I think I want my brain back.

After complications involving accusations of ethnic insensitivity canceled the television broadcast, Axis Powers Hetalia found itself in an internet/mobile phone-only release format, making the subs a little bit tricky to come by, but thankfully they are out. However, even subs could not prevent me from my overwhelming first impression.

Wow, that was profoundly disorienting. To describe the sensation of viewing this is best put as ‘I feel like I just jammed my head in a blender.’ While many other short episode-style anime at least manage to maintain a single storyline through their five minutes of runtime (Chi’s Sweet Home being the first to come to mind), here we are immediately tossed into the story, and treated to a series of very, very brief vignettes. I would summarize to you what exactly happened in the episode, but when each bit last no more than a minute and a half or so, it becomes difficult to do so.

I’m not terribly sure of how I feel about APH as a result of this choppy approach to storytelling. While I am sure that this approach worked within the webcomic world, I’m feeling fairly leery about tis ability to translate over into an audio-visual medium. I have been told that this is supposed to be funny, and while I did smirk at points (the gag involving Russia bullying its enemies was fantastic), I just felt more bewildered by the speed than anything.

Of course, the sheer absurdity works a bit in its favor, as watching bishounen-style versions of countries traipse across the screen in various stereotyped manners (France likes wine a lot, Germany is a hard-ass, Italy yells ‘pasta!’ when asked to take part in a debate) is hysterical in an absurdist sort of fashion. But it elicited no outright laughs, making me suspect that, in the long run, it cannot sustain itself.

Anyway, in trying to find out some more concrete details on the show itself, I happened upon a similar webcomic, Afghanis-tan, which takes a similar approach, except by moe-ifying the countries of South and Central Asia which end in ’stan’ (and also include America… and al-Qaeda… uh… ok…). Unfortunately, the series is apparently no longer accessible via the internet, which is a bit too bad, since it does sound so bizarre I’d like to get a glimpse of it.

Oh, you want technical details for the show? Well, the sub I had had rough picture quality, but the animation doesn’t seem to be very good, as evidenced by the shortcuts made in scenes featuring multiple people (see: xxxHolic). There is no OP, and ED is weird, featuring members of the cast toasting each other with boots full of liquor.

I just don’t know what to make of this thing.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 27th, 2009 at 6:56 pm and is filed under Anime, First Impressions.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.