Otaku Review

That sound you just heard was me hitting my head against the wall after reading this story.

Online protests have begun in Korea against the upcoming anime ‘Hetalia – Axis Powers’. The anime is based off the gag parody manga which takes about twenty countries and uses their stereotypes to create mostly bishie characters in a high school setting. It’s supposed to be political satire but someone isn’t getting the joke. The protests actually started because of the manga though. According to the protests, things like Korea grabbing the breasts of Japan (link SFW, rest of site not so much) are very insulting to the nation of Korea.

There is some logic being found in this mess though. In a statement published on ANN, the broadcaster of the upcoming series said “[KIDS STATION] was unaware of the criticism in Korea. However, a Korean character does not appear in the anime version.”

So far, over twelve thousand signatures have been collected online in one day. Absolutely no idea on if online petitions in Asia have any more dramatic effects than say an online petition in the US but this is certainly a story that I’ll be keeping my eye on. I can’t imagine that the series is going to be canceled or even delayed due to this but I have to admit, before I heard this story I didn’t even want to watch this series. Now I’m kind of curious. The political satire series begins airing on 1/24.

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