#analysis.txt

to fully explain this i think it’s important to fully understand the amadeus of it all for which i cannot recommend enough zero’s post about fnowae.

to use some of their words/phrasing, the quote itself as the title…fascinates me. it is salieri (in this instance, pete) repudiating god, declaring him to be his mortal enemy from here on for having the nerve to bestow upon amadeus (patrick) such brilliance (and i will be referring to him as amadeus because that feels like it might be a little cleaner than calling him mozart throughout this whole Thing etc etc etc). to mock salieri’s mediocrity. he is so envious of amadeus that he feels amadeus’s gifts are a divine punishment from god himself. “from now on we are enemies, you and i.”

what does all of that have to do with pavlove, though? amadeus is the gifted one, whom salieri finds to be insufferably annoying, but staggeringly brilliant. indescribably so (the fact that they do eventually befriend one another, and when amadeus dies, it essentially drives salieri insane and many years later he even claims he murdered amadeus, despite the fact that amadeus was sick, having worked himself to exhaustion and death……all of that is another can of worms i don’t…i don’t have it in me to crack open right now). “nobody will ever remember me, rejoice and fall to your knees.” “i want to make you as lonely as me, so you can get addicted to this.” bone crushing loneliness clawing at the door like a dog just begging for companionship. i need someone, please be that someone. i don’t know what to do if i don’t have someone. but maybe it’s for the best. but i can’t leave well enough alone (historically, “i don’t do too well on my own”) so i need you to feel what i feel. empty. isolated. lonely. then maybe you’ll need me the same way i need you.

“their faces are dancing till they can’t stand it.” being the outsider, the wallflower, the lone observer, because what else can you do? what else is there to do? it’s three drinks too late to talk to anyone but myself. who even wants to be there with the lunatic on a downward spiral entirely of his own design, who has faded so seamlessly into the background that he doesn’t even know who he is or if he even exists anymore. getting worse till there’s nothing left.

from now on we are enemies is pete vs patrick. two brilliant artists duking it out because one is so enamored with, but absolutely cannot stand, the brilliance of the other. pavlove is…different. more distanced. it’s the realization. and if pavlove is the realization, from now on we are enemies is the final showdown.

pavlove is misery with the life he’s cultivated, with the parties and the tabloids running rampant in the 2000s. the drugs he’d been doing that his best friend didn’t even fully realize the severity of because, in his mind, drug abuse was this abstract thing that he couldn’t quite comprehend. fnowae is the culmination of isolating oneself from those which he loves and cares about, because he’s so lost in his misery.

“what good comes of something when i’m just the ghost of nothing?” because progression in any capacity is a threat to your self preservation. creative integrity, personal growth, whatever it is, it has begun to feel like it’s unattainable because the risk is too high. so what’s the point? it’s a three-and-two pitch to walk to anywhere else. so stay where you are. don’t bother. patrick is brilliant, patrick is gifted and he doesn’t even know it and i’m just a painter looking at the walls trying to finger paint and he’s the only one who has been able to finish these half-baked paintings i throw at him. if this thing is breaking down, what am i good for?

trick question. stalemate. stay right here. if anything, move back.

but there’s a wife to try to make a life with and a child on the way and if i do move forward, who’s to say i don’t just find new ways to make it all worse? my anchor has started to completely detach—get engaged, make a solo record, make himself a life, eventually…soon, even—and i’m let out to sea all on my own and i don’t want to be here, i wanted to go back to land. i wasn’t prepared to still be here. but somehow, i am, and i don’t know what to do. i’m the just the man on the balcony, singing, “nobody will ever remember me,” because amadeus over here is doing the things that are worthwhile. he’s the one people will revere, and i will fade in the distance as the blurry shadow whose features have smudged and disappeared with time, because my contributions pale in comparison to his genius, because i wasn’t blessed with the ability to sing or write music or do so many of the ten billion things he is capable of. because who knows how i’ll be remembered now that the ship i’ve spent the last 8 years manning is possibly about to sink and maybe that means that will be my legacy, if i even have a legacy. if anyone remembers that i was ever here. but that doesn’t mean i don’t want to be remembered. that doesn’t mean i like what i’ve become, how my meaning has become dependent on the twin skeleton beside me. i’m the invisible man who can’t stop staring at the mirror. begging to be remembered…because that’s the point of it all, right?

