Hetalia’s Pilot Episode — Moving Crack

Hetalia‘s first episode was finally made available for viewing and loyal fans did not waste any time streaming it off animate.tv and seeing for themselves how good Hetalia would be if it’s moving. I’m pretty sure everyone has heard of Hetalia and the troubles it met after the announcement of its airing, but to those who are new to the whole Hetalia affairs (a rather steamy affair, indeed!), here is a little primer.

Axis Powers Hetalia started as a webcomic published in Himaruya Hidekaz’s blog. It’s immense popularity allowed it to be published as a manga and it earned even more followers. The series is set in World War timeline where the countries involved are represented by human characters. Each person!country’s personality is loosely based on the stereotype characteristics the original country has during WWII, according to Himaruya’s view. The word Hetalia itself is a play on words “hetare” (useless) and “Italia” to make a pun regarding Italy’s attitude during World War II.

Some readers regard the webcomic as cracky and almost satirical. Some, though, discover lesser known facts regarding WWII and some countries by reading between the lines and looking beyond the comedy. Because of certain issues, like the characterization of the countries and other historical facts, this series earned a lot of criticism. Some of the complaints and issues caused the upcoming anime to be pulled out of being aired in local television channels and was instead brought to the public through mobile download and streaming.

Anyway, back to my initial topic. The first episode of Hetalia has been streamed and it’s supposed to follow the published manga form (the main historical arc, if I’m not mistaken). There are over 40 countries mentioned in Hetalia, but only the few are recurring, most of them were those who took part in WWII.  Since I’ve been waiting for this to be available for viewing even more than I’ve been waiting for Gundam OO episode 16, here are some highlights of the five-minute pilot episode, including the cast of characters that were initially mention. I’m also thankful that there’s a Chibitalia insert! Really, an episode wouldn’t be complete without that adorable little boy…girl…boy…

Warning: IMAGE HEAVY, but crappy screencaps.

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.