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[verschreibsel]

Okay I mostly try to keep my journal balanced because I have friends who are into anime/manga and some who are not but I really need to talk about the issues with Hetalia dub produced by FUNimation. Rant ahead. I'll try to provide links as I go along. :)

Comments

[verschreibsel]

Exactly! If I wanted to get someone into Hetalia I would always say read the translated strips posted on the lj comm. The anime starts out rather boring (probably due to low budget they reuse a lot of animation) but it gets better. But if someone watched the dub I would seriously not want them in the fandom based only on knowing the dub because it's basically a different series.

In the hetalia_wank post the OP mentioned (and I don't think they're trolling because they're on my f-list) that the voice actors said in the Q&A that they were told to be as offensive as possible in their dubbing.

I think they just don't get that just because part of Hetalia is a little about WWII (though Holocaust etc. is never mentioned) doesn't mean it's about making a funny nazi Germany character and having him be ridiculed.

[verschreibsel]

Haha that it is.

Yes. I mean this isn't a matter of getting fans who only saw the movie adaption of a book. What if there are fans now that only saw the dub and that's enough for them. :| Well Hetalia will come out in Germany as a manga soon. I think november.

[nanima8]

Okay, now I really understand your point. They simply went to far with this. I mean, what were they thinking??
Hetalia isn't South Park, it's a series about making fun of stereotypes in a way that is acceptable and funny and definately not offending.
Every character fails in his/her own adorable way.
But the series avoided topics like the holocaust simply because it's tasteless to joke about something so horrible.
I don't know what Funimation thinks we are, but we're certainly not THAT type of people who would find this funny. They crossed the line, and I won't buy the dub anymore. D:

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Yes thank you. I didn't want to make the dub bad for you or anything and I heard that apart from those lines the dub is supposed to be really funny but personally I won't support the DVD sales even for the Japanese version with English subtitles on it.

Yes they crossed a line and this subject especially is very dear to me and I don't like any jokes about the topic. But people can like South Park for it if they want to. I'm not so far gone that I can joke about it but Hetalia was never meant fro joking about the Holocaust so it's not Hetalia anymore.

[renaissanced]

I admit I'm not familiar with Hetalia beyond seeing fanart through friends and being able to identify the main cast of characters. But this worries me. Especially with a wide spectrum of Americans (including anime fans) liking South Park/Family Guy, this has to potential to do harm.

There was a huge Hetalia meetup at the con I just went to (you saw the pics right? :3), and a friend and I were talking how it's weird that such a 'underground' (to us) series got that many fans. I guess it's not underground anymore and is approaching being a big name. I hope the American dub doesn't attract the wrong kind, especially after the horrible debacle of a few Germany's Nazi salutes down the street from Boston's Holocaust musuem. :C

[verschreibsel]

No I didn't see the pictures I think.
Well I don't care if you like South Park or Family Guy but I don't and Hetalia was never about that kind of humour no matter what people who dislike it say.

Yeah exactly like I said. If you're a fan of only the dub I wouldn't want you in that kind of fandom I was in when Hetalia was more "underground" as you put. It has gotten big in Germany as well. Last year I was at a book fair and there were three Cosplayers and it's a giant hall full of cosplayers and they were so happy to be recognized. Then one year later everything was full of Hetalia cosplayers. The fandom has grown a lot since the anime came out and made it easier to get into it than hunt down scanlated webcomic strips. And of course the manga is being published in America (and Germany soon too).

sorry for the tl;dr I'm really upset by this.

[renaissanced]

Don't worry about the tl;dr, you're fine. ♥♥♥

[verschreibsel]

ah good. btw I did see your pictures. I totally forgot haha :) sorry about that

[sturmig]

Whoa, now I'm sorta glad studying and the job-hunt have kept me away from fandom for some time. '__'; WTH is up with this? What could they possibly have been thinking? -_-

[verschreibsel]

Well the official story is that it's to be appealing to the audience and in one article posted the voice actors said that the producers told them to just be as insulting as possible until they said that the voice actors could stop.

Hetalia already had an audience and while some may enjoy this kind of humour and the kind the original Hetalia has that doesn't mean that changing the series so completly is okay. In my opinion at least.