Respoding to Hetalia comments

For two-thirds of my anime blog­ging life I have been blog­ging Hetalia Axis Powers. Nothing I’ve ever writ­ten attracts more com­ments or more hits than these bloody posts (bar maybe the sea­son pre­views). For that reason it would be a shame not to give these com­ments a little bit more lov­ing, espe­cially the ones from the dark days that I never got around to reply­ing to. So, like all good anime stu­dios, here I am milk­ing my fran­chise and start­ing with my first of sev­eral silly Hetalia-orientated posts to give this series a proper send-off with the end in sight.

Warn­ing: This is a veeeerrrry long post.

Epis­ode 1

Sydney: wow could you tone down the rude­ness? ser­i­ously. the koreans have reas­ons and bad his­tory with japan.
im dis­ap­poin­ted with the lack of tv broad­cast (and korea in the comic is one of my favor­ites any­way.. but i guess he wouldnt be in the anime either way). im korean, i know what the koreans are mad about, i dont really agree too much. whatever.

First epis­ode, second com­ment and I already man­aged to offend someone. *Borat style voice here* Great Success!

Food­bender (aka: Blindability)The world is filled with con­tro­versy. But it’s anime like this that some­times reminds us to take things with a grain of salt, so to speak (or in other words: lighten up). Every­one is entitled to think and feel what they want.

I think Hetalia is great.

I never real­ised until I went back but it appears co-writer Blind­ab­il­ity has been read­ing my Hetalia posts from day 1! Dis­play­ing fine writ­ing tal­ent and a cool head already.

Ramtha: hmm… Well, maybe if those Koreans would just go back to play­ing Star­craft, they wouldn’t care so eff­ing much.

hyo­galover: Koreans are really hate­ful. I don’t under­stand why they are mad. this anime was made so it could bring world peace. I read that Koreans also got mad at Hikaru no Go. –_–
Not even Itali­ans are mad at the great joke they made out of them. Is not like they made the fuck­ing anime and manga to make fun of Koreans. the anime is called HETALIA!! not HETAREANS >.

And I thought I was a bit racist towards Koreans in the earlier epis­odes… You have to remem­ber that the people mak­ing this fuss are prob­ably the same group of whiners that com­plain at everything. It’s the same with them crazy orthadox Chris­tian people in Amer­ica that cower at the sight of any sort of nud­ity on TV. If they made a Hetalia style anime about the troubles in Northan Ire­land and the IRA there would prob­ably be out­cry in some sec­tions of Ire­land, and that is far more recent. The reac­tion from these select group of Koreans are a total over-reaction from a group of people who can’t take a joke but you have to under­stand where they are com­ing from. And please, do not judge Koreans by these bunch of whiners.

Nata­sha: Would people leave off the hate­ful racism towards Koreans? Sure, some people in Korea found it offens­ive and, as would ANYBODY else, cre­ated an out­cry. That does not make them bad people.
It’s not about being polit­ic­ally cor­rect, it’s about not being offens­ive to people when you KNOW it’s being rude (such as sug­gest­ing Koreans are only good for gam­ing). I love Hetalia, per­son­ally, but if some people don’t like it, I’m not going to start bash­ing them.

Why can we just get ALONG? :/

Could not have put it bet­ter myself.

ezzy: but from a gen­eral perspective…one coun­try ban­ning some­thing from air­ing in tv broad­cast world­wide just doesn’t sit right with me. Ok they got made fun of by a japanese-american comic. Whoopdy frickin doo… Ser­i­ously, the way Korea is por­trayed in the manga is not as bad as the other coun­tries. But you don’t hear Italy, Rus­sia or even France com­plain­ing about the far worse por­tray­als of their characters.

You don’t hear other nation­al­it­ies com­plain­ing? You clearly haven’t looked hard enough. Korea is the most obvi­ous example but you should see what some people say about this series. People will for­get about the holo­caust because of Hetalia? No really, and I think he was dutch.

*sigh* you know.. i am an italian…i am embar­rassed by Italy’s character…BUT… its very funny..and in some cases its his­tor­ic­ally true! So instead of bitch­ing about how Italy is por­trayed badly…I am just going to take that grain of salt and enjoy the comedy..and real­ize that there is some truth to how the itali­ans were. By doing so, maybe itali­ans now will start build­ing a strong army little by little? …who knows…

Ah the sheer amount of nation­al­it­ies that come out when talk­ing about Hetalia. You know, there are some really inter­est­ing com­ments on this first post.

Exe: this series is com­plete shit, why would any­one watch/read this utter tripe?

