Summer Anime 2009 List

I’m a bit late in posting about anime series to be shown this summer 2009 basically because I’ve been too busy tending to my seiyuu stuff and BL dramas. However, looking at the list of series to be shown, summer doesn’t seem interesting especially when compared to the last winter and spring schedules. It’s a bit sad that there was nothing much to look forward to (IMO). Anyway, for the sake of recording, here are series to be shown this summer, arranged alphabetically.

Hetalia Fandub Craze – Bringing Nations Closer One Dub At a Time

Marukaite Chikyuu - Hetalia's ending song

Everyone who is into Hetalia has probably heard of its amazingly adorable ending song, Marukaite Chikyuu sung by Italy’s seiyuu, Namikawa Daisuke. It has a catchy tune, stupid lyrics and very cute visuals. The first time I heard it, it stuck and I ended up listening to it in loop for weeks (until Romano’s character song was released~). It’s a great hit among fans and non-fans alike (I know, I managed to reel a friend into the fandom because of this song).

Suddenly, someone had a great idea (if you know this wonderful person, please tell me) to make a Marukaite Chikyuu version for his/her country. Taking a karaoke version of the song, someone rewrite the lyrics to fit the words in their language and sang it with the karaoke track. The project was made people amused and happy. Soon, everyone wanted to pitch in an sing Marukaite Chikyuu in their own language. And thus began the great craze of singing the ending song in different languages.

More than the paper craft, the doujin game, the MADs/AMVs, I love this project of singing Hetalia‘s theme in different languages. I do not know if it’s the participation of people from all over the world or the sheer creativity of some members of the fandom, but I’m really glad that this project started and is continuing even now.

While I was searching around for the various fandubs, I became curious of other countries and their languages, even those not even in Hetalia yet. I am thankful to those who wrote the lyrics and translations with their fandubs because I feel that I’ve learned something, even if it’s just lyrics to a simple song. It’s also amusing that some contributors even changed the lyrics to fit their countries’ cultures (like changing the food or personality of the song). All in all, this project is amazing and I hope that there will be more contributions. It’s not only making Hetalia more accepted in communities — it’s also bringing people together. I cannot particularly say how, but seeing the comments in each fandub and sharing in the excitement whenever a new fandub is up makes me think that way :).

In Youtube, there is already a playlist organized to collect all the fandubs in one place. However, there are new ones as well as some which are missed. Here’s a list of the fandubs I collected some time ago, arranged alphabetically by language.

I’m still including names of countries in parentheses even though it’s mostly obvious where some languages come from because some of the fandubs are pretty specific with the country they want to represent (like French for Canada). Each link leads to their corresponding YT video.

• Hetalia original version (Japan)
• Cantonese (China)
• English (Canada)
• English (UK and US)
• Estonian (Estonia)
• Finnish (Finland)
• French (generally Canada and France)
• French (Canada)
• French version 1; version 2; version 3 (France)
• German (Germany — and probably Prussia?)
• German (Austria)
• Hebrew (Israel)
• Hungarian (Hungary)
• Indonesian (Indonesia)
• Italian (Italy)
• Korean (Korea)
• Latin-Spanish (…?)
• Latvian (Latvia)
• Malay (Malaysia)
• Mandarin (China, Hong Kong, Taiwan)
• Mandarin (Taiwan)
• Polish version 1; version 2 (Poland)
• Romanian (Romania)
• Russian version 1; version 2 (Russia)
• Swedish (Sweden)
• Spanish version 1; version 2 (Spain)
• Thai version 1; version 2 (Thailand)
• Vietnamese (Vietnam)
• Visayan (Philippines)

Sadly, the Filipino-Tagalog one seems deleted and I don’t know where I can find it again :(. Anyway, if there are more fandubs in YT, please tell me. Other than that, enjoy how a little silly song has become an international sensation :D.

To everyone who contributed to the project directly or indirectly, you are awesome >v<bbbb

Winter 2009 Anime — Of Sequels and Sci-fi

The year 2009 promises another phase of wonderful anime, most of them continuation of series released the previous year. Here is the lineup for this season. I’m a bit late but ignore that XD;. These are arranged alphabetically, with the usual info like date, seiyuu cast and a short summary. I did not include pictures, but you can find links to each series’ official site.

Again, my watching verdicts are: YES, NO, and MAYBE.