Review of Hetalia Axis Powers: Paint it, White!

The concept of a Hetalia Axis Powers movie is intriguing in the sense that the movie medium would allow it to have an actual plot. Of course, the short clips present in the adapted series are still scattered throughout. Largely similar, they’re often self-indulgent in their own attempts at being funny, with little correlation to the integral storyline aside from the occasional mention that it’s related to the main series in some way. Nevertheless, the new medium doesn’t change the fact that the presence of little gag clips only point out that the Hetalia Axis Powers Movie doesn’t really feel like a movie. When formulabecomes stale, it only becomes a matter of time before a half-baked idea were to take its place. At best, it’s worth watching to see how Hetalia could have any semblance of a plot, though it even struggles with this as well.

The new plot premise involves a mysterious alien species who are painting the entire world white, hence the film’s title. This may seem like a simple concept—and it is—but its attempts at emanating the parent series are weak, and therefore stale as a result. Like before, the main personalities of the anthropomorphized nations are made clear in the first five minutes of the film. The eccentric nature of the cast leads the scriptwriting to prioritize them, and thus cement their character interactions as the main crux of the film. Doing what they do best, their bickering when challenged by the notion that they may need to work together persists as a good point of departure for the exposition. What follows is an oscillation between the characters plotting their next course of action in a similar manner to the exposition and actually going out and fighting the aliens. Given that the resolution of it is quite simple in practice, the film had to dumb down the characters even further so that the enacting aspect of war is further drawn out. Even then, the plot is largely absent of noticeable plot holes, plot conveniences, and plot contrivances; instead, the film just comes off as rather aimless.

Elsewhere, the use of cutaway gags along with a few training scenes helps the film regain energy for the climax. The humor is perhaps the film’s biggest downside, as it’s not really funny. Most of it could be described as low-brow history buff humor, and although Hetalia could be described as such, a noticeable dip in quality can be seen in the movie. Stupid character interactions aside, most of the jokes made in the movie simply beat a horse to death even further. Wow, Switzerland is neutral; wow, British food is bad; wow, Germany hates Jews. In fact, the film even bothered to make all of these jokes more than once if the first time wasn’t enough to drill these bottom of the barrel jokes into the viewer’s head. At times, there were moments that were funnier where the intention was to not be as funny simply because the main appeal is rooted within the characters rather than the historical associations. At the very least, the movie had one joke that was at least amusing, which involved the proposed relationship between France and Britain. Of course, the original series had a fair share of both these types of jokes as well; however, they are much more substantiated by the amount of content it had.

The characters are largely static in contrast with the parent series. As mentioned previously, the film takes the time to remind the audience of the main group’s personalities again. The most well known of such includes Italy wanting to surrender when given the chance, Germany being a tough guy, Japan being polite, so on and so forth. Other personalities don’t receive nearly as much screen time, such as France, Britain, and Russia. Like the parent series, Hetalia has a clear bias when it comes to picking favorites, and the movie similarly doesn’t shy away from that. Nonetheless, it makes sense that the film’s brevity of an hour and a half only made room for so much character. The correlation of the film’s favorites being the former axis is similarly seen in everyone’s character interactions, such as Germany being the only competent one and whatnot. Surprisingly, France’s and Britain’s dynamic is a bit different from my recollections from the main series, though this could be due to the fact that everyone is fighting off the aliens instead of other nations. Iceland made an appearance at the very beginning of the movie, though his role in the film was largely substantial and was quickly forgotten about afterward. Usually, the characterization wouldn’t be anything special when compared to the main series; however, the Flanderization and the deus ex machina become a bit hard to ignore.

If the presence of a plot wasn’t enough to give the movie a noticeable difference, then perhaps a theme would. Despite that, the film’s hostility towards assimilation—which they state outright—is proposed as the alien’s main goal. The countries embodying national pride are the antithesis to this, so it clears up the motivations of the aliens. It’s not exactly subtle, which is why the viewer could’ve already guessed what the aliens were motivated by when they started sucking the color out of planet Earth. At the end of the day, Hetalia has always had some sort of agenda to back it up; in this case, there’s a spacey en-doubleyou-oh globalist boogeyman at large.

The artwork seems to have improved a bit, and this can mostly be seen through the usage of CGI. This can be found with the alien blob things, whose CGI movements are the weird lumbering gate they tend to do. Additionally however, there would be the occasional “wild” movement such as a head turn, or even a dance or a cheer at one point. The aliens are reminiscent of that one gray blob episode from Fairly OddParents, but without any facial features and a green antenna up top. The minor improvements in the art that include said “wild” movements could be seen as the alien’s character development, but this is merely speculation. Otherwise, the non-CGI animation had improved minimaly when compared to the main series. Movies tend to have higher budgets that get funded into a much smaller time frame, so the small improvements in the art department make sense.

Although it’s inferior to the main series in nearly every aspect, it might be worth checking out if Hetalia interests you in general. While audacious, the film is still largely formulaic when compared to what the series has been known for previously. The plot itself is relatively simple and more-so exists as a backdrop for the character interactions. Furthermore, the plot allowed for its simplistic, though not nearly as explored theme of anti-assimilation. It may try to encourage the viewer to value the diversity of each nation’s culture in respect to themselves, but given how dumbed down the characters are in this one, it may pose a bit of a challenge.