Series: Hetalia Axis Powers - Complete Series 02
Release date: 7th February 2011
Certificate: 12
Running time: TBC mins
Director: Bob Shirohata
Starring: Atsushi Kosaka, Aki Kanada, Daisuke Namikawa
Genre: Anime
Studio: Manga
Format: DVD
Country: Japan
Returning to the trials and tribulations of our personified and unashamedly stereotypical nations, Hetalia Axis Powers - Complete Series 02 picks up where the first instalment left off. Lodged in the conflict of World War II, the five-minute vignettes continue to detail the political and military interactions of the Allied and Axis Powers, in typically zany fashion, as they career forth to the battle’s culmination.
The Allied Forces stumble across a journal belonging to Germany and believe this will yield all the insight into his tactical stratagem, enabling them to push on toward victory. However, Germany’s innermost thoughts prove not to be extensive musings on garnering victory but about how irritating Italy is, much to the Allies’ surprise.
Shown through flashback, Germany bemoans Italy’s inability to look after himself in a fight, noting how when he leaves him unprotected France and England take it in turns to attack and humiliate him. Italy, in a desperate attempt to prove his worth to Germany, decides that he needs to go on the offensive and looks for an easy target with which to notch-up a much-needed victory. However, despite choosing a “lightweight” country in Egypt, they are beaten with consummate ease.
Germany notes, with exasperation, in his diary that Italy, after yet another disastrous campaign, “can’t even fight a Middle Eastern country using arrows – and they didn’t even blow themselves up!…”
The crux of Hetalia once again proves to be the relationship that continues to develop between Germany and Italy. The witty banter and repartee between these two contrasting countries continues to provide most of the comic relief, and main interest, as the series’ most familiar characters. The frustration Germany feels at Italy’s never-ending stream of ineptitude continues to boil ever hotter, while Italy’s naïveté and blissful charm leads the viewer to become ever more enamoured with his childlike demeanour.
As well as their Second World War escapades, this second instalment continues to delve further into the respective nations’ histories and the spiritual bond that was briefly alluded to in the previous season. There is an enhanced exploration of why it is these two individuals with such opposing identities continue to be so intertwined, with there being notable comparisons and similarities between the fighting forces of the Holy Roman Empire (HRE) and Germania – a representation of the Germanic tribes that Rome failed to conquer.
Beyond the affiliation between the title character and the show’s primary antagonist, Hetalia continues to provide character-based background for many of the various protagonists. America starts off as nothing more than a child from the “new world," with France and England remarking that he must be kept away from the demonic Netherlands (a shadowy silhouette marking the Dutch colonisation of the time), and the two senior nations argue about whom he more closely resembles. The Baltic States become worthy of their own episode, detailing their own individuality, yet are dubbed “the nervous triplets” in recognition of their increasing fear of Russia, whose own actions are becoming increasingly alcohol fuelled and erratic.
While the additional historical context provides a greater understanding of the types of relationships the characters have with one another, allowing their idiosyncrasies and individuality to flourish, the heightened focus on characterisation results in the plot becoming of secondary importance and, consequently, lost. What made the first season an engaging viewing experience was its relation to the historical events, the world wars that underpinned the characters’ actions. As the writers flesh out the countries we’ve come to know, by venturing deeper into history (England visits Japan in 1902, representing the clash of cultures of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance), while introducing an array of new nations, the episodes find themselves hinging less on military conflict and ultimately lose their impetus. While Hetalia prides itself on its quirky and unconventional recollection of past events, it suffers from being too ramshackle, from not providing enough of a platform for it to return after exploring bygone affiliations. Without the same focus on the Second World War’s climax, in the way the first season rigidly followed the early 20th century timeline, any continuity or coherency is blurred in a free-for-all of memoirs and sagas, which while individually very interesting, fail to provide any resolution to the story which was the initial premise for Hetalia.
The anthropomorphism of entire nations allowed for a scathing humour that is disappointingly absent from this second instalment. While, at times, the analysis was generalised and bathetic, its ability to make the viewer laugh through its political and visual comedy was ever present. In the second series, the writers have abandoned the archetypal design of following an event and ridiculing the participants for a more investigative approach, which perhaps a series of this length eventually needed to adopt, but provides fewer laughs for it.
Hetalia still manages to provide visual entertainment with a crisp brand of animation that lurches between the luscious and the ludicrous, veering between the silly and the sillier. Its national representations are still as over-the-top and surrealistically stereotyped as ever and, with more countries to mock, this injects some much needed fresh air.
While diehard fans may argue that the series needed to branch out in order to remain enjoyable and not suffer from repetitiveness and complacency, too many scenes are interspersed into varying episodes with no justification for their existence or historical contextualisation. A thirty-second sequence involving Russia and China ends with the former jumping from a plane onto snow (believing the snow will soften his landing) as part of an attack, but for who, against who and why are never explained nor vindicated, leaving one scratching their head as to the necessity of such a scene. Without a conclusive resolution or alternative focus to the world wars that anchored the first series so remarkably, the second instalment is affected by an aimlessness, a lack of focus, spark and quality that cannot be made up by quantity of character.
While still as ostensibly enjoyable, Hetalia’s second season suffers from the law of diminishing returns. It spends too much time looking backward and not enough on where it should be going. BL
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