The Hetalia Community momentarily exploded with the news of Hetalia being licensed by Funimation!
I was actually pretty surprised Hetalia was even going to introduced to the US by the industries for being 1) a web comic and not an actual manga, and 2) 5 minutes of anime that was even banned in Japan from airing on TV.
Maybe Funimation noticed the humongous fandom it had despite being 'underground', and decided what a big win for them to get this!
The first thing in my mind when I heard the news-
The voices.I mean, come on- it's a series about COUNTRIES, they have to have accents! I wonder if any of the seiyuus have even tried accents for Hetalia, while Himaruya gives them all interesting ways of talking- what with China saying Aru, America continually talking of heroes, Italy going 've~' and Sweden speach impairment(my friend actually called him that- I really like Sweden). I wouldn't know if the seiyuus attempted accents in Japanese, or how you even talk in a foreign accent in Japanese(This is what astounds me to see Anton Yelchin in a Japanese movie coming out soon!)
Anyways, America is notorious for voicing characters with bad accents, it's not something desirable in this anime. It was banned from airing by North Korea for being offensive, I wouldn't put it past others to find ridiculous accents even more offensive. Accents have to be relatively decent, and Funimation HAS been able to do that.
I had been thinking of good voices for Germany, and the first voice actor to pop up in my head is Crispin Freeman.
I love him so much, I remembered his voice as Tsume from Wolf's Rain, which I though definitely could suit Germany(then my little fangirl mind went on having the voice of Toboe being Italy-HURRRR).
But then someone mentioned how they thought voice actor would make a good Germany. I gasped, forgetting the lovely voice actor again. For being a great voice, I only know him from Fullmetal Alchemist as Mustang, and the only good voice in Bleach, the filler character Ashido. For those 2 or 3 episodes with Ashida, I was OK with hearing Michelle Ruff. But just barely.
Later, many fans were protesting to having big voice-actor Vic Mcgnogna voice, which made me laugh.
I understand the hate, but I don't really care about if Vic will voice in Hetalia- I care more if Johnny Yong Bosch got a role in it.
GOD DAMMIT IT'S HIM AGAIN-
Moving on quickly to my second part when I heard of it-
The new people that will come into the fandom.
I'm not entirely saying GTFO to people who will be learning of Hetalia now in the US, but it's something I didn't really want happening, in case it turned ugly.
The fandom for Hetalia is so huge, it makes the character CDs reach the Oricon charts. It rivals mainstream anime and manga that I still believe to be big in the US like Bleach and Naruto. It's kind of hard to tell, though. Bleach and Naruto were both popular aired on TV in the US, and you will find many cosplayers at cons as Sasuke or Ichigo. The main Hetalia community is topping over 20k members while I found only -10k members in Naruto and Bleach communities.
But then again, the fandom is really only situated on Livejournal, including external sites that hold scanlations and then all of the Japanese fandom on Pixiv and their own sites. From what I know, Hetalia doesn't have a external forum like Bleach(Bleach Asylum) and Naruto(Naruto Fanboards or whatever).
And for a funny note- the Capslock Hetalia community has nothing.
Now that I've described the size of the current fandom enough, it makes us wonder what will happen when people who only watch/read what comes to them in their (imo) dumb magazines. Will we become mainstream like Naruto and Bleach, and become disliked because of the fandom with many tards that make everyone facepalm?
Will there be more wank to the pretty peaceful community? I guess we shouldn't because the series itself has yaoi, so people shouldn't be homophobic, it has history and conflict with nations, along with making fun of each of them, so there shouldn't be a hate or racist circles coming around.
How serious are the shipping battles between USxUK and FrxUK? Not as big as what goes between IchiRuki and IchiHime, or even NaruSaku and any other pairing conflicting.
There is serious wank that goes through the other two fandoms that make me dislike the fandom altogether- but the Hetalia community doesn't show that much. I don't hate any characters at all in the series- A few countries are my absolute favorites, and then some I like more than others. I also have very little hate for different pairings.
Maybe it's because everything is crack, anyway, since all you're doing is shipping countries who all have relationships that change over history.
Now wanting to wrap this all up so I can go to sleep for the impending tomorrow of school, I'll end it there.
And for fun, I've had tried coloring Hetalia, despite the dirtiness in the beginning. I used a clean lineart of Prussia, though, so it doesn't matter.
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