Review for Hetalia World Series: Season 3 Collection

Introduction

I have long considered that this reviewing lark is a hit and miss affair. For every measure of pleasure there is a commensurate measure of pain. The reviewer lucky dip that would see review discs doled out at random is a thing of the past however, and usually we reviewers get to chase after those titles that interest us the most. I had been thinking that my equal pleasure and pain theory had been disproven. It turns out that I have been saving up my bad karma in recent years, and that extra measure of pain has been due me. For me that boils down to Hetalia Axis Powers, a comedy anime show that is unexplainably popular (i.e. I don't get the joke). Last month, the first measure of pain hit with the Hetalia movie. Now it's the turn of the third season, Hetalia World Series. I'll warn you straight off the bat, if you are a Hetalia fan, this review is unlikely to jibe with your views.


It's still 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.


All 24 episodes of the third 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 Hetalia 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. Also something I noticed a lot more this time around was a weird strobe effect when scenes would fade out and fade in. It looks bizarre.


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

This disc is loaded with extra features, even more so than any of the earlier Hetalia releases, although there is a bit of redundancy to them. The episodes and extras are presented via static menus, and the disc displays a jacket picture on compatible players when not spinning.

There are three commentaries on the disc, accompanying episodes 1, 4, and 6. ADR Director/Writer/narrator Jamie Marchi hosts Jonathan 'Prussia' Brooks and Ian 'Romano' Sinclair, Joel 'Poland McDonald and Josh 'Lithuania' Grelle, and Scott 'Britain' Freeman and J. Michael 'France' Tatum for three totally trivial and pointless gossip sessions. Although this may be the only anime commentary on the planet that makes reference to Gillian 'Poo Lady' McKeith.

Of most use on this disc is the Hidden History Hidden within Hetalia feature, some 50+ pages of text that offer the actual history that inspires the sketches in the show. There's a whole lot of detail here worth reading.

The Hetalia Fan Event at the Tokyo International Anime Fair 2010 is a featurette that lasts 37 minutes, and has three members of the voice cast on stage to promote the show and have some fun, entertaining appreciative fans. This is only the first such featurette


The Hetalia Event in Tokushima Part 1 (18 minutes) and Part 2 (16 minutes) has two different voice actors interacting with the public to promote the show.

Finally the Fan Event (20 minutes) offers a view of another such proceeding at the Sunshine 60 Observatory Event. That's over an hour and a half of promo material right there to wade through.

Coming back to the English language release, there are some 7 minutes of Outtakes on the disc, which I found about as funny as the show itself.

The English (Australian) trailer is here, and you get the textless closing songs (albeit with forced subs which render them somewhat less than textless.

Conclusion

The joke is wearing thin at this point. Hell, the joke was wearing thin at the end of the first season, so now, after three series of Hetalia, plus the Paint It, White movie, we've gone beyond thin, past threadbare and we're now approaching gossamer. The nations of the world are anthropomorphised, and personify their national stereotypes with an insipid lack of imagination, and they proceed to annoy each other in less and less creative ways. The English dub layers an extra dollop of crudity and political incorrectness to give it a little extra spice, and it just keeps going on, and on, and on.


Once again, I responded to a Hetalia disc with the following series of reactions. A brief moment feeling like I've been hit by a truck, unable to initially come to terms with this bizarre comedy creation. Then there are a few moments of genuine chuckles, and indeed laughter, as my brain desperately tries to convince me that this is indeed funny. Finally, after around ten minutes or so, the deflating realisation that this isn't funny, it's just tedious and repetitive, and that there is another one hour and forty-five minutes worth of similar antics yet to go. And so, the remaining episodes, split up over the next following five or so nights, are endured in stony silence, punctuated by the occasional smirk, and one or two tortuous guffaws, as through some random chance or some Shakespearean infinite monkey metaphor they occasionally say something funny once again.


This time around, my humour muscles were mildly exercised by the debut of a new character, the slothful Greece, who would much rather imagine being a cat, than worry about GDP and the trade deficit. There was a gag about France always being on strike that worked. America makes friends with a profane alien in 1947, and everyone is scared of Sweden. Otherwise it's the same old comedy routines, rinsed and repeated once more, and I do begin to feel that after series 1 and 2, they're scraping the bottom of the barrel here.


The once saving grace for Hetalia has been its tie in with genuine history, with the various characters recreating actual historical events with comic overtones. And once again, it is this which redeems this third season. You get to learn about history in a fun way, and begin to understand the relationships between nations that have shaped the way that the world is today. This coupled with the very generous helping of extra features will be a treat for the discerning Hetalia fan. For those like me, who are less inclined to this series, it will be less so.