My long-unawaited opinion on the Hetalia dub

[teakay]

In case anyone is polling the Internets.

Some of it I found quite funny in its own way - "They had all become assholes!" "Where do you think they get extra-virgin olive oil?" "Dumbledora the Explorer!" "Woof!" "Your boyfriend or girlfriend or gender-neutral chibithing," etc.

Some of it got a kind of uneasy snicker - America's transition from "You can back me up" to "You can be the cannon fodder," Ukraine the juvenile megalomaniac, ETA: Lithuania's rant on Russification, etc.

Some of it I found... rather appalling - i.e. gratuitous Nazi references that A) are out-of-character and B) make no sense. Also France and England's Manipulation Activities, which were already pretty questionable in the original, become horrifying when one of the rumors they decide to spread about Germany is specified as being about the Holocaust. I am loath to shell out for a DVD with that on it.

So I guess what I'm saying is, I wish I could say I hate it top to bottom. I suppose at least my wallet's relieved.

Comments

[liam-sensei.livejournal.com]

I did manage to find a copy of the DVD (which I found surprisingly hard to find anywhere but online) and I like the dub. I haven't seen all of the dub episodes, but I'm mostly through the DVD.

I personally liked "Licken mein balls!" too, though everything you mentioned above was also pretty damn funny.

I also noticed the Nazi references and the part when Germany is talking to South Italy about getting "Jews" from them. I think Funimation wanted to address the fact that WWII Germany=Nazi Germany. I don't know how sensitive the topic of the Holocaust is in Japan so the omission of Nazis and the Holocaust in a series only released in Japan might not be as glaring. In the US, however, I think Funimation might have been nervous that they would get a shitstorm if WWII Germany was just this comical character and Nazis and the Holocaust were completely omitted. So those additions might have been to address the elephant in the room, albeit poorly. Though the part in the grocery store that looked like a German propaganda film should have been explanation enough, though such metaphors are often lost on Americans. *shrug*

[tobykikami.livejournal.com]

By the part in the grocery store do you mean the "Postal" parody? I'm afraid I have to reveal myself as an ignorant American, because I'm not sure how it resembles a propaganda film (unless all the various stereotypical ethnic quirks are "justification" for Germany to go bats on everyone in the store).

I wouldn't mind Nazi references in themselves - it's more the handling that makes me raise my eyebrows. The "What is it, another Jew?" line, for example. I'm at a loss as to potential historical basis for why South Italy would be shoving Jews at Germany in the first place, so to me it doesn't seem to have much of a point besides lol he said Jew. As far as the "Information Manipulation Activities" thing, there was already some debate in the fandom over whether it was meant to refer to WWI ("Think of the Belgian babies!") or WWII. The Holocaust was an elephant in the room in that case, but I don't think presenting it just as part of an Allied smear campaign really does much for shitstorm-prevention. That just doesn't sit well with me.

Another, non-Nazi thing that raised an eyebrow is that in one of the last episodes, the dubbers took after an Edgy group of fansubbers and had an Italy whose voice just broke chirping, for no apparent reason, that he sounds like "a homo."

[liam-sensei.livejournal.com]

Yeah that's the one. For some reason that made me think of a propaganda film; "this is what other ethnic groups are like and this is why they are bad," though in this case it was going after other countries and not Jews or Gypsies. Maybe that was just my interpretation, but I remember seeing that for the first time and being like "I see what you did thar."

I agree that the handling of the Nazi references wasn't the most appropriate and very scattershot. In that case they probably weren't going for anything concrete, they were trying to include them with all the other pieces of snappy dialogue, and you're right it really didn't work. The "sounds like a homo" part reminds me of similar dialogue on Ouran High School Host Club, they were using it to be funny but it really didn't work.