i said it at the beginning, fall out boy had to be fall out boy and leave the world on a cliffhanger for three years. but it’s been 14 years since believers never die vol 1. we know what happens next. we’ve read the next chapter, watched the sequel, seen how it all pans out. they get to be happy middle aged men playing these songs, reclaiming the trauma and horrors and pain within them, making them into newer, happier memories, because they’re not about that pain anymore. and they haven’t been for a long time. they haven’t been theirs in ages. and so they can finally let it go, with their spouses and kids in the audience cheering them on (well, maybe not the kids. they’re dads, after all, they can’t think they’re cool). with stronger bonds between them and a stronger sense of self in each of them. because they’re not defined by each other anymore, no, this is their fun little art project. patrick composes for a living now (a composer but never composed, who always saw himself as a composer first, now literally a composer by trade), joe and pete each have multiple different ventures they explore in their free time (the symphonies of the overdosed, now being sung by yourself because you don’t need someone else to do it for you anymore), andy is in a million different bands at any given time. they don’t need each other—they don’t need to be defined by each other—they want to be with each other now.

something i havent seen anyone talk much about is irisu's diary. no, not the cough medicine txt file. irisu's in-game diary. you know, this?

...except in english. i havent seen many people ever talk about this except for when it spooks them during videos. well, i figured someone should transcript it. so i did. heres the full text, from the english translation patch:

"I moved a lot as a child so I never really made any friends. I was so scared of becoming close to someone that eventually, I stopped talking. All my classmates, and even my teachers, shunned me. But I had a friend, in the corner of the schoolyard. Every time I got close to the cage, it'd come wobbling over to greet me. I'd reach through the netting, and pet its forehead. It liked it. I think it was taken in as a weakling by the school, but no one came to see it. It was weak, shy and covered in scars. Half of one ear was torn off. There was a cat at the school, too. Everyone played with it. I got sick whenever I played with the cat, so I stayed away from it, and everyone else. That boy showed up to help one day. Apparently he lost a bet. And that's how I started to like him. Maybe I was being selfish, but I slowly got closer and closer to him. In the middle of those dark and gloomy days, being with him may have been the only happy moment of my childhood. One day, I came to my friend's cage to settle it down. The door was open. In the middle of the cage, I saw red liquid splattered all over. All that remained in the cage was it severed head. And the cat, licking the remains That cat,"

first, i feel like i should point out that its impossible to know what comes after "that cat" so in actuality, we dont know if in english the sentence would start with that (for the record: in japanese you could say "i hate cats because of that cat" but the order of the words would be completely different, so saying "that cat is the reason why i hate cats" would be a more literal translation of the sentence, in accordance to the order of sentence parts. i dont speak japanese, nor am i knowledgeable and articulate enough to explain myself, but the basic gist is that the translators translated what they could read). second, i genuinely have no clue what "settle it down" means in this context, i feel like that doesnt make any sense, so ill just ignore it. lastly, this post will take this diary entry as "truth" aka what irisu experienced as a kid.

this diary entry shines light on something that isnt explored very well in the diary entries in uujima's suicidal rabbit diary: he talked to irisu... so i assume. "showed up to help one day" at least to me implies they talked. taking into account the small comment about the bet, we can assume that was just a half-assed excuse uujima made up to be with her, but the fact that this is never mentioned ever again leads me to think uujima simply forgot about the small lie. this wouldnt be important if not for the fact that he cant remember irisu from back when they were both kids during the events of his diary txt file as college students. we know this because he never mentions remembering her from anywhere. and youd think decapitating a rabbit to make said girl more sociable would be enough reason to remember her, right? in the in-game diary excerpts, he claims to have always watched her from afar... but this seems suspicious to me.

many claim that uujima didnt actually kill uutarou, because one of the diary entries say that the rabbit was lying on the floor of the cage, dead. but the last ripped diary page mentions he saw the rabbit's last moments. so which is the truth?

there are other things that make me suspect that uujima has memory problems. he seems not to remember why he "saw"/"sees" the rabbit's red eyes in his sleep, and there is an instance of him apparently not remembering the foreign picture books of dying rabbits. his general personality also points to that of a person who's careless about what happens to himself (like being suicidal, but careful in more "important" matters, such as thinking of irisu's plan backfiring on them due to evidence and such), so i cant help but think that whether the rabbit was killed or was already dead is honestly rather ambiguous.

i dont know if all these contradictions are the result of the writer/s not writing the details properly into the game, translation issues, or just purposeful writing that puts emphasis on lost memory. of note, there are different instances of canonical material (as in, both found in and from the game, as well as dataminable files) that refer to the boys as satoru and takeru, but sometimes theyre satoshi and takeshi. in the end, im just left confused.

