Hetalia Axis Powers: Paint it, White!

Overview: I'm VERY happy to finally write this review of the Axis Powers Hetalia Movie. Why? It means I will never have to review anything else Hetalia related ever again! Plot: Wait a minute...does this mean APH actually has a plot?! For the movie adaptation of Hetalia, yes it does! Do they finally do what the series was allegedly created for and finish telling the story of WW2 with our anthropomorphic Yaoi countries? Hell NO! Instead we get a plot about aliens invading Earth. So Hetalia went from being all about WW2 to being about space aliens? (Insert joke about the History Channel here)! The aliens wishto end conflict on Earth by erasing all the world's unique cultures and making every nation completely bland and homogeneous. Yes, the Hetalia movie is a long rant against the forces of globalization and the erosion of traditional cultural heritage. (slow clap). It may have been a REALLY obvious allegory that would make even Frank Herbert facepalm, but at least the Hetalia writers tried harder than usual this time. That is to say the Japanese writers tried harder. The American script was written entirely by Funimation voice acting legend Chuck Huber, who just makes gay joke after gay joke. Honestly, at least Chuck appreciates who the fanbase is and WHY the show is actually popular. Chuck gave the fangirls exactly what they wanted, so I can't really blame him. Art: The art and animation for the official movie was honestly WAY better than the series. The use of CG was surprisingly well done and we even get a fight scene that looked decent! I'm serious, it looked better and was better choreographed than some of the later episode fights in Bleach! Entertainment: "Italy...WHY DID YOU BRING A CAT WITH YOU!!!" Literally about 95% of Hetalia's entertainment is derived from Patrick Seitz's absolutely incessant yelling and over the top German accent. I'm not quite sure why Americans seem to believe that Germans just yell at the top of their lungs all the time. Probably because of that one short, Austrian guy that died 70 years ago. The closest the movie gets to honestly being funny was when the various countries tried to impress the aliens with their own native cultures. America takes them to Vegas, China cooks for them, Russia forces them to watch ballet against their wills, and England nearly causes the annihilation of mankind by trying to give them a sample of his horrible cooking. That was almost funny! Overall: 3/10 Was it a surprise to anyone that this movie wasn't very good?! The art is an impressive upgrade, the voice acting is fine, and the bare bones of a decent allegory and cultural commentary on globalization are...almost there at times. The latter being sort of like a rejected episode of South Park that was never quite finished. However, the humor is pretty awful and the movie quickly gets tedious and annoying. Honestly, if you want to watch a stupid comedy featuring ethnic stereotypes and horrible German accents, I would recommend Beerfest. At least it is WAY better than Hetalia.

