| abstract
| - Once upon a time, the Roman Empire ruled the Mediterranean. Then it collapsed, leaving his grandson Italy in his place. But all he wanted to do was cook, draw, and flirt with women. Cut to World War One. Germany waits at the Italian front, ready to face the heir to the mighty Roman Empire... He finds Italy hiding in a tomato crate. Poor Italy is scared and has no idea what the hell is going on, so Germany takes him under his wing, where he remains until World War II. At the same time, the "Allied Forces" are getting ready to counter attack... if they can reach an agreement, that is. A popular Japanese series by Hidekaz Himaruya that is an allegorical tale of the history of Europe, especially during World War Two, with anthropomorphizations of different countries and the various stereotypes associated with them. Axis Powers Hetalia is at once educational, irreverently silly, occasionally touching, and quite probably very offensive to certain people. Surprisingly, it gets many of the more subtle and less well known relationships between European countries rather well represented, which you usually wouldn't expect of foreign writers. Starting off as a webcomic, Hetalia garnered a strong fan following, and was eventually published in print form. A series of drama CDs were made later; an Anime adaptation has been released, but broadcast on television was canceled in favor of alternate means. The word Hetalia is a portmanteau of hetare and Italia (Italy), which means hopeless Italy, as Germany soon discovers. Hopeless in a cute way. You know, with the Axis powers, it's not bad to be bad at being bad. Four volumes have been printed in Japan, the most recent in the summer of 2011. The manga adaptation was originally licensed by Tokyo Pop and two volumes were released. However, they went bankrupt before the third was finished, and the series has yet to be picked up by another publisher. In the meantime, the original webcomic can be read here, with scanlations at the Hetalia LiveJournal community (note that some entries are locked, so you will need a LJ account to view them) or here. A compilation can also be found at this site, which is very readable and easy to navigate, but which is missing many of the newer strips. An anime adaptation by Studio DEEN began airing in January of 2009, and currently has completed four seasons, (along with three additional "special episodes") with the third and fourth seasons under the title Hetalia World Series. A movie ("Paint It White") has been released in Japan and became available in North America in November 2011. Both the series and the movie have been licensed by FUNimation. However, it should be noted that for whatever reason, they never subbed or dubbed the episodes that were on the Japanese Fan Disc. While 2 of the 3 Fan disc episodes were just compilations of actual story arcs (Chibitalia and Storage cleaning, respectively) one of the episodes featured a story about the Cat Festival and when Prussia & Hungary were little. Because of this, any casual fan watching streamed episodes on YouTube might get confused when they see the episode where teenage Prussia realizes that Hungary has breasts. Still, some of the subbed episodes can be viewed at FUNimation's website or on Veoh. The dubs of seasons 1-2 are now available on FUNimation's website. Hulu also has both subtitled and dubbed versions of the Axis Powers. (As does Funimation's YouTube Channel and the DVD release). Likewise, a sub of World Series is also officially available on YouTube and Hulu. The show is TV-MA, so an account on either is required. Note that the dub deviates from the original to a large extent. Now has its own Alternative Character Interpretation, Memetic Mutation, Hetalia Bloodbath 2010, Hetaween 2011, Hetalia Bloodbath 2011, Ship Tease, Ho Yay, Ron The Death Eater, Ships That Pass In The Night, and Die For Our Ship, pages. It also has its own page on TV Tropes' Fetish Fuel wiki. Check them out! And also fanfics with their own pages: All He Ever Wanted, You Can't Take the Sky Away from Me, Part Right, Half Wrong, a Third Crazy, The Pleasantville Series, Its a Small World After All, International Academy of Hetalia Fanfiction, Seven Little Killers, Brutal Series, A Castle of Silence and Bones, The Hetalian Monster, Nineteen Eighty Three Doomsday Stories and From the Ashes. Along with the fanmade RPG games Heta Oni, Roma Heta, Heta Quest, Heta Hazard, and Tales of Hetalia! Compare Scandinavia and The World, another webcomic that was inspired when a Danish artist disagreed with how some of the Scandinavians were depicted in this work. By the way, there are two Italies (Veneziano and Romano), but assume we mean Veneziano (North Italy). Similarly, "Korea" refers to South Korea, as in the original comics he is called by the Japanese name for South Korea (Kankoku) and the name for the North (Chousen) is never shown.
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