I remember a lot of people didn't like him at all, or is it like a mendela affect.

I don't think it's a Mandela Effect, I actually feel the same!!

This is pure speculation from my part, but I think there are a couple factors that played a role in this and that are partially correlated.

I have a feeling that Austria was even less liked in the Western fandom compared to Japan back in the day, like he was never a fan favourite but it feels like he had a more solid niche in Japanese spaces compared to Western ones, based on the number of fanarts and doujins.

I think this might've been partially caused by a dissonance between his original characterization and his FunAnimation one. We can assume that, whether Austria was well-received or not, every single Japanese fan was able to make this choice based on the source material in its intended form. The anime already makes him come across as more one-dimensional than the manga (this is true for most characters obviously, not just him), but at least when he's on screen he has his own intended lines, attitude and personality (fun fact: it seems Hima really wanted to give him a slight lisp because he was voiced that way even in the Hetalia Drama CD from 2008, which was pretty much a fanwork albeit supervised by Hima himself who also wrote the scripts using the strips as a base).

This, however, isn't true for every single Western Hetalia fan. I'm pretty sure that the majority of Western fans came from the anime (myself included), and after 2010 this meant for many, probably most native English speakers that they came from FunAnimation's dubbing of it. FunAnimation's Dub, especially when it comes to the first seasons, has many adaptation issues and deliberately changed dialogue for the sake of making it more 'palatable' to a Western audience (this would lead to extremely questionable choices, much more serious than Austria's writing, but I won't go there since it's beyond the point) ... This often came at the expense of accuracy, and this reflected in the way the characters come across.

Austria was one of the characters who ended up with the shorter end of the stick in this process. Up to his first appearance, he comes across as less sympathetic than he does in the og material (if og!Austria scolds Chibitalia because he should be more careful, which might imply a twisted form of concern but concern nonetheless, dub!Austria is only interested in establishing his own supremacy by affirming that he's strict with rules), and he comes across as generically more willingly snobbish than he's supposed to be. One of Austria's traits, especially in early content, is that he has an aura of innocence in the way he expects others to serve him. He doesn't act that way out of snobbism or sheer authority, but because he's so used to it being that way that he's out of touch with the concept of being independent. There's an air of 'hetare' about it, and I'm using this word because if I recall correctly Hima himself described him that way once.

In the Japanese dubbing, you can feel that in how he's voiced, he has a rather soft tone, there are times where he sounds tired and done more than angry, and even when he's angry, to me he comes across as a whiny, sympathetic loser more than a spoiled snobbish brat.

In the English dub, his lines are generally drier, more authoritative, sometimes directly offensive and vulgar (something that is pretty OOC of him, like he canonically went out of his way to try and say "naked" without actually saying it before he gave up on Germany's confusion and said it bluntly, how can I believe he'd say "I guess Germany's asshole isn't all that cozy" with a straight face?? Pls). His voice isn't soft, he loses that slightly laid-back, oblivious quality and it's replaced with someone who does come across as unpleasantly full-on snobbish and sometimes even mean in his way of interacting with others.

... Now, it's no secret that I personally despise Dub!Austria, but I'm not saying that it's necessarily something everyone agrees on. There are people who like/love Austria and watched the dubbed anime first, and obviously I can't invalidate that lol

... But Dub!Austria is a somewhat distinct nuance of the character compared to og!Austria, and I do believe it's even more of an acquired taste.

This leads me to the other point that I think contributed to Austria having been a pretty disliked character (especially, I mean there's still a good chunk of people who seem to dislike him but definitely less) back in the day: the fandom's average age.

I think Austria is one of those characters that are more easily appreciated when you're older.

May God forgive me for this comparison but, kinda like Squidward, you know? 😂 This isn't a random comparison actually, it's that I came across some meme that basically said, as a kid you love Spongebob because you identify with him, and find Squidward weird and boring because he's the adult you're not ... But as an adult, your perspective shifts and you start to relate more to Squidward and therefore you might wonder "man, has Spongebob always been so annoying or is it me who changed?".

