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]

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.