I take that back…

Epis­ode 4

Claudaine :I must say I love read­ing what you have to say about Hetalia. It’s almost as enter­tain­ing as the epis­ode itself. ^^

I love get­ting happy com­ments

ANTIFA SUPPORTER R.: FUCK CODE GEASS!!!!!!!!!! LEOUCH IS A NAZI FAGGOT

Hetalia: Bring­ing out the racist fags in all of us (I didn’t even men­tion Code Geass in the post…)

Epis­ode 5

tsuki: the reason why they don’t have Ire­land is because in WWI ad WWII Ire­land was classed as England.

¦3: wait wut

Ire­land WAS NOT classed as eng­land. only the north is part of the “UK”. ffs, i’m an irishanon and i’m pretty fuck­ing sick of all the hetali­afags classing us with eng­land. ever heard of the 1916 easter rising where lots of people died just to get inde­pend­ance from eng­land? obvi­ously not. i’m not even a pat­ri­otic irish per­son but it really just pisses me off how ignor­ant some people are. it’s like say­ing canada is the same as amer­ica. >:U

also, ire­land might come into it – in one strip eng­land men­tions he has 3 sib­lings that are always try­ing to shoot him or some­thing, and it’s assumed he’s refer­ing to Wales, Scot­land and The Repub­lic Of Ire­land. So maybe! But who knows. Either way, Ire­land is tech­nic­ally in it, if you want to clas­sify the north i guess. lol.

Hetalia: Bring­ing out the crazed pat­ri­ots in all of us (BTW we were part of the UK in the WWI but we pissed them off so much that they even­tu­ally left us to do our own thing, much to our delight. We weren’t part of UK for WWII, some­thing which rather pissed of Churchill when we wouldn’t let him use our shipyards)

Epis­ode 7

Kana: “This guy rep­res­ents this coun­try called Amer­ica. No idea where that is, I think it’s some­where in Africa, right? I was hop­ing that per­haps he would bring some new jokes to the table but all he does is eat fast food, which is basic­ally an exten­sion on Italy’s joke. Come on Hetalia, come up with some­thing else! Although I do like the ‘and I’ll be the hero!’ line Amer­ica spouts out, it’s just so true. At least, that’s what I’ve heard about Amer­ica. I doubt they have a large enough army to be any sort of hero. They prob­ably don’t even have any nuc­lear weapons.”

And you live where? You prob­ably live in Africa your­self, ahaha.
Now now, my friend, not to be rude, as I do enjoy your blogs about Hetalia very much~ You are very wrong! You may or may not have been kid­ding, but for Pete’s sake man I really hope you aren’t.
Amer­ica is in North Amer­ica, right below Canada. In the 1700’s we defeated Great Britan all though we were entirely weaker and had less resources, as well as being incred­ibly uneducated. Amer­ica is known for it’s incred­ibly greasy & I sup­pose some­times gross fast food. The reason he is always say­ing “I’ll be the hero!” is because appar­ently Amer­ic­ans nor­mally want to be the cen­ter of atten­tion.
Also, you’re kid­ding about the army thing, right? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army
You make me sick when you say things like you know about the greatest coun­try & freest on Earth. Where ever it is that you live, we could kill your entire coun­try and the sur­rounds one next to in an instant.
How­ever~ since we’re all heros and pride ourselves and being assholes~ we won’t~ unless you do some­thing bad first.
“Kid you have no idea what you’re talk­ing about regard­ing your coun­try at all, my coun­try is–” All talk, whatever you’re think­ing, dear. I don’t careeee~
You’re an asshole.
How­ever, no hard feel­ings, eh~? I hope to read your blogs on Hetalia still~
By the way, epis­ode 8 is also out and subbed

This remains my favour­ite com­ment I’ve ever got. They even sup­plied me with Wiki­pe­dia art­icles! Ser­i­ously, I’m read­ing through the thing again and it really makes me grin from ear to ear.

Amaya: as much as I enjoyed your blog (and your lovely screen­shots of hetalia, thanks you so much for that)
I was very sur­prised that you didn’t know much about Amer­ica
I’m sure other people call this coun­try U.S.A but I thought most people in the world knew about Amer­ica…
where do you live again? you type in Eng­lish so I assume you knew about Amer­ica… oh well
but other than that, really nice blog, I really liked your pic­tures xD

I guess I could just don my mas­ter trolling act at this point but…I still can’t believe people believed me when I said I didn’t know what Amer­ica was.

Epis­ode 10

Kunikochan: Oh I do love your Hetalia posts~

They’re almost as amus­ing as the show itself x3

I won­der what happened to Kunikochan. She used to be one of the reg­u­lar com­ments way back in the beginning.

