#hetalia hate

Hetalians: Massively celebrate the independence days of countries especially those that have a independence day the country had worked hard for, also celebrate great moments too like some regaining their independence days. Giving attention to countries that are usually looked over and not noticed or cared about that much and have people actually want to know about their culture and history and even want to learn the language.

Like I get it okay? I know the horrors of war, its impact on millions of people which can still be seen today. But if you've ever seen hetalia you'd know it's just 5 minute segments of almost nonsensical cracky storylines, random trivia and the only thing there you could consider history is just the origins of italy and the HRE. The main focus is how personified stereotypes interact with each other while turning it into a comedic sketch, and to compare tragedies like WWII with a five minute segment of countries reimagined as cats is honestly a bit offensive. Like get a life. There are more serious issues in hetalia that need to be solved, and if you think that attacking its fans are going to do anything, then congratulations for successfully wasting everyone's time! I hope you're real happy that you bullied a random kid on the internet and asked them to off themselves! I bet you're real proud huh

You think this is the first time nazis have been called out in the community? Because it's not. I'm not Jewish. You're right. And if Jewish people want to be mad about the situation that's fine that's not the problem. How do you expect things to get better if you keep pushing a group of people trying to do better back down? You know condemning every hetalia fan because of one group chat is unproductive right? Ah but I'm sure you don't care about don't anything productive.

I'm all for having a civil conversation. I'm all for discussing problematic aspects of hetalia, explaining my side as a fan and listening to the grievances certain groups may have with the series. I'm all for listening to productive suggestions on how to combat racism antisemitism and other forms of prejudice in the fandom. But you clearly would rather yell at fans of the low budget anime men than doing something productive

Hetalia is meant to be pure satire, you’re not meant to take anything seriously unless they enter a few emotional beats (Davie episode for example) that don’t even touch the stereotypes and rather world build. (Like on the Davie episode, it explored the fact that nations outlive humans) 

I’m part of the now present day gen, the old stuff is fucking history, I’ve heard of the shit that USED to happen in Hetalia but so far on how I’ve been here, the fandom is nothing like that anymore and whatever happened back then would not be allowed to happen now. Even if something harmful did possibly rise up, then from the looks of things the Hetalia fandom will definetly come together to stop it as we don’t tolerate this shit. 

I’ve never encountered anyone in the fandom who has actually taken the stereotypes or other things and turned them into something they actually believe in. If you really think we are like this and are so quick to take stereotypes, then really who is the real problem here. You’re also truly implying that everyone in the Hetalia fandom then are a buncha sick-minded people?

Also the fact that you accuse us of being racist when you don’t even have proper examples, one should always explain their reason on why they think of something like that, please, I’d be very glad to hear why you actually think that, and see the examples made in the PRESENT DAY that support your opinion thats actually widespread. Don’t look at the small bad sideof the fandom that every fandom has, look at the huge majority of, what you COMMONLY see.

 If you don’t tell us what we’re doing wrong, how can we fix ourselves?

Hetalia is very important to many people, it has been able to bring friends together, grow passions, in Hetalia especially you can find so much historical things and find people who geniuenly love history and culture of certain countries. In this fandom you can especially find so many people from all over the world, all sharing our love for Hetalia, all friends, if we were truly racist is it would be a called out problem by now if people indeed were massively getting hurt from it. There are many neurodivergent people who are hyperfixated on this. Many find their comfort in this series especially with what’s going on right now in the world. 

Hetalia is flawed, of course, like any other series, book, or anything in the world. Nothing is perfect, but that’s fine. 

It’s fine not to like a series, but please do not use the fandom’s tag where everyone hopes to see good things to share your dislike for it.

There is enough negativity in the world, and people deserve to not have any comfort things to be attacked. Be mature, if you don’t like it, just block the tags so make sure you don’t see content of what you hate. If this series and fandom was TRULY extremely harmful, then it would have already completely been killed off back when it started and not have 7 seasons and outright musicals, as there would have been so much more hate towards it and such.

So, it’s happening again. What’s happening again? The whole attack on the Hetalia fandom. All over places like discord and tumblr, there are people spamming tags, harassing users, and worse for liking Hetalia or posting things about Hetalia because “it’s problematic”. Now, I already made a post discussing the nazi content in Hetalia, to which there barely is any and Himaruya actually goes out of his way to avoid it. But it seems that most of the hate is calming down and there are more posts on combating hate than those causing hate. But I will continue to monitor it in the future. But I’m going to try to go over what’s happening and summarize it the best that I can and address some of the arguments that are coming up. 

So, how did this all start? 

UPDATE: The bottom part only fueled the fire. The real reason why it started is here: https://hetafacts.tumblr.com/post/186974434986/so-whats-going-on-with-the-hetalia-fandom

ALLEGEDLY (not for sure), I heard that all this started when someone found American Civil War fanart involving a slave. And yeah. It was pretty bad. The person who posted this had legitimate concerns as this art is indeed...no. This isn’t okay. Nor is it okay that the person is being harassed for calling out something that was not appropriate. I do think this user is the most civil of the group of haters and actually has some legitimate concerns. If you were one of the people who harassed them, that was incredibly crappy and you owe this person an apology. None of these people should be harassed. That’s just what they want. This fanart is really bad, but after doing some research, I saw that this art was made back in 2010. While yes, this art is very problematic, it is not representative of the current Hetalia fandom. 

