Title: Hetalia Season 5,  The Beautiful World

U. S. Distributor: Funimation

U. S. Release Date: July 22, 2014

Format: DVD, 125 minutes, 25 episodes

Genre: Comedy

Age Rating: 17+

Overall Personal Rating: A-

Synopsis: 

Series overview: Hetalia is a comedy that make fun of many of the countries of the world. Each character is a personified version of a country, composed of stereotypes associated with each. For example, the guy named America loves hamburgers while Italy loves pasta.

Season 5:

Italy gets a new tank and Germany creates a coffee substitute before everyone goes to an academy. Germany, Italy and Japan decide to check up on all of the clubs (no matter how stupid).

In between shorts, there were cute new rice ball characterizations of the countries.

Russia was having a difficult time as other countries bully him. Chibi Romano is being a brat. Japan travels to attend Americas, it is a total culture clash. Americans don’t act different whether they are home or not. Then there are obvious food and activity differences.

There is internet trouble around the world. Blogs and websites are being hacked, one of the main countries seem involved but play innocent. Next scandal happens when embarrassing photos are getting around and causing havoc.

The group is having a little friendly(-ish) competition with holidays and even more so over who is the best at horror and thriller films.

Germany struggles to understand other people, the emotions and social interactions have him confused What is it that they mean? Specifically what is Italy’s intention?

Estonia’s dream brings a new way to enjoy the characters.

Commentary:

I definitely enjoyed seeing another season of Hetalia.  It has been awhile since I watched any myself, but it definitively remains popular, as both a series and a fandom.

Overall, there is a bit of a change in Hetalia. The animation style features more realistic, or perhaps older, looking characters.

The script seemed to be different too. There seemed to be more current pop cultural references and less of the knowledgeably historic points. While the pop cultural jokes were quite funny,  one of my favorite reasons of liking Hetalia was that it taxed my knowledge of history, and I could read the notes or look somethings up before re-watching.  I’m able to learn something in a fun way. I don’t mean that this was missing, just a little less saturated. I always say never skip the historical notes. It makes the humor more complex, explain things you don’t currently know and lets you understand were the writers were coming from.

There were plenty of smaller countries, all represented with there stereotypes in full force. Netherlands , Belgium, Greece, Turkey and others get their episodes.

Complaints? Italy’s voice. In the beginning, it was too high and fast making him hard to understand. Maybe I got used to it, or maybe it was toned down because the annoying quality faded until I had nearly forgotten about it.

Who do I think Hetalia is for? Well, I think it should be a broad range but I know from those around me, it is mostly tweens and teens. I don’t see this as a shoned, but the excited fandom seems to be female.

It was a fun afternoon, traveling the world with the guys and gals, definitely good to see them all again. If you liked any of the previous Hetalia’s, I really think you like this too.

Extras:

I had the limited edition, this comes with a rice ball bandanna and a set of stickers.

The extras on the DVD include commentary with the voice actors. It is mostly fun chatter, but occasionally has interesting bits of production notes and personal opinions.

Overall Grade: A-