[Hetalia] New characters! ✿❀ ✿
After years of possible sketches and hints, Hetalia finally has Czech Republic and Slovakia, as of yesterday's strip.
Original | Hetascans translation
Well, it's nice to have final designs, and a strip to go with them! Even if the designs are much different from what I was hoping for. ...I'm rather glad that I only wrote the one fic with Czechia; it would have been harder to adjust if I'd invested more words into these two.
There's a lot of excitement about new characters so far. Also some criticism, though fortunately what I have seen of that has been relatively level-headed, mainly relating to some inaccuracies in the strip, as well as places where the usual portrayal of national character doesn't match up with these particular interpretations. One example from Czech tumblr user Sparklingdali's tag comments condenses most of what I've seen.
#oooookay #:D their dynamics at least are great #descriptions not true #czech serious? #'can be strangely obsessed with odd little issues' HAHAHA this sounds like it was written by a czech #always been someone's underlings: NO #hyphen war was in 1990 not in 1918/9 #we don't hate each other's languages now but we had language disputes I guess #I mean you can't really hate slovak when it sounds almost the same as czech #still better than I expected
And another commentary from Sparklingdali and Dokudoki, in this post, which is too long to copy, but expands on the above.
Main concerns: the introduction strip doesn't get their historical power statuses right, as it forgets Bohemia's former status as a kingdom. The strip seems to take language-related teasing too far, interpreting it as dislike, when this really is not the norm. There's also some concern that Czechia's profile doesn't make reference to the national stereotype that Czechs have an odd sense of humour, and instead possibly implies that she's a little stuffy and formal. And then of course there is the date inaccuracy of the hyphen debate.
While I'm not an expert on Czech and Slovakia, these all seem like pretty reasonable concerns to me. However, they've only appeared in one strip so far, so hopefully these details will be clarified/corrected in the future. And some character-related things could come out in further strips, even though they aren't mentioned in the profiles, such as Czech humour. One thing that surprised me is that there was no mention of either of them being good friends with Poland, as that is something that I expected to see. But there is plenty of room to explore that in a later strip - really, it should be its own strip - so hopefully we'll get something with that eventually.
Himaruya creates a lot of one-off characters who appear once in a strip and then don't really show up much again (India, Australia, and New Zealand, for example). But Czech and Slovakia have been in the works for years, and in addition to vague ideas in blog notes, there have been a few draft designs from 2011 (first and second, both down the page) and 2012 (here). So, hopefully he will do something with them beyond this one strip. All of their neighbouring countries already have designs, so finding something to do with them should be pretty easy. But at this point, it's a matter of waiting and seeing.
And of course, there's already some fanart: ✿ ❀ ✿ ❀ ✿ ❀ ✿
And one by ctcsherry, which gets special mention because it's gorgeous - In traditional clothing Go look at it, it's beautiful!
This entry was originally posted at http://yuuago.dreamwidth.org/3412416.html. You can comment here or at the original entry.
Original | Hetascans translation
Well, it's nice to have final designs, and a strip to go with them! Even if the designs are much different from what I was hoping for. ...I'm rather glad that I only wrote the one fic with Czechia; it would have been harder to adjust if I'd invested more words into these two.
There's a lot of excitement about new characters so far. Also some criticism, though fortunately what I have seen of that has been relatively level-headed, mainly relating to some inaccuracies in the strip, as well as places where the usual portrayal of national character doesn't match up with these particular interpretations. One example from Czech tumblr user Sparklingdali's tag comments condenses most of what I've seen.
#oooookay #:D their dynamics at least are great #descriptions not true #czech serious? #'can be strangely obsessed with odd little issues' HAHAHA this sounds like it was written by a czech #always been someone's underlings: NO #hyphen war was in 1990 not in 1918/9 #we don't hate each other's languages now but we had language disputes I guess #I mean you can't really hate slovak when it sounds almost the same as czech #still better than I expected
And another commentary from Sparklingdali and Dokudoki, in this post, which is too long to copy, but expands on the above.
Main concerns: the introduction strip doesn't get their historical power statuses right, as it forgets Bohemia's former status as a kingdom. The strip seems to take language-related teasing too far, interpreting it as dislike, when this really is not the norm. There's also some concern that Czechia's profile doesn't make reference to the national stereotype that Czechs have an odd sense of humour, and instead possibly implies that she's a little stuffy and formal. And then of course there is the date inaccuracy of the hyphen debate.
While I'm not an expert on Czech and Slovakia, these all seem like pretty reasonable concerns to me. However, they've only appeared in one strip so far, so hopefully these details will be clarified/corrected in the future. And some character-related things could come out in further strips, even though they aren't mentioned in the profiles, such as Czech humour. One thing that surprised me is that there was no mention of either of them being good friends with Poland, as that is something that I expected to see. But there is plenty of room to explore that in a later strip - really, it should be its own strip - so hopefully we'll get something with that eventually.
Himaruya creates a lot of one-off characters who appear once in a strip and then don't really show up much again (India, Australia, and New Zealand, for example). But Czech and Slovakia have been in the works for years, and in addition to vague ideas in blog notes, there have been a few draft designs from 2011 (first and second, both down the page) and 2012 (here). So, hopefully he will do something with them beyond this one strip. All of their neighbouring countries already have designs, so finding something to do with them should be pretty easy. But at this point, it's a matter of waiting and seeing.
And of course, there's already some fanart: ✿ ❀ ✿ ❀ ✿ ❀ ✿
And one by ctcsherry, which gets special mention because it's gorgeous - In traditional clothing Go look at it, it's beautiful!
This entry was originally posted at http://yuuago.dreamwidth.org/3412416.html. You can comment here or at the original entry.