Dub!Austria pushes on this specific aspect of Austria's character even more than his og depiction by reducing his bishie/moe-related personality traits. This misinterpretation of his character causes him to come across as, in a way, more realistically unpleasant in how he expects so much from others when he seems to give little in return but unkind remarks and an air of superiority.

Og!Austria is already, in my opinion, more palatable for an older audience compared to the average middle-schooler, and this is twice as true for Dub!Austria due to what I said above.

Because the average age of Hetalia fans back in the day was generally low, I think this impacted the perception many (regardless of whether they were Japanese or not) had of Austria as a character. In the West, this phenomenon was amplified further due to FunAnimation's adaptation choices.

As for the current times, I don't think Austria is super popular, but he seems indeed more well-received than he used to be. I think it might indeed have to do with the average age in the fandom having risen, and possibly the first dubbed seasons not necessarily being most people's enter point for Hetalia anymore (though if you haven't watched them you totally should, and possibly subbed but whatever//).

I think it's because Nations lack inherent free will when it comes to their own Country's politics and fate. Regardless of their personal sentiment, it has been shown multiple times that they cannot revolt against the established power until their people revolt first and successfully enough to witness the emerging of another leader/boss (whether it's one single person or a group of people). It seems a Personification cannot truly exist without always having someone to obey to, which I guess betrays the fact that Himaruya isn't an anarchist - though it's also de facto true? All human establishments have a guide, whether forcibly or by peer recognition ... We are inherently social animals, and with that comes the need for hierarchy to navigate our society. Family is inherently the first form of hierarchy and 'regulated society' we get acquainted with ever since we're babies, so it's pretty much ingrained in our nature (we sort of inherited it from apes, too, after all animals living in hierarchy groups are pretty much living in very rudimentary forms of tribes - and Countries are basically tribes on a much larger scale).

Anyways,

This need of always having a boss to obey to can be seen very well with Russia: forced to help the monarchy in the bloodbath of the repressed manifestation and failed revolution of 1905, and despite that he would later be crowned as the Personification of the USSR and serve the side he had been previously forced to shoot less than 20 years later.

As this old strip seems to suggest, despite lacking free will, a Personification still has a human side, they aren't mere tools or vases, so the relationship they have with their own people and government can be very complex as they are aware of their inescapable role but also have their own emotions and inner world to deal with. This is, personally, why I think Personifications prefer to engage with each other and tend to mentally disassociate from human doings, because otherwise their mental state would get even worse as their relationship with their own people and government often implies the frustration of feeling like a puppet, sense of guilt, delusions of persecution (as shown above, because I guess often times especially when things aren't going well, many humans confuse the Personification with their own government assuming they're the same thing) and so on.

Another shown example is France, taking pride in the stylish and rich fashion and lifestyle of his ruling class before the Revolution of 1789, yet later being forced to adopt and quickly finding new pride in the more sober style adopted in Napoleonic times.

The way I personally see it, is that Personifications are forced to always have a leader to obey to, in some shape, because that's truly just what human nature is like on a larger scale. Even when in 'revolution' times, most humans always seek a leader, a guru, someone whose words, drive and judgement they can be confronted with - and they usually become the new government, whether de jure or de facto.

Personifications are also implied to have no voting rights, even nowadays, because it is not their job to decide. They represent their own people, but do not technically count as an individual of their own when it comes to geopolitics, so they cannot take any important decision in their own hands. All they can do is respect the times and wishes of their people and obey their boss (which acts as an intermediary between other humans and the Personification), whether happily or begrudgingly, for as long as it takes for their people to find the motivation, cohesion and strength overthrowing a government takes. And in that case, only once that happened, a Personification can obey the new government.

I think, the only scenario in which Personifications aren't as strictly tied to the orders of their own government is, paradoxically, when they've been conquered by another Nation. In that case, it seems that the Personification of the conqueror Nation becomes the intermediary between their own boss and the conquered Personification, with the conquered's legitimate government losing power (at least to a degree) in these Personification-boss dynamics. So in that case you get Personification-Personification hierarchy dynamics.

[Note from Future!Me: this post got too long because I started rambling and checking notes for the Brexit and SpaPort Chapters, sorry!]

I think that'd be helpful but it'd resent from the sample pool being all from the Tumblr fanbase community (which I don't think is the majority of the Western fandom..?), which might have some inside biases and trends that don't necessarily reflect the Hetalia fandom outside of here. Translated Gangsta chapters are also being released by different blogs because h*tascans is a bit far behind afaik, so this might influence the potential exposure too.