Epis­ode 11

kchan: Just wanted to note; the sub­titles have noth­ing to do with the anime’s cre­at­ors, so don’t bitch about it.
Hon­estly, this is a really…badly writ­ted review. All you’ve done is bitch and whine.

Ah yes. This was the epis­ode where my patience with Chib­italia snapped and I spent the entire review point­ing out the flaws with this series. Some people weren’t too happy with that.

Osaka: If you don’t get the show, don’t watch it. 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?

This is prob­ably the most enlight­en­ing com­ment I’ve ever got­ten and it forced me to really think about how I blog series. Do point out the flaws where they clearly are some or do join in cel­eb­rat­ing what Hetalia does well?

Arana: Come on, people! Someone points out and explains their reas­ons for what flaws they see in a series you like and you start bitch­ing about how they should stop watch­ing the series if they find stuff to com­plain about? A tad imma­ture, don’t you think? It’s not a bash­ing post, it’s reas­on­able critique.

I say this as a vivid fangirl of Hetalia, and I don’t agree with all the points presen­ted but I think it’s great that someone’s actu­ally mak­ing an effort to round the neg­at­ives of the series without totally shoot­ing it down.

In the end I settled to con­tinue with an hon­est review of how the epis­ode panned out. I know people often go to blogs to join in with cel­eb­rat­ing a fant­astic series and it can be a bit dull read­ing a blog­ger that didn’t really like the epis­ode but if I don’t call out the bad epis­odes when they occur then that deval­ues my posts where I said the epis­ode was fant­astic. If an epis­ode was ter­rible I will still call it out for being terrible. I shall not take the policy of appeas­ing the read­ers. That’s what Cham­ber­lain did and look what happened to him!

Epis­ode 13:

Soka: (plus I got a highly help­ful com­ment a while back, explain­ing to me which coun­try Amer­ica was. I could only remem­ber it as that place Bruce Spring­steen once sang a song about being born there).

XDXDXDXDXD
Man, I’m inter­netu­ally fall­ing in love with youXD

HAH! Screw you Hetalia bish­ies, I have fangirls too!

Epis­ode 20

Avalon: On the sub­ject of clean­ing America’s house­hold, it was because Lithuania was very poor at the time– most of the European nations were still try­ing to make up for what they lost in WW1, so many immig­rants were com­ing over to Amer­ica, mostly from East Europe (Lithuania especially).

I prob­ably learn as much from Hetalia com­menters about world his­tory than I do from the show itself.

Epis­ode 26

hey­heyho: Sorry for my lame eng­lish, it’s not my first language.

Again, the inter­na­tional aspect of Hetalia com­menters is shown. BTW, hey­heyho, I believe you are the com­menter who’s been around for the longest, well done!

Humanity_Cat: 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’m begin­ning to won­der if I should have done more research other than his­tor­ical research of Hetalia. Would it have increased my enjoy­ment of the series? I’ll never really know will I. Also it’s really cool to see where all these reg­u­lar com­menters star­ted fol­low­ing my posts.

luffyluffy: 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?

They all star­ted com­ment­ing in epis­ode 26! No really, my com­ment count shot up from about 3–4 per epis­ode to 20 com­ments. I guess it must have been the finale that was thought to have just happened and people went search­ing for reviews, although as this com­ment shows some people just fol­low and don’t com­ment for a long time. Come on lurk­ers, get out there and start com­ment­ing! You know you want to.

Apollo Pom­pano: 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!

It looks like I made the right choice in being hyper-critical.

Epis­ode 27

luffyluffy: As for the army march, that’s Ore Wa Doitsu Sei aka I am German-Made. Makes Lud­wig sounds like a Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaziiii!

Like Lel­ouch then accord­ing to that guy who com­men­ted on epis­ode 4. Yikes this post is long isn’t it?

Epis­ode 29

luffyluffy: I just laughed while read­ing your com­ment XD I can hardly say “in Amer­ica” any­more, it makes it hard to con­verse XD

Hell, when me and my boy­friend go to Ber­lin, the first thing that will most likely come to mind is “Heh, I’m inside Ger­many and Prus­sia at the same time”

… God, Hetalia ruined my mind XD

Hetalia: Bring­ing out the per­ver­ted side in all of us.

Epis­ode 31

Johanna: It’s not purple, it’s navy stupid. -.-

*fixed*

Epis­ode 32

Mon­sturr: Admit­tedly, I found this site through one of your Hetalia posts, but I’ve come to keep an eye on all of your posts; I’ve star­ted watch­ing Sora no Man­i­m­ani as well Hale Guu thanks to this site

I got someone else to watch Hale Guu? *Borat style again* Great Success!

