Hetalia Axis Powers: Paint it, White! - Reviews

This. Was. AWESOME!

Absolutely nothing to do with history but I don't care. I am willing to ignore history for the sake of an hour long Hetalia episode (essentially what this is).

But why did the aliens get mad when England gave them scones? Scones are amazing! (Guess where I'm from) ^J^

Starting out by saying that I only try and do positive reviews, I believe I can continue having the reader of this bare in mind that I will try to stay on the more positive side of things rather than the negative.  However, that doesn't mean I'll turn a blind eye to the aspects that need improvement.  Without furthur a-do, let us begin.

If you're looking for something serious, Hetalia will never be your cup of tea.  If you're looking for the historical aspect of Hetalia, you won't find much of that either.  This was more of a fun little movie that made little sense but still was a ton of fun to watch.  But, I believe that's the way Hetalia has always been; sure, the history behind it is what makes the humor, but watching the human personification of France and England fight over something so trivial as the way an alien race percieves you that you stop paying attention in the middle of their invasion to take over planet earth, then I think you have a nice little, 'I'm not having a great day and need a pick-me-up' movie.  Or, alternativly, you have a, 'I'm in a silly mood and want to watch something funny' movie, or, 'I just kind of feel like it' movie.

In terms of animation, there is little to speak of since the characters actually break the fourth-wall and make fun of their own animation.  It's very simply, perhaps a bit sloppy, but that gives it a special kind of charm that make Hetalia what it is and what it's supposed to be.  Nonesense.

I usually do not watch dubs, but it seems the English voice actors were given lines that made things twice as raunchy and terrible than the Japanese actors.  With China's famous line, 'Suck balls!  I knew fortune cookie was full of bad lie!"  And, or course, who could forget France's, "I refuse to look as ugly as the rest of you!"  And the fact that Switzerland is even able to block out an alien attack with his nutrality is gold.

The ending has to be one of the most adorable things I've seen.  It takes all the characters (even those who weren't in the movie) and has them dance.  It was nothing super fancy, but it was a cutesy type of deal.

My only minor complaint has to be the interuptions throughout the movie.  There are various clips taken from the rest of the show (previous episodes) and are placed in the middle of the movie.  It felt like that was the way it was used to segway into the next scene, but it didn't properly do it justice.  

Overall, this movie, for being a pleasent fun laughable story that you can watch on any kind of day earns a 9/10 on my scale.

Hetalia is an amazingly hilarious series for a show that only lasts for 5mins. But taking a show like that and sticking it into a hour long movie what could go wrong? I tell you...The end of the world because of an Alien invasion. Seeing our countries fight Slenderman looking aliens was hilarious! America with his antics, China impressing them with delicious food, Britain ruining it with his food, Russia being creepy, and Italy being...well you get the idea. 

I would highly recommend this movie to those who are looking for a funny movie and to any new and up coming Hetalians!

I am a big Hetalia fan and when I found out that there was going to be a movie made, I was shaking with anticipation, but after finally watching it, it left me kind of disappointed.

STORY (6/10)

The main plot within the movie wasn't actually that bad--aliens(Pictonians) come to Earth, mess stuff up and the nations must band together or turn into faceless, formless beings. It could have actually grown into an impressive movie, as the show originally consists of clip-like episodes to begin with, carrying no real plot, but entertaining all the same. I feel that there was potential that was never uncovered; there could have been an awesome story with action, hardships, friendships and the ever present comedic element. Unfortunately, we got a story that was kinda generic, with, I especially didn't like, clips from the original show, which took away from the events of the main movie. The beginning is a mimic of the world meeting, having shots of each main character's face, as well as Germany yelling for everyone to shut up and even the climactic scene played out on the same trapped on an island scenario and during the dramatic scenes, why must there be a close up of every character? So, I do know that this movie was made for the fans, but I feel like this movie could have aspired to greater heights and reached out to more people, rather than settling for the fans they already had. I mean, if you haven't seen Hetalia, the movie may seem a bit confusing and this confusion limits the success and enjoyment to viewers. If we wanted to watch the show, we could have gone back and watched through it, we didn't choose to watch the movie in order to see something we've already seen, or at least I didn't anyway.