Notes themselves also do not necessarily reflect the real engagement because some people might be reading Hetalia without having a Tumblr account or they might avoid to heart the posts (you know, some people are still afraid of admitting they're into Hetalia). A views counter would probably be a little more accurate, but even then it still isn't a very safe way of determining whether Hetalia is doing well or bad chapter by chapter for the Western fandom.

As for the Eastern fandom (and a small percentage of the Western one), surely Hetalia is doing well enough with them since World Stars has been running since 2014 and merch has never stopped coming out (afaik?).

You got me curious about the average number of notes in the infamous Brexit Chapters as opposed to the SpaPort chapters, though (I think all of Gangsta is too new for the data to be considered 'final', especially the last Rusita chapter which probably blew up a bit but it has been less than a week, so yeah): • Brexit Arc Notes, as of 4 August 2024 • Chapter 191: 4139 Notes [25 July 2016] - Chapter 415: 935 Notes [17 Feb 2022] Chapter 416: 594 Notes [24 Feb 2022] Chapter 417: 612 Notes [3 Mar 2022] Chapter 418: 645 Notes [10 Mar 2022] Chapter 419: 930 Notes [17 Mar 2022] Chapter 420: 950 Notes [24 Mar 2022] - Chapter 467: 1177 Notes [9 Mar 2023] Chapter 473: 1171 Notes [20 April 2023] Chapter 474: 727 Notes [27 April 2023] Chapter 475: 368 Notes [4 May 2023] Chapter 476: 459 Notes [18 May 2023] Chapter 477: 612 Notes [25 May 2023] Chapter 478: 571 Notes [1st June 2023] Chapter 479: 733 Notes [8 June 2023] Chapter 480: 757 Notes [15 June 2023] Chapter 481: 1047 Notes [22 June 2023] Chapter 482: 664 Notes [29 June 2023] Chapter 483: 810 Notes [6 July 2023] Chapter 484: 523 Notes [13 July 2023]

(Yes the Brexit Arc didn't feel insanely long, it was insanely and inexplicably long)

• SpaPort/Olive Oil Test Chapters Notes as of 4 August 2024 • Chapter 428: 1192 Notes [19 May 2022] Chapter 429: 801 Notes [26 May 2022] Chapter 430: 632 Notes [2 June 2022] Chapter 431: 623 Notes [9 June 2022]

I'm gonna add that Chapter 432, which has Gerita Interactions (something HWS was kinda scarce of at the time) has 1251 Notes.

What I noticed, by scrolling through chapters and glancing at notes (I had to scroll through some unrelated ones too because Hetarchive's HWS chapters index is incomplete and I had to cross-check on Shonen Jump Plus' site as I searched for the translations), is that interest seems to peak when there are settings and situations that are considered Hetalia classics - Main Cast or Europeans messing with each other especially in Conference setting, or historically but of course if no Main Cast is involved they tend to do quite worse -, but then progressively sinks when people realize HWS is no APH and the situations tend to be either too dragged or too fast, verbose, underwhelming, sanitarized and with characters acting like shells of their real selves, serving the educational trivia they are describing instead of that trivia being integrated in scenes that actually make sense for their Hetalia selves.

Peaks often happen at the change of setting, especially if characters that are loved a lot or were greatly anticipated show up again, or if something fandom-appealing happens (Chapter 419-420 had Philippines and some other ASEAns appear again after over 20 chapters, and 419 also had some light GerFra messing around). It's as if people hope for the new thing to be good, but then kind of lose faith and grow bored with it until the new change. I included Chapter 467 in the Brexit Arc but it was actually a short, yonkoma-style chapter featuring the UK Bros sharing their opinion over England, which I think explains the peak in notes. Chapter 466 also did very well for today's standards (1087 notes) and it featured the Italies with a focus on Romano, but I believe the one thing that made it blow up a little compared to the two previous chapters which were part of the same arc (763 and 640 notes respectively) was Romano being shown singing at the end.

