotyping, taken to a literal extreme. This series of anime shorts has the various nations of the world, anthropomorphised and taking on their nation's particular traits. England for example is a tea drinker who can't cook. As the name suggests, it focuses on Italy, a weak-willed cowardly layabout who dreams of pasta, and is a woeful disappointment compared to his grandfather the Roman Empire. It's a series of 5-minute shorts, based on a web-manga that was adapted to television. This is the first series of Hetalia Axis Powers, with the second due early next year. No doubt a third series, Hetalia World Series will follow soon after, and maybe even the feature film! With all this Hetalia out there, it's got to be good, right?


It's World War II, and Germany is all set to conquer the world. The bad news is that Italy is his ally again. The good news is that this time he has Japan on his side. With his skills at discipline and efficiency, and Japan's skills at miniaturisation and inscrutability, they surely can't go wrong. And Italy has come with a ready supply of white flags. But on the other side there are the Allies, with youthful America dominating proceedings, much to the consternation of England, and of course France annoys everyone, while friendly amiable Russia is secretly planning to stab everyone in the back. These personifications of nationhood relive key events through world history in Hetalia Axis Powers, while the Chibitalia segments tell a more ancient story, when little baby Italy was yet to grow up, and wound up working as a cleaner for Austria.

All 26 episodes of the first series are presented on this disc from Manga Entertainment.

Picture

The 1.78:1 anamorphic transfer is an odd bit of betwixt and between. The episode content itself is a native PAL transfer, and you'll find that the disc's runtime is five minutes shorter than the US disc due to PAL speedup. Given that this is a cheap and cheerful animation, bright, colourful and simplistic, it doesn't make too much of a difference. But still the absence of ghosting, judder and blended frames is a positive, and the anime flows very naturally in this form. Having said that, for some bizarre reason, all of the closing sequences are NTSC-PAL conversions, where you will see all the ghosting and blended frames that are thankfully absent from the episodes. It's an absolutely bizarre way of doing things, and the only reason I can think of is to avoid the fast paced and high-pitched closing theme sounding even more helium induced.


The image is clear and colourful throughout, with a hint of moiré on finer detail. It is quite soft though, which appears to be a creative choice to reflect the quite childlike and friendly character designs, and the straightforward animation. The Chibitalia segments have excessively cutesy characters, with more of a paint-brushed feel to them. Generally the animation is good enough for a set-up, punch-line format, and doesn't need to do more.

Sound

You have a choice between a rather unnecessary DD 5.1 English track and a DD 2.0 Stereo Japanese track, with optional subtitles and signs. I say the English surround is unnecessary as this isn't the most aurally significant of anime, just an ephemeral gag-fest. I tried the Japanese track first, and found it to be acceptable if unremarkable. I don't have enough experience of Japanese to know if there are regional accents at play, but the voices are well defined and suit their characters. I then gave the show a shot with the English dub, expecting a plethora of accents to go with the national stereotyping, and hopefully bring out the comedy more. Accents there are, but quality isn't always apparent, and neither is clarity. I wound up leaving the subtitles on, as some of the accents were impenetrable. That didn't help much as there were different jokes being used in the English and Japanese versions of the show. The subtitles were clear and error free, and you'll be using the pause button, as there is a lot of on-screen text that is translated and just flies by.

Extras

When Hetalia Axis Powers' first season was released in Japan, it was split across 4 discs. It doesn't seem particularly economic, although the Japanese did get extra features to make things worthwhile. This DVD collects all 26 of the episodes, and it manages to find room for some of the Japanese extras, and adds some more of its own.

What we have here from the Japanese releases are the Show Comments from director Bob Shirohata. These are presented in three parts, taken from Japanese volumes 2, 3, and 4, running to 10, 14 and 10½ minutes respectively. In it he talks about the episodes on those discs, with reference to clips and the show's storyboards.

In Japanese volume 1, he spoke specifically about the show's ending sequence, and how that came together with the music and inspiration from the original manga. This featurette is presented here and lasts 7 minutes.