Hetalia is an interesting success story. It began as a webmanga by Himaruya Hidekaz. Due to its popularity, it was adapted into a manga and published by Gentosha. This was quickly followed up by an anime version by Studio Deen and the series is still going strong. It's on it's fourth anime series, had a PSP game, a movie and a ton of merchandise. I may do a proper review of one or more of the series eventually, we'll see. That being said, I do have reservations about the film. The anime themselves are made up of short episodes that are made up of aseries of short sketches, which may or may not be connected to each other, based on historical and political subjects. With a five minute runtime per episode, that kind of thing can work. However, this film is slightly over an hour and a quarter long. How could it possibly maintain the aesthetic of the series? And even if they do manage, is it really a good idea to do so for that long or does it overstay its welcome? Let's look at Hetalia: Paint it White and find out. Story: A group of aliens invades Earth with the intent of turning all of humanity into faceless, bland looking beings like themselves. Our main group of countries, America, England, China, Russia, France, Japan, Deutschland and Italy meet to discuss the situation while Canada is in the room going unnoticed because that's pretty much Canada's schtick in the series. The group immediately starts arguing and goes their separate ways to try to fight the aliens off on their own, or surrender to them in the case of Italy. Shenanigans quickly ensue. The major problem with the film is that the main plot is really stupid. Which could work for the franchise, but it's also largely devoid of funny moments. There are a few but it's mostly just uninteresting and dull. They also clearly didn't have enough ideas for what to do with it since it's padded with a large amount of short gags. It wouldn't be so bad, except that all the short gags they pad it out with are ones taken directly from the anime proper. They seriously were so devoid of ideas that they couldn't even come up with original jokes for the film. They had to take jokes wholesale from the series. That's pretty inexcusable even if the padding gags are the funniest part of the film. Characters: They include all the standard Hetalia characters and give most of the side characters small cameo appearances, at least. The trouble is that they don't really take advantage of them. They have a really zany cast in the main series and yet most of them ultimately do very little and a lot of the character gags they do have are just recycled running gags that you could get by watching the main series. Art: The artwork does look like the series and it looks pretty good. My only real issue is with the aliens and their technology. They look really bland and their flying saucers look equally boring, inside and out. I guess that's supposed to provide tension since these dull beings want to replace all of these zany and visually interesting characters with boring carbon copies of themselves, but therein lies the problem. We know that it's not going to happen because it's a comedy and not anything resembling serious. Even if the comedy does fall short. Studio Deen could have at least given us something visually interesting to look at under the circumstances. Sound: If you've seen Hetalia then you know what to expect from the actors. The performances veer into over-exaggeration quite a bit but they're all solidly done and they do suit the characters. The music is pretty good as well with the same style that you'd expect if you'd seen the series. Ho-yay: Italy and Deutschland get quite a bit of homo-eroticism. To the point where one of the other countries comments on it. There's also a little bit between England and France, playing up to their love/hate relationship. Final Thoughts: As someone who generally likes Hetalia, this film is a major disappointment. Most of the jokes that work are directly taken from the main series and used for padding. Trying to have a longer story could have worked, but not with the execution they have here. They simply don't take advantage of the comedic potential of the situation or of the individual characters. What you ultimately get is a stupid, lazy film that doesn't even seem to be trying. My final rating for it is a 3/10. If you're interested in Hetalia, I would recommend watching one of the main series and just skipping the movie since all the really funny bits are in the series proper anyway. I'll continue film festival week tomorrow with a look at Hoshi wo Ou Kodomo.

For me being a fan of Hetalia. I did not enjoy the movie that much. One reason was that they kept showing past episodes in the movie. Which one, I did not enjoy, second I was more interested in the movie that episodes I've seen. The story was okay, it didn't seem much there was much thought in it.

I love Hetalia and just recently got into watching it. I sort of binge watched it and obviously finished the whole thing relatively fast since the episodes are so short. Then I found out that there was a movie and I thought, well... This is going to be interesting, since the episodes rarely have actual plots that lasts for longer than half a minute. I feared that the movie would be chaotic, pointless and that it would make no sense. I was right. The movie is funny, sort of, but the fact that it's main plot is interrupted by these small sketches from the episodes is justSO confusing! I mean, the original show is confusing but you get used to it - that's just how it is; it's not supposed to have a storyline. So when they try and do a movie with an actual plot, but still with the odd 30 second sketches, it's just weird and... makes it incredibly boring to watch. Especially since all those little clips are from the show, which, I assume, most people who watch the movie have already watched, so I wonder, why put in so much old material that has nothing to do with the actual plot of the movie? When you make a movie from a popular franchise, you wanna create NEW material! I mean, why would you pay for a movie that is, what, 40% clips from the episodes? If they wanted to keep the 30 second sketch thing that the show is known for, I'd been totally fine with just half an hour of random history shit, I mean, kinda like putting together a bunch of the episodes. Totally fine. Or they could've focused on the events of one specific war. Why the made up alien stuff? I just found that having a plot, does not work for Hetalia. It was not really funny... At all. It was odd. After all this is said and done, I am a HUGE Hetalia fan, I think the show is hilarious and I'll keep watching it, but if someone asks me ''should I watch the movie'' my answer will be; ''Only if you've watched the whole show and feel like you wanna sit through 1 and a half hours of pointless stuff just for that extra bit of mediocre Hetalia. Then go for it.'' (The dub is great though, as always. You could just watch the movie for Todd Habertalia and Jacque Michael Tatum. That's what I did after the 30 minute mark XP) ((I apologize for the name puns...))