See, the Hetalia fandom today is not what it used to be. Back then, it was a totally different beast. It was an AWFUL fandom and I have called it out numerous times and it was a prime example of an awful fandom. People were getting harassed over ships left and right, people were doing Nazi salutes in cosplay, there was this hate campaign on all the female characters, there were really racist and insensitive are and fanfics everywhere–like this one, and the fandom was 10x bigger than it is now. Therefore, it was a crazy dumpsterfire infested with weeaboos. It still is infested with weeaboos, but it’s not the trash hole it was back in the day. 

The series was worse too. shitty animation budgets whitewashed a lot of characters. But the new animation fixes this. The dub had nothing to do with the original and had a lot of iffy jokes, which again, was fixed in World Twinkle. Korea and Poland have been toned down. Korea hardly even shows up anymore. The creator took a step back and thought “damn. I messed up.” I also hear the “It’s called Axis Powers Hetalia so it’s automatically racist” argument too, so I’m going to clarify: That’s the name of the first season (or two seasons if you’re going off the anime) ONLY. It’s because it follows Italy in WWII and Italy was, of course, part of the Axis. The following series are called World Series, The Beautiful World, World Twinkle, and the most recent, World Stars. And before you come at me with that “Hetalia is Nazi propaganda” stuff, I already did a post addressing that. 

Yes, the fandom was awful. HOWEVER, over the years, the Hetalia fandom kind of died, if you haven’t noticed. A bunch of people left the series–which is more often than not, one of their first anime series ever–to go to series like danganronpa, or more commonly Homestuck, hence the Homestuck fandom picking up a lot of weebs from it. After Homestuck ended, it lost fewer people, but since 2015, it has been pretty empty and only recently made a comeback. Currently, the fandom is half young weeaboos and half former fans who came back for nostalgia reasons. With a lot more senpais in the fandom, the fandom is a lot tamer and not nearly as problematic as it was before because there are actually older people to keep the fandom in check. Of course, a few problematic fanworks slip through here and there, but it’s met with reprimand instead of “awww. So kawaii des”. Fanart like this is bad history now and the fandom is much smaller and has fewer garbage people. I’ve been monitoring the fandom for a while now because like many people still in it, I don’t want it to go back to its previous state. 

Yes, we have a lot of weeaboos, but that’s because Hetalia is often a lot of people’s first animes. A lot of the people in the fandom are still young and cringy. At least they will grow up and grow out of it. These people will look back at themselves in 3-4 years and say “Holy shit I was a cringelord”. Unlike the people in the Steven Universe fandom who still think it’s okay to harass people to the point of suicide over fanart. They will most likely remain assholes for a while since they are grown adults in their 20s-30s who seem to have no remorse for their actions. If we are judging all series to condemnation by their fandoms, we would need to boycott Steven Universe and Undertale too. You can’t pick on a fandom like Hetalia and ignore the fandoms you happen to be in just because you like the series. 

Call me a racist or whatever all you want, but at least I’m being civil. You don’t have to like the series. You can still believe it’s a racist piece of garbage show for all I care. All I want is for people to stop spamming the tags, stop the harassment, and just put an end to this crusade. I am more than happy to have a civil discussion with you about it if you still have more concerns. 

In conclusion, Hetalia is no worse than countryballs or countryhumans. In fact, those two series are WAY worse.

Now you see why I had to make multiple videos. But what do I know? I’m just a racist nazi clown using a rantsona to whine on YouTube. Sorry I had to rush the video, so it’s not as good as I wanted it to be, but I hope it’s enough. I know most of the discourse has blown over, but I wanted to make a video like this anyways. 

Why Hetalia’s Germany isn’t a Nazi: https://ellawritesficssometimes.tumblr.com/post/174832735552/katemarley-ellawritesficssometimes-note

Why Hetalia doesn’t glorify Japanese Imperialism : http://www.universitypublications.net/hssr/0203/pdf/H3V633.pdf 

And before you complain about the voice I use here, I like using fun voices. It makes things less boring and keeps people paying attention. You do know the average age of my audience, right? 

Another complaint from last time I want to address is my talking speed. I speak slowly on purpose I have a lot of people who watch me whose first language isn’t English. I know how hard it is to learn a language so I speak slowly so those whose English isn’t so good can understand me better. That’s very insensitive of you to complain about my speaking speed, especially if you are from an English speaking country. In your own words, check your privilege. 

Sources:

Ellawritesficssometimes’s posts: https://ellawritesficssometimes.tumblr.com/post/177326520917/unpacking-further-misconceptions-about-hetalia-in

https://ellawritesficssometimes.tumblr.com/post/176537625563/yes-because-clearly-something-that-depicts-war

https://ellawritesficssometimes.tumblr.com/post/174832735552/katemarley-ellawritesficssometimes-note

https://ellawritesficssometimes.tumblr.com/post/176861916256/why-hetalia-isnt-racist-why-it-doesnt-promote

Sand’s Paper: http://www.universitypublications.net/hssr/0203/pdf/H3V633.pdf 

https://recommendmeanime.com/american-characters-in-anime/