I think it must been when the Hetalia narrator announced that Italy was being hauled off to live with Holy Roman Empire at mean old Mr. Austria's house that I began to wonder if I needed to start questioning someone's sanity. But whose? That of the acquisitions executives at FUNimation, who thought that an anime Histeria! focused on European history would sell in the United States? Or mine: Should I really credit my ears when they insist I'm hearing things like the above?
Really, I'd love to know who the target audience is for this Japanese micro-series (each episode is about three minutes long, plus credits), even in its home country. It has got to be the silliest thing I have ever seen: a vague retelling of European history that reimagines the protagonist countries as a lot of cheeky teenagers pulling pranks and hijinks on each other.
Luckily, viewers only need the barest familiarity with actual history in order to make minimal sense of the shenanigans. Each nation conforms to its stereotype: Germany is the hulking, humorless bully masking his sense of inferiority and loneliness under a cloak of brutality. Italy is the flighty, pasta-loving coward. France is the flirty and effeminate one who talks a big game and surrenders when anyone looks at him cross-eyed. America is the preternaturally cheerful team leader convinced he is the star of a superhero movie starring himself as the superhero star of a movie about himself, with himself as the star who is also a superhero. England hides his emotional frigidity behind a façade of superiority—until his imaginary friends come out to play. Russia is just weird. Surprisingly (or maybe not, considering its country of origin), Japan is the only one of the bunch who really doesn't come into focus, though there is one hilarious moment in the first season when he presents Germany with a fleet of miniaturized U-boats in assorted snazzy colors, which he proposes to mass-market with a catchy theme song; and another where Italy stumbles upon his porn stash.
Most of the main episodes focus on World War II (which, if you think about it, makes this series just about the most tasteless possible take on that horrific period in world history), but lots of other periods in history come in for grief, from the current era to the Middle Ages. The latter are the focus of "Chibitalia," a shorter short attached to the longer shorts, that portrays these same characters in their kid forms during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Here the jokes definitely require you to have taken a college-level course in European history and to have actually paid attention in class. Aside from a continuing story about the kid-crush that Holy Roman Empire develops for Italy, it also includes allusions to or situations involving the Hundreds Years' War, the War of the Austrian Succession, and the Spanish acquisition of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. (Mr. Austria's predilection for Chopin may also be an allusion to the Habsburg annexation of Galicia during the oh never mind.) If you're like me and actually know these things, your jaw will drop and you will howl with laughter at the extraordinary depth of knowledge the series sometimes reveals and the cheek with which it treats it. If you don't, you'll probably just laugh your head off, then scratch it and wonder who did the what-now and why.
Occasionally there are explanatory notes, so that we are told that France's incredibly awkward proposal of marriage to England is an allusion to a 1956 plan floated by the French government for a formal union between the two nations. But there aren't many of these, which means you have to get by on the sheer entertainment value of the dialogue and gestures.
Which are totally and hysterically successful, so I don't know why I'm making a big deal about the supposed "history lessons" in this thing. Hetalia is brutally fast and wickedly quick-witted; the jokes and situations are brilliantly timed and visually composed. Everyone is a cliché, but they are sharply realized and entertaining clichés. Italy is at the center of most of these, and the glee he shows in finding new ways to avoid fighting—such as hiding in a box labeled "Tomatoes" and claiming to be the "Tomato Fairy"—is very winning. Given the speed this show moves at, I'd really recommend watching it dubbed; and, anyway, the FUNimation voice artists are at the top of their game, with great accents and terrific comic performances. For hilarity and tastelessness, it's easily on a par with Ghost Stories, and I never believed I'd find an English voice track has funny as that one.
I've only one criticism, and it's got to be the mildest criticism I've ever leveled against a show: Watching it is like eating popcorn. You can't stop with just one episode, and it is way too easy to gorge yourself on too many at a time. I felt physically ill by the time I got to the end of a disc, but I couldn't stop myself from marathoning it.
The two season releases each come with two discs: one containing the complete season (along with a handful of episode commentaries by FUNimation voice artists) and one disc given over to Japanese-produced featurettes. The latter are of only modest interest, but it is nice to have them.
This show really needs to be picked up by an American network as "educational programming," not because it is educational (it's hardly that) but because it would totally screw with the busybody groups who are always demanding more educational programming on television. Every complaint about its ribaldry and lack of respect for its subject matter could be met with "But where else will our children learn about the War of the Austrian Succession and the postwar Solidarity union between Switzerland and Liechtenstein?" That would shut them up, and that little miracle would be another one for the history books.
This article is taken from- http://www.toonzone.net/news/articles/35648/hetalia-history-gone-bananas
No comments:
Post a Comment