Anyways, back to the Brexit Arc, Chapter 473 picks back the Brexit topic and features the UK Bros like Chapter 467 and does similar numbers (1177 and 1171). Chapter 474 sees quite a sink at 727 Notes, and no wonder, because that's where the entire arc turns into all the characters acting weirdly to fit as visual description of a mere percentage number instead of each getting a bit space to truly integrate that trivia, if possible, within their own character and flesh it out in a proper gag. Now, credit where it's due, this is not the first time Hima crowds multiples characters and make them say a one-line that describes a historical or numerical hard-fact, but there is a difference between this being a random part of a broader, fleshed-out situation (ie: in 'Maria Theresa and the Seven Years' War', or 'Lithuania's Out-Sourcing Part 3') and it making up like, over 50% of the actual arc. Honestly, Brexit itself was just a pretty lame thing to build such a long Arc from if you ask me, like I don't think there was objectively enough content also because it's too close in time to nowadays ... And the "Let's Interview Countries About What They Think of Brexit!" format with a human journalist asking Countries around just- wasn't a good idea. Because it basically trapped the characters into a rather rigid scheme. It was like, fanservice where everyone appears at least in one panel at the expense of no one truly mattering. And it definitely didn't pay off, considering many people consider the Brexit Arc pretty underwhelming if not bad. Chapter 476 (459 Notes) has freaking 12 characters in 5 pages for God's sake! And 8 of them are being interviewed. It's too much for one single chapter that is made up of 5 pages. Hetalia traditionally has a fast-paced humor, but here there isn't even humor, this is just characters saying something and then disappearing again. There is no truly constructed gag around their opinion, nothing comparable to classic Hetalia humor. This is why some people feel that many parts of HWS feel 'sanitized', and the Brexit Arc shines particularly bad when it comes to this. And btw, I'm not saying that each of those characters should've had a designated gag, the point is that quality should prevail over quantity. It'd have been okay not to feature everyone, but at least those appearing should've had some actual substance to their appearance. Otherwise it's just frustrating.

Sorry, not to Austria-posting here because it's out of topic, but "at least try to hide the fact that you aren't remotely interested!?" is such an amazing line because it kind of describes what's the issue with the "Brexit Interview" format and why many characters feel like hollow shells of themselves in here especially// Anyways, I think the following chapters resented a lot from the huge mess Ch476 is. Not that the rest of the arc is amazing, but I do believe that for instance Ch479 handles the interview format better by having less characters. Cyprus also sort of throws shade at how the interviewer is asking everyone and their mother:

(note how Greece and Spain, who seem to be more acquainted with Arthur than Cyprus, look like they're sort of disagreeing with his words - which sound pretty much like the standard description you'd make of someone you don't know super well but don't want to offend.) Whenever Hima does stuff like this in HWS, I cannot help but wonder if deep down there's some criticizing of editors' requests between the lines.

Chapter 481 finally gets another peak at 1047 Notes! And guess what? It has some rather unhinged France flirting with Germany:

As well as Poland appearing again after many chapters (as well as Liet who had briefly appeared in Ch474), which probably helped the notes too:

After this peak, the Brexit Arc only has a few more chapters left and they do pretty bad in terms of notes, with the last chapter (which only features Hungary and Ireland) stopping at 523 Notes, after a chapter that did sort of decently (810 Notes) featuring the UK Bros and the proper conclusion of the Arc (the Ireland/Hungary interaction is more of an aftermath extra thing I think).

...

As for the SpaPort Chapters, they sort of follow the pattern I've come to theorize as I looked through the Brexit Chapters. First Chapter does incredibly well: with 1192 Notes, it is the chapter with the highest amount of notes among those taken into account, except for Chapter 191 which was released back in 2016 (where Brexit is first mentioned, and that chapter has 4139 Notes, pretty insane for today's average although it indeed had a lot more time to pile up notes I guess).

The reason why it sort of blew up is blatant, and I think it partially also had to do with how, back then especially, there was a trend of people claiming that Himaruya had changed for the best and sort of 'disowned' the unhingedness and sexual ambiguities of pre-World Stars Hetalia (and, to a certain degree, also of some parts of early HWS, admittedly). Many people, especially older fans who enjoy early content (like me >w<), felt extremely validated by this SpaPort Chapter because it gave us hope to see content similar to back then again and also confirmed the suspicion that Himaruya didn't actually change all that much but that the 'issue' (if you may call it that way) most likely lied in Shonen Jump Plus' direction instead. It also gave quite the euphoria to SpaPort Shippers because this chapter went against people who claimed Spain and Portugal were meant to be siblings and that shipping them was extremely problematic. When canon source does something some parts of the fandom frown upon and shame other fans for, it always gives validation to the other party, and in sanitarized HWS times, it was always a much needed fresh breath of air.