ANIMATION (5/10)

For me, when I hear that an anime is getting a movie, I instantly think: better quality animation. Naruto for example; when Naruto aired on Toonami, I was instantly hooked (I had already read part of the manga) and became a big fan. when I found out that Naruto the movie: Ninja Clash in the Land of Snow was being created and would show in certain theaters in the US for a few days, I was jumping off the walls with excitement. The quality was amazing, being a step up from the show. Paint it, white, unfortunately is the same quality. There are more backgrounds which is nice, but staying with the show animation (which isn't bad) hints at laziness from the producers, but since they included the show exerts, I know they had to stick to a constant style. Also, combining 2D and CG never looks that great together (except in KARAS), which works ok with the pictonians,actually adding a bit of creepiness to how they move, but it's still doesn't fit that well with the regular 2D animation.

SOUND (8/10) 

There isn't much to say about the soundtrack. It fit with the movie, being similar to the show's soundtrack, but there really isn't any redeeming qualities about it.

CHARACTERS (8/10)

The characters are fine as usual, being the same, lovable guys and gals that attracted people to the show in the first place. In the movie, they are still fighting and bickering, choosing to fight alone, only to realize that they need to work together. Another typical development, but hey, at least they learned something right? The main thing was that you got to see some of your favorite characters in a new kind of setting, not expecting much character development (I wasn't) as the characters are pretty much defined and are good where they are.

OVERALL (6.5/10)

Hetalia is one of my favorite shows for its characters rather than its plot, but I was really expecting more out of this movie than what I got. This movie could have been super great, but failed to go the extra mile as it only treated the current fans, creating a movie that was pretty much a recycle of the show, whether they literally took clips or created identical scenarios. I suppose a show like Hetalia, which carries no plot, just wasn't cut out to have a full length movie, where a creative plot was needed.

After falling in love with the Hetalia series, I had been wanting to watch this movie for a long while, but much like the second season of Haruhi, It kept getting pushed back and my life got busy which prevented me from watching it. But for Christmas I got the DVD for the movie as well as the first 2 seasons, so I finally decided to watch the movie. At first I was not sure how well a series of 5 minute mostly non-sequitor webisodes could become a feature length film, as it seemed like a stretch to me. My exerience with these kind of movies being adapted from shows (mostly 30 minute shows though) to be kind of just... meh. Well as I watched I found out.

-Story-

The main story arc seemed like an interesting idea, and for the most part the movie did a good job at making it work. My main gripe with the story is that they seemed to waste a lot of time on throw away gags that weren't as fun as they should have been. The biggest example of this was the showing of Switzerland and Liechtenstein throughout the course of the movie. It was cute the first time, but anytime after that it just distracted from the plot. Another thing that I didn't like is when they broke from the story to show us clips from the actual show. They essential took a clip show and sprinkled it throughout the movie. Even if the material was new, it still took us out of the main plot far too often, which when doing this kind of plot, is a bad move. It worked to break from the main plot in the show because the plot of WWII did not need to be followed tightly, and the format of the show allowed for that sort of thing to happen. Other than those two major gripes though, the plot was good. I found the jokes to be quite funny through out the film and was constantly laughing out loud. Also there were many scenes that I thought were awesome, like the battle the nations have with the pictos and all the different hospitalities that the nations had to offer.

-Animation-

For a feature length film, I was expected a major improvement of the animation in this film over the show. Don't get me wrong, the art in the show is already great, but for a movie, usually the art gets noticibly better, which this film just didn't seem to have. The animation still looked good, but not up to my expectations for a feature length movie based off of the show.

-Characters-

What can I really say. They are the same characters that we all fell in love with when we watched the show. To say any more would just become me griping about my favorite secondary characters not getting enough screen time, so I will leave it at that.

-Overall-

Despite some flaws with the main plot being broken by a misplaced clip-show from time to time, the film was pretty good. The humor was good, the main story was good, and we still love the characters. I will freely say though that the original show was better, I still liked the Hetalia Axis Powers Movie. I would recommend it only to fans of the show though. If you aren't a fan of the original show, you probably should get your first experience of Hetalia from the actual show.