.....and does an incredibly CUTE job at it...????? Oh, let's start from the beginning. (******IMPORTANT NOTE: you'd much better read my review in this link: [link] instead than here!!!!!)


I'm italian. Like most italians who have a bit of intelligence, currently I can't say I feel particularly proud of my own country.
When Japan comes up with a new web-comic whose title is "Hetalia", I feel the need to check it out. The title is a crasis from the word "heta" and the name of my country, "Italia". In japanese, "heta" means "incompetent, unskilled" - which makes the title of this manga roughly translate as "the incompetent Italy". What should I make of a manga who goes by that rather offensive title? You see now why I just had to check it out.

So what's this manga about? It's about anthropomorphic representations of the world's countries. Anthropomorphizing countries is an old practice that all the european world loved to do since the medieval period and its known love for allegories; thus the originality here is not in the concept of anthropomorphic countries, but rather in the idea of actually making a whole story about it.

And so we see mister North Italy as a clumsy coward, thinking only about good food and nice women, and who can't do anything by himself, and whose immediate first reaction whenever he's in trouble is to raise the white flag and beg for mercy. Oh, but mister North Italy is so sweet and spaced out, that everyone still loves him despite all.
And when mister America is called to fight against Japan, he can't find where it is, because all of his world maps only depict the USA as the unique country.
Korea is either whining and demanding compensations to everyone, or aimlessly bragging about being better than any other asian country, and he often ends up being accidentally throd upon by other big countries.
China fondly helps his little brother Japan, teaches him how to write, gives him culture, and all this only to end up getting badly beaten up by the cynic Japan himself once he is become all grown up and strong.
And the list continues.

The manga is actually a very sharp, witty satire, however concealed in such a crazy, colorful, childish, light-hearted atmosphere, which makes quite the contrast with some of the political themes the series actually talks about.

Korea (the real country, not the character), almost as to exactly mirror his anthropomorphic manga representation, started to violently protest against this series, deeming it outrageously offensive. Because of that, the cartoon, inspired from manga, that had been started airing on japanese television has been quickly stopped, and can now only be seen on the internet or, you know, on japanese mobile phones.

Well, Korea, and what should we italians do about that? We're the ones who get the most mocking in that series.

Italians, for good or for bad, have a strong auto-irony, however, and I myself ended up bursting in laughter on a couple of sketches about Italy's behaviour, admitting "Oh dear, maybe I shouldn't even laugh, because sadlt this is all so very true!".

No, I don't care about how the manga parodies countries. It's satire, right? Then go protest against any other kind of satire and repress the freedom of opinion!

No, the problem with "Hetalia" is a very different one. And a very serious one, too.
....The point is: the setting is mostly during World War 2. That was a little bit difficult to digest for me, and that is where the manga's real controversy stands. We see these countries - and they look like so cute and funny and innocent boys - and it just confuses me to see that the adorable little clumsy dude over there is actually FASCIST ITALY, and that other disciplined serious, but so sweetly protective and shy dude is actually NAZIST GERMANY. It's jarring and almost spoils the fun of the show. Basically, the series takes the issue of WW2 very lightheartedly. Too lightheartedly. You can't make something so innocent and cute out of WORLD WAR 2. You can't!!!!! Had the series been set in any other time setting, I'd have loved it. But as it is now.... I still love it. Proof is that it's the first manga and anime that I've ever read/seen since something like two years!! However, I still feel very, very uncomfortable about the approach, to the point of almost feeling guilty about laughing and having so much pure fun about sketches concerning World War 2.

Oh, another thing I personally don't like about the series, even though it's not a big issue, is the homosexual prettyboys shounen ai overtones. I know that it just comes natural with being a japanese production: as no japanese production is ever devoid of either shrill-voiced bigbreasted underage girls, or cleanshaved girlylooking homosexual prettyfaced boys, or sometimes both things. But, you see, I really don't think the squealing 15-years-old stupid fangirls are the target this series should attempt to attract. A clever and harsh satire of the world's countries is risking to pass undernoticed as yet another ridiculous prettyboys series for female teenagers.

You know, Hidekazu Himaruya, dear author of this series..... maybe when you are parodying Japan, you shouldn't really concentrate on the excessive politeness and all. No, you should really concentrate on how that is the only country who turns political satire into a prettyboys series, or who turns a prettyboys series into something strictly related to fascist and nazism.