Humanity_Cat: unfor­tu­nately, I’m find­ing that the longer I stay on this anime blog, the more I find interest in the dif­fer­ent animes….*thinking about start­ing Spice and Wolf* Gods….I’m never going to get any home­work done at this rate….

*drools* Oh wait, this was a Hetalia post. The hot wolf-goddess put me off my stride.

ses­qui­ped­alian: I love read­ing your blogs. The Hetalia are just so good. Heh, a bit late to say this, but Chib­italia annoys me as well.

Do not fret my friend. All Chib­italia hat­ing com­ments are wel­come at any time.

Scamp: KICK REASON TO THE CURB! DON’T BELIEVE IN THE POTATOES WHO BELIEVE IN YOU, DON’T BELIEVE IN THE LURKERS WHO LURK IN THE COMMMENTS WHO READ THE POST. BELIEVE IN YOURSELF! YOUR COMMENT WILL BE THE COMMENT TO PIERCE THE HEAVENS

WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK WE ARE!!!!!!!!

…yeah, this was actu­ally me respond­ing to an earlier com­menter. I think I might have just watched the first Gur­ren Lagann movie or some­thing. ROW ROW FIGHT DAH POWAH!!! Oh yeah, this is a Hetalia post. I keep get­ting sidetracked.

Epis­ode 33

That guy who was in such a bad mood couldn’t have been Den­mark. He is more the hyper­act­ive type, and I don’t think he would go to a bar like this.

Shiroi-Hebi: My friend told me though that this blonde guy reminded her of the taller guy from the sketch of Czechslov­akia —> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yo_btds9-kM
Or bet­ter to say, looks more like Slov­akia, I didnt really think of that, but he looks sim­ilar to that guy from the pic…

I get so used to see­ing com­ments like this that I for­get how odd these con­ver­sa­tions are. Things like ‘nah, that must be Slov­akia’ or ‘that’s such a Rus­sian thing to do’ or even ‘I get Lithuania and Canada mixed up’ are such bizarre things to say without the con­text of Hetalia behind them.

hey­heyho: Oh, but here in latin amer­ica every­one hates Chávez too! There was much lulz here when it happened.
Except for Bolivia, I guess. Hes’s got a man-crush with Venezuela and all-*SHOT*

This is why I love the whole concept of Hetalia. Any type of inter­na­tional polit­ics or events can be Hetaliased and it instantly becomes funny. Even the world cup, as you can see from the very first pic­ture waaay up the top of this post. Man, this post is long.

Epis­ode 35

Siri: Well, long-time reader, first time com­menter. (Wow, I sound dorky.)

Sieren: Like Siri I am also a long time reader, first commenter.

Jan Suzukawa: Well, Siri has broken it open for all of us. I’m also a long-time reader, first-time commenter.

bliss­fullyna­ive: uhmm.. hello.. long time reader, first time com­menter too. >__< Since i’ve been read­ing a lot of first time posters here, might as well join in too.

They all came in this epis­ode eh. The pro­spect of a movie brought out a few new com­menters and some of them are still com­ment­ing today. Yay, I love com­ments

bliss­fullyna­ive: I must say, i have learned a lot of his­tor­ical stuff from Hetalia. It even gives me more motiv­a­tion to learn other cul­tures and coun­tries. Thus, i really look for­ward to your hetalia blog posts as well, because you some­times explain the his­tor­ical side of an epis­ode. :3

This. While I said that my suc­ces­ful troll com­ment was my favour­ite because of how mind­bog­gling it was, this is my favour­ite com­ment in terms of why I blog Hetalia and why I con­tinue to blog this series. People really have been learn­ing about dif­fer­ent cul­tures from Hetalia…but I’ve got another post on the way that deals more spe­cific­ally with that so I’ll leave that sub­ject for now.

Epis­ode 36

Siri: Com­pletely unre­lated to your review but… I figured I’d com­fort you by telling you that I per­son­ally know at least seven male Hetalia view­ers in per­son. You’re not alone.

bliss­fullyna­ive: Oh, might as well add that i have influ­enced 3 male friends to watch Hetalia and they like it. The other one’s a His­tory fan, so he got inter­ested. The other one likes Chib­italia. @__@

Exec­ut­i­ve­O­taku: One more male Hetalia fan chim­ing in

Much to my sur­prise, Hetalia does actu­ally have a siz­able male fan­base. I guess they are slightly quieter con­sid­er­ing you can’t exactly join in the fangirl squeals can you.

