Hetalia was written in July 2006 by Hidekaz Himaruya. The series is a comedy about history starring personifications of the countries of the world to to make jokes about human history and international relations. It most commonly features the axis powers during the time period of the second world war, hence the title. This is probably the most comedic of my favorite series, and it's also got a different format; not being a standard serialization and instead being a gag webcomic that got adapted into an anime whose episodes are only a few minutes long, sometimes several unrelated parts with each ep and don't neccesarily tie into each the prior ep or the ep after it. As such what would usually be a strength or a weakness of a series is differnet from a more serious serialized story.
3 Reasons I love it:
1: The jokes are about topics I find funny. Hetalia most often jokes about national stereotypes and history, two topics I think are really funny. Talking about comedy and why it works is famously the least funny topic but basically I think Hetalia's comedy works well for me is that the jokes are a nice mesh of a large variety of different types despite it's seeming simplicity; ranging from observational human (for instance the sketch about how the different countries act at the supermarket), to fun historical trivia that is amusing (like Russia breaking England's cursed chair) to characters being over the top with their personalities (like Prussia's constant declarations that he is the great and awesome Prussia) to just random nonsense, tied together by the theme of history and international relations.
2: Another facet of the series that I think makes the humor funny to me but also helps the series in a different sense is the fact that it's a very positive upbeat series compared to the few things in it's "genre". If you compare Hetalia to something like, say, Countryballs, Countryballs isn't made by a single person but in general it seems to be more cynical of the countries. In Hetalia all the countries are flawed for comedic purposes but they're usually made out to be generally pleasent people. In fact most people who like Hetalia say their favorite character is their representation of their own country, often because they get the jokes about that country more and they think it's a good representation. This also creates the sense that even countries and peoples we don't like or compete with in real life, are filled with real people who are probably doing their best too. You could really easily make something with Hetalia's premise very dark, or even easily make it a dark comedy, but instead it's kept fairly light-hearted.
3: I actually really like the shortness and segmented nature of Hetalia episodes. On one level it is perhaps just pragmatic adaptation of it's source material, however it very much fits with my ideal for comedy. I like my humor fast-paced, and really don't like when a joke or even a type of humor is done for too long.And if nothing, Hetalia eps are very fast paced due to their episode lengths.
3 Flaws:
1: Hetalia jumps around in space and time withour any rhyme or reason basically on the writer's whim. On the one hand it might be annoying if they started in caveman times and took years just to get to anything that someone today might be aware off. On the other hand it's just so...random about it. Countries that played huge roles in history haven't even shown up or showed up only the smallest amount as Himaruya plays clear favorites with what countries and time periods he's interested in.
2: This one is obviously massive your mileage may vary, but some of the characters don't really seem to represent their countries. I think Himaruya did a really good job with most of them, but there's some countries whose personalities or relationships seem really off. For me the biggest one and honeslty the strangest one given Himaruya's nationality is the way too pleasent relationship between China and Japan. These two have off and on again hated each other for millenia now, why are they so unantagonistic to each other?
3: The period of history that tends to interest me most is actually antiquity, ancient history which Hetalia despite having canonical characters for, spends almost no time in. The series jumps around in space and time yet the earliest chronological sketches get is usually maybe the late middles age (one quite funny sketch about China and Japan first meeting aside). If they're going to jump around so much, I wish the series would cover more time periods.
My Favorite Part:
My favorite part of Hetalia is the episode titled "Davie." America who at this point is young enough to be a child meets and befriends a human boy named Davie. The two become great friends but Davie grows up, while America, being the embodiment of a country, is still a child. Eventually Davie passes but America sees his descendant and mistakenly identifies him as Davie, quickly becoming his friend. I dearly wish there was more episodes like this. This is an episode that perfectly shows what the relationship between a person and a nation is and why we make relationships with the countries we live in. Countries are things that will outlast us, and will see us in our descendants and show them the love we show to our nation. We are part of a procession of people in constant dialogue and friendship with a concept bigger then us made of our ideals and our sense of greater community which we call a country.
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