Funimation provide commentaries for some of the episodes. Patrick Seitz (Germany) and Todd Haberkorn (Italy) speak on episode 2. Eric Vale (USA) and Jerry Jewell (Russia) talk over episode 9. J. Michael Tatum (France) and Scott Freeman (Britain) comment on episode 12. Finally Clarine Harp (China) and Christopher Bevins (Japan) accompany episode 16. All of the commentaries barely have enough time to get beyond the silliness stage and are fine for a giggle, but not very informative.

The Hidden History within Hetalia is a far more useful addition, as it offers 14 text pages of information detailing the real history that is referenced in some of the episodes.

Finally there is the textless closing.

Conclusion

I've been dithering and procrastinating for most of the day, trying to figure out how to break the bad news. Nothing comes to mind, so I'll just come out and say it. I didn't find Hetalia Axis Powers funny. In fact, most of it felt like a humour vacuum, and any goodwill and tendency I had to chuckle gradually faded. Of course funny is in the eye of the beholder, and what I might find as entertaining as laser eye surgery, without the consequent clarity of vision, other may find so hilarious that they will need to change their underpants, twice. So as with any comedy, your mileage may definitely vary. I have more than a few bones to pick with Hetalia Axis Powers, the biggest being that it doesn't exactly excel at using national stereotypes as a source of comedy. What it does do is find a quirk of nationality and beat it to death repeatedly as its sole source of punch lines. Hence England is bad at cooking, America wants to be the hero, Italy is always surrendering, China keeps building Chinatown wherever he goes, and Russia is psychopathic. There needs to be more than just surface value to get the humour working, there has to be some underlying nuance and observation as well. Otherwise it's just petty bigotry and name calling.


Then again, Hetalia Axis Powers doesn't really give itself enough scope to go deeper into these national characterisations. Each episode is about four minutes long, and consists of around three vignettes, or story arcs per episode, all of which stretch across the series and gradually develop. Four minutes is hardly enough time to get past the petty name-calling stage, and with the basic element of this sort of sketch comedy repetition, you'll have to get through around five or six episodes of Italy's love for pasta before you learn anything else about the character.


The other problem is regionalisation. Every country's set of national stereotypes and pre-established prejudices about other nations is often very different. It's one reason why some of the Japanese conceptions of other nations' idiosyncrasies occasionally flew over my head. The Japanese perception of the Swiss has no cuckoo clocks or chocolate in it, but much stinginess. I thought the US dub might make a difference, as often anime comedies get a significant translation to make them work in another language, and they may even get completely different jokes. So now the British have bad teeth as well as being bad cooks, and all foreigners speak in the same, strange but indefinable accent, except Japan who sounds like Kim Jong Il from Team America. What may have helped Hetalia is if it got a completely different dub in the UK, so that we could have given it the wit and humour that would appeal more to British audiences, and infuse it with our own prejudices about the world, and the Belgians.


Still, there are positives to Hetalia Axis Powers, and I do like the way that it incorporates actual history into its little drama of national personification. There are constant references to actual historical events and treaties, all of which inform how the characters relate to each other. I also found that as the series developed, I began to smirk more and more. A lot of that has to do with the repetition of sketch comedy. There comes a point where it just wears you down. But then again, as the characters were developed, we stepped away from the World War scenario, and began looking at other moments in history, and other relationships. England's problems with his upstart kid brother America was one plot thread that was interesting, as was a similar thread with China and his little brother Japan. By the time we were introduced to Switzerland and his little sister Liechtenstein, I was venturing dangerously close to a grin. And anyone's heart would melt after encountering the world's smallest nation, Sealand. It does bode well for the second series, as the characters expand and the show's scope widens.


I don't think that I can easily recommend spending money on a comedy show that only makes me smirk though. If I want to see a comedy about the Second World War, with plenty of national stereotypes, and one that actually has the audacity of making me laugh, I'll watch Allo Allo. Still, you don't have to take my word for it. Funimation have episodes of Hetalia up on Youtube, so you can try before you buy, and make your own minds up.