English Dub Review: Hetalia – World Stars “Industrial Revolution Part 1-4”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

The countries all adapt to changing times.

OUR TAKE

Oh hey, Funimation is releasing these episodes in batches of four instead of one at a time! That was nice of them, and means that we’ll be done with the season in the next batch! Unless they dub the OVAs, in which case we’ll be done after that. But this time, we’re covering the first four of the six part story about the Industrial Revolution! What I expected was some highlighting up some machinery that came into prominence during this time, but instead it’s mainly about how certain goods became popular like pottery and plates and such. Now, I’m no historian, so I could very well be talking out of my ass, but I have to imagine there were more interesting things going on in this time period than what we’re seeing here. But maybe that’s the limitations of portraying countries as cute guys and gals who can do no wrong, since it means you can’t have a whole lot of actual conflict or dive into the juicier subjects. I guess it’s no wonder that the fanart of this series back in its fandom’s heyday was willing to flesh that out and why the hype quickly cleared out when it became clear they were never going to bother with any of that. Can you imagine if they did modern day stories about Russia, China, and the US with that mindset?

Ah well, I guess that tells you where the priorities of this series lie and why it took such a long pause since the last main season a few years ago. Hetalia is only meant to be five minute chunks of history adjacent fun anyway, not some grand thesis on why things unfolded the way they did. And it certainly kept me somewhat entertained for the four separate instances of five minutes that were in these episodes, but watching them all at once in a row mainly just showed the flaws in this format of release. It would probably be better to put them into compilations that are the standard length of usual anime episodes. It would help with the pacing somewhat and not be interrupted by the thirty second credits every five minutes. They’ve made feature length movies before, so it’s not like they can’t do it! That said, we only have a few more episodes left, including the rest of the Industrial Revolution stuff, so I can’t say I’m not looking forward to seeing how this all ends.