Axis Powers Hetalia: Paint it, White!

America mourns the wibbly blandness of his national landmark and the countries join forces against the noppera. Surprisingly enough, Italy actually proves useful once or twice and is not a complete waste of space!

 

Oh and while that’s all happening, Switzerland and Lichtenstein have lovely picnics because they live in the magical neutral bubble and thus cannot be attacked by the aliens. Canada and Cuba manage to keep busy tending to the partially assimilated with kind words like, “You still have your legs” and “at least it’s not your arms.”

 

The animation quality throughout the movie is great. The animation is smooth and the art is clean. There is also a lot of attention to detail when it comes to the backgrounds. One of the things I didn’t particularly like about the movie was that skits from the series were scattered throughout the movie. It felt a lot like they were padding it and it seemed like the middle of the movie had more series scenes than it did actual movie plot. In an interview (see the Extras section of the DVD), director Bob Shirohata said that he included the scenes that he and the cast liked best because it fit with the show’s theme of disorder. He also noted that they had edited and improved the sound effects for those scenes. While I understand the purpose of it, I found it to be distracting. On a few occasions, I even had a difficult time figuring out if I was watching movie or a random insert scene. Ideally, I would have liked to see them create new skits for the movie instead of reusing ones from the series.

I also found it odd that the movie opens and closes with Iceland, a new character, but he doesn’t play any role in the movie. They do make a few jokes at his expense which are explained in the Extras. It was nice to see the inclusion of Sealand in the movie since we see so little of him in the show. While he had a lot of lines, he still proved more useless than Italy. I guess that’s what happens when you’re one of those countries no one takes notice of. Like Canada.

As I mentioned before, I think Funimation did a nice job with this. The voice actors have improved. England in particular had a noticeably improved accent. The script is well written in both languages. It was translated in a way that wasn’t exact, but was effective and held to the original style. Funimation took some liberties with the jokes and most of the time they were great! They even slipped a little Doctor Who reference in there. Some of the jokes, however, were a little off color. I refer to Germany and his threat to gas Italy and asking if S. Italy had brought him a Jew. I’m all for off color humor, but I’m a little stuck with these. I can’t decide if they’re funny or inappropriate. I guess that’s up to each viewer to decide.

And, because I love me some music, I must add that the ending credit song was fun. In the Extras there are both the theatrical ending and the theatrical ending without credits. I was surprised to find that it’s different from the DVD ending which I liked. The theatrical ending has a window playing various scenes from the movie while the DVD ending had various characters doing a bon dance. I also recommend that you take the time to read the Hidden History section and watch the Outtakes.

Included on this disk are English and Japanese audio and English subtitles. Extras include The Hidden History Within Hetalia, Hetalia: The CAPSLOCK Commentary, Original Theatrical Ending, Textless Theatrical Ending, Opening Day Stage Greeting, ‘Paint it, White!’ Trailer, Outtakes, and Trailers.