"aren't y'all exaggerating about how bad
Hetalia's effect on ppl was?"
no bc there were a shit ton of cosplayers that made jokes out of real historical events bc of the hot yaois TM...see below https://twitter.com/plazynoodles/status/1319311441334358016

Like okay, I was 13 years old and got into Hetalia because I saw people drawing gay fanart of these characters. I hyperfixated & ended up seeing ppl say the revolutionary was was like a breakup & France, Spain and Prussia were known as the "bad touch trio"..

Like surface level it probably would seem harmless, ppl try to personify things all the time. but the anime pretty boy woobifying events of WW2 is...hm. not to mention There were so many weirdos around making AUs based off traumatic events

Like I remember the good times had, the nostalgia of being into a series that...I THOUGHT was unifying and educational at the time, being a child and everything, but looking back on it it's p horrifying what was normalized

Now I know a lot of ppl are capable of critically consuming things, and I'm not going to tell y'all what to do. But basic human decency should tell you that making light of historical traumatic events is offensive. It's not wrong to point out these things.

It's not wrong for anyone to be bothered by Hetalia or the mention of it, especially given how racism was rampant in the fandom.

Yes, some ppl got more interested in history through Hetalia. However, a lot of ppl took Hetalia as complete fact & weren't be mindful of the lense that it's being told through. Historical events weren't anime boys, they were REAL things that happened to people.

The character Korea, a shining example of this, was a racist caricature of what Japanese ppl thought Koreans were like. Korea banned Hetalia for that reason. It makes sense too, bc Japan colonized Korea and has always been racist towards Koreans

Humanizing countries makes it easier for people to relate to them as characters. People have favorite characters bc they see themselves in characters. Making countries into characters adds...a whole layer of complexity that I think ppl, especially younger folks, aren't aware of

Just imagine if the events of 2020 happened back then. Imagine the situations they'd draw the character of America in - regarding coronavirus, regarding police brutality & systematic racism, regarding ICE, regarding Indigenous rights

Ultimately yes, it's mostly the white folks (many probably actually N*zis) that continue to uphold this show on a pedestal and make offensive content. Not everyone did bad things, some ppl were trying to have fun. But so many people were influenced by peers & the fandom

And the actual content of the show in some cases that it ended up negatively affecting a lot of marginalized folks through...casual racism.