Scamp: @ExecutiveOtaku: For some reason I’d always assummed you were a girl…

Exec­ut­i­ve­O­taku: @Scamp: It’s like I’m not being acknow­ledged as a man! I’m in des­pair! The inter­net get­ting the wrong impres­sion of me has left me in despair!

Ehehe, sorry about that one…

Epis­ode 37

Scamp: Spam away. It makes my posts look even more pop­u­lar the more com­ments I have

When I see my posts have got­ten 30 com­ments I keep hav­ing to remind myself that it’s the same people com­ment­ing over and over again and not 30 sep­ar­ate people who think I’m amaz­ing. It’s a great ego-deflator.

Humanity_Cat: And darn, you’re a guy? *sigh* I guess I can’t talk to you about makeup now….

Now why would you think that just because I’m a guy I don’t wear makeup? That’s sex­ist so it is.

Epis­ode 38

Humanity_Cat: think of other reas­ons to keep blog­ging about Hetalia even if the sea­son ends.

That’s exactly what your read­ing now…if any­one has decided to read down this far that is.

Epis­ode 39

Exec­ut­i­ve­O­taku: I pro­pose the UN be made a char­ac­ter. It can be male or female, and very much in the stu­dent coun­cil pres­id­ent char­ac­ter arche­type except most of the time the major powers won’t listen to them. But he/she can give them hall monitor-like arm­bands to allow them to beat up on another coun­try or pull two fight­ing coun­tries apart from each other with inter­na­tional approval. Blue and white arm­band with UN sym­bol, pos­sibly a blue hel­met, maybe anemic like Roma from SoraMani since he/she’s only as strong as the power that mem­ber nations give him/her, par­tic­u­larly good friends with Sweden due to sup­port, maybe some resemb­lance to Amer­ica due to be headquartered there.

This is what hap­pens when a writer at THAT anime blog com­ments on your posts. She he instantly eclipses everything you’ve writ­ten so far. Maybe I should ban him to make myself look better

Jan Suzukawa: I didn’t know you had an aver­sion against Chibitalia…

Actu­ally, I secretly love Chib­italia. I think it’s amaz­ingly cute and the only reason I hate on it is because I wish I could give people type 2 dia­betes too.

Epis­ode 40

Jan Suzukawa: And I hear Lel­ouch was also driv­ing the hay cart in Spice and Wolf. That guy sure gets around a lot.

Wait, so that means that not only is Code Geass a nazi anime but so is Spice and Wolf?

What is this ‘polit­ical cor­rect­ness’ you speak of?

Epis­ode 41

ran­do­manon: And yeah, Himaruya Hidekaz is a guy. A lot of people got con­fused when found out too.

See? I’m not the only one who auto­mat­ic­ally asso­ci­ates people who are involved with Hetalia to be girls.

Epis­ode 42

That­thingin­the­corner: Really? I dis­agree, I think Japan has one of the best singing voices and Ger­many the worst.
But I’m also very weird.

We are watch­ing a bunch of bish­i­fied coun­tries. We are all weird here. Who wants to be nor­mal anyway? I’m here at mid­night writ­ing a post about a car­toon that’s over 4000 words long and I don’t actu­ally have any point to prove in writ­ing it. I hope you guys at least got a few giggles from this post.

Kagura89: Nice “tract of land” you have there Ukraine~
This epis­ode is more like a bonus to the male view­ers like me XD

Ah yes, the male view­ers. You guys need some ser­vice as well to coun­ter­act all the fanser­vice the ladies are get­ting. And here I am  to present you with some glor­i­ous Horo fanservice!

Sorry, I couldn’t handle the idea that the last pic­ture of Horo on this post had a Nazi flag behind her. Any­way, I think it’s time to fin­ish this post off.

bliss­fullyna­ive: *fangirlsquee* on Austria-san – I think he’s the most hand­some of all the Hetalia char­ac­ters. Ah, sorry Scamp – I prom­ise we won’t let this devolve into end­less yaoi fangirling…

Humanity_Cat: Oy, there actu­ally might be people who ship RoChu…..-__– *cough­like­mecough* But whatever, I don’t want to start any­thing. I tend to like his­tor­ical pair­ings more…like Rus­si­aX­Ch­ina or AustriaXHungary…

randomanon: The America/England doesn’t seem squicky to me since Amer­ica will­ingly broke away from that rela­tion­ship with Eng­land in the Amer­ican Revolution…But then again, I ship Belarus/Russia, so…

luffyluffy: I dont liek Rus­siaCh­ina D: I-I like Germancest… *fid­gets* I-I’m sorry, I know it’s incest but… I-it’s so cute… T-They mesh together so well…

Yes, these are my readers.

(Fuck yeah! Always wanted so say that)