Figured I'd use this platform to say if you're still into hetalia please reconsider.
It's one thing to be a kid entranced by the jokes and simplicity, that's what I was at a time (I was about 13 when I started this account), but at some point you need to grow up and look at what this series was with more mature eyes:
This was a piece of media that personified Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany into nothing more than silly cartoons, and that trivialized the very real crimes against humanity they committed- wounds that are still felt today by many people- into jokes.
It is one thing to enjoy media that is fine in concept but contains problematic elements in it's execution, such as JJBA, Danganronpa, or Fire Emblem (I'm not going to argue about these, they're just examples); it is another entirely to continuously support media where the foundation itself, the very basic concept of it, is rooted in perpetuating racist and xenophobic stereotypes and making light of historical genocide.
There simply isn't a way to divorce Hetalia from that.
I'm not going to debate with anyone on this post as I've fully moved on from Hetalia and refuse to waste anymore of my time on it- I only want to leave this as a parting message.
Whatever still draws you to Hetalia, be it a love of history, a passion for character exploration, a desire to laugh, or just nostalgia; please channel it somewhere else.
Thank you for making it fun while it lasted, but it's high time we let Hetalia go.
I said I’m not debating people and I’m not, hence why I’m not replying to anyone directly, but I’m going to address a couple things I’ve seen in response:
-This post isn’t about Veraverse, it’s about Hetalia. The problems I am talking about were not invented by the fandom, they were fundamental to the source material. That’s the whole point of this post. Japan doesn’t even appear in any Veraverse fics so I don’t know why some of you thought I was just talking about that when I mentioned the trivialization of the crimes of Imperial Japan. For the record, Veraverse suffers from many of the same foundational problems that Hetalia does, but this post isn’t about it. I’m only using this blog because it’s the only Hetalia platform I still have lying around and I was hoping I could get through to someone.
-It’s not ableist to ask people to not support racist media. I am also neurodivergent, and that’s not an excuse to perpetuate the things perpetuated in Hetalia. And you may notice that I never called anyone a bad person for reading/watching it, I simply said that it’s not something we should keep supporting.
I tried to word the original post gently, because I’m not attacking anyone, I’m just asking you to think critically about the media you consume and maybe not revive something so heavily drenched in imperialist propaganda. If that makes you defensive, maybe it’s time to self-reflect.