... But alas, this is still World Stars, and after the initial hype this chapter brought, as always, Shonen Jump kinda drags Himaruya down and remind him he can't do anything that crosses his mind lol

Chapter 429 still does decently (810 Notes) although it sinks from the previous one. I think this can be explained by how, once again, in World Stars' fashion, the initial good idea gets drowned into a sea of educational text.

Despite Spain's lovely face coated in olive oil and Portugal's sort of spicy attitude, it is still a bunch of trivia that, rather than being acted out in funny or intense gags, are simply illustrated by static characters and lots of text. We got thrown back into the World Stars Experience(tm) and, even though this chapter still holds up kind of well thanks to the overall setting, it starts turning into a disappointment because we realized it was not much about Spain and Portugal's relationship, but rather about Spain and Portugal teaching you trivia about olive oil and other Countries' ranking.

... And so, the last two chapters sink more and more, getting 632 and 623 Notes each.

This is probably a pattern that isn't consistent throughout the entirety of World Stars (or earlier content, but that'd be harder to investigate), but it seems to be proven true for at least the chapters/arc I took into consideration.

As for Gangsta, it is too early to truly get an insight of its reception among fans because it's still ongoing, but people were indeed extremely curious about it! The translation of Chapter1 (511) collected 2258 Notes from February 8 2024, despite getting potentially obstacled in circulation by the fact that it wasn't posted nor worked on by hetascanlations.

No Gangsta Chapter has topped that yet on Tumblr, or has hit over 1000 notes in general. There's also the problem of the translation having gotten a bit fragmented in the first weeks because Chapters 512~515 were translated by both zakuramochi and withnofreetime and only from Ch516 onwards it seems to have found a stable home on @withnofreetime. Either way, it's even harder to keep track of engagement for Gangsta because of this fragmentation, and something I haven't taken into consideration is that there might be other translation floating around in other socials and communities, such as verusmayaii's on Twitter. Here's a MasterList of Gangsta fantranslation sources that @hetalianhistorian is keeping up to date, in case someone needs it :3

Huhhh well.

This answer went places, didn't it? xD I didn't plan to write or research this much, but you got me curious to check out the notes chapter by chapter especially for the Brexit Arc anon!!

I wonder if anyone has gotten this far in reading//// If anyone did, I feel very honored!! Have some ice cream~

Hi, sure!

2ptalia has no actual content in terms of chapters, but the concept itself as well as several 2p Designs are canon. Himaruya just basically shared several designs and claimed he had drawn these characters reimagining them as if they ran "an evil organization". The term "2p" refers to the trend of several multiplayer games (such as the Smash Bros. series) to give the 2nd player (the "2P") a character with a different color scheme in case they select the same character as Player One.

Japan, Italy and Germany are the only characters to have been given a canon color palette for their 2p Versions. The most common portrayal of 2p!America, 2p!England and 2p!France originates from their 2p!Nyo!Counterparts, which unlike the guys have canon designs:

Nyo!China and Nyo!Russia received 2p designs too, but interestingly the fandom didn't seem to have used them much as a base for the most popular portrayal of their male 2p counterparts. Nyo!Canada and Nyo!Prussia received a 2p colored artwork too:

There are, then, sketches that have "2p" in their file name. These are believed to be the canon 2p portrayals of the Allies:

I think the one on the left is meant to be 1p!Russia for reference as Hima worked on the 2p design. I think the final design for 2p!Russia would've been the one on the bottom. Note the lack of scarf probably standing for him having lost it completely.

Interestingly, the tentative 2p!China design on the right seems to have been repurposed as a base for Gangsta!China, judging from their hairstyle.

Austria possibly also received a canon 2p as he appears in a sketch alongside what are pretty clearly 2p!Italy and 2p!Germany despite the lack of color. It is unclear whether Japan is meant to be his 2p counterpart or not, however, since his outfit looks closer to the one Kiku wears:

The same blog entry also has a couple more sketches which do not appear to portray any 2p. Another artwork that is believed to be a 2p is this alternate coloring for Poland, as it had "2p color" written beneath as a description of the picture:

Interestingly, this is the very first mention of 2Ps, as the blog entry with Poland dates back to 2008, whereas everything (well, the little we have of it) else belonging to 2ptalia was posted between 2011 and 2013.