Oh, definitely Sweden. He can be pretty mischievous at
times.
Remember when he came up with France’s punishment after the
2007 April Fools’ Event? Basically, he got France to praise and idolize
everything about England.
Also, why haven’t people recreated this scene enough? It’s pure gold.
Before I get into how Prussia fits into Hungary and
Austria’s relationship dynamic (platonic or romantic), it’s important to
briefly go over Prussia’s background, as it allows more insight into his
behaviour.
In one of his character notes, it’s stated that he’s never
had to marry. It would follow, then, that Prussia’s narcissism likely derives
from the fact that he’s long grown accustomed to fending for himself. He
doesn’t rely on others.
Yes, he’s been subordinated by other nations before (i.e.
Poland, France, Russia), but the point here is that other than Germany, Prussia
hasn’t formed a meaningful and trusting relationship with another nation.
It’s not just a lack of intimacy either; Prussia’s lonely
and desperately craves company.
In the 2007 Christmas event, he tells [lies to] himself that
he’s happy being alone. Likewise, he attributes the tears welling in his eyes
upon seeing couples spending time together on the holiday to this happy mood.
The strip then pans on Hungary and Austria acting seemingly
couple-like, where Austria buys Hungary a hat. Pretty romantic if you consider
how stingy Austria is.
The fact that Prussia cries at the sight of Hungary being
with Austria hints at an unrequited romance. I’ll touch on this again soon.
Prussia’s alone because he lacks the skills to socialize and
develop relationships with others. The most obvious evidence of this is where
he attempts to read a book instructing him on how to socialize with people,
only to get bored and quickly abandon his commitment to learning from it.
Buon San Valentino also touches on how relationally-stunted
Prussia is.
Just a quick refresher: Germany reads a book about dating
and marriage, thinking that Italy has romantic feelings for him. Austria has
also read this book.
The comedic relief in the strip, is that after failing to
propose to Italy – given that Germany had misread the situation – the scene flips
to Hungary making a remark on the absurdity of the romance book.
Austria gets flustered, keeping that he had also read the
book a secret. He and Hungary then set off to the book store to fix this mess.
Notice how the scene deliberately shifts to Prussia. On cue,
he claims how happy he is to be alone. He then secretly watches from afar as
Hungary and Austria ask the store owner if they have a book on how to comfort
someone who’s “been rejected in his romance.”
The store owner doesn’t appear to have a book of that kind, so of
course Prussia takes things into his own hands and pulls a prank on Austria by
forging a fake book.
I would like to thank @shirokage218 for correcting my original misinterpretation of this part. I really appreciate it.
Take note of the title.
“How to properly comfort a German man who has failed in love.”
Here, it seems like Prussia might be projecting his own insecurities, even in something as trivial as a book title.
With all this in mind, I want to end by pointing out that
Prussia isn’t entirely alone either. He, Austria and Germany have lived together before, likely during Germany’s annexation of Austria.
Lack of romance aside, Prussia is close enough with Austria
and Hungary for them to be considered family. Yes, he does tease Austria by
referring to him as a “lesser German”, but they still spend their holidays
together.
That said, the irony in Prussia’s
life is that he feels alone and depressed despite being surrounded by others.
AusHun (platonic and romantic) would probably need a whole post on its own, but I can certainly go into the relationship dynamic shared between the three of them.
As for PruHun, it’s more one-sided on Prussia’s part. It’s still worth exploring, though, as it requires delving into the depression and loneliness Prussia keeps contained within himself.
Post coming up soon!
Dear me
It’s almost as if
Hima didn’t make a
strip explicitly explaining why both
of them still exist…
Okay, so you know when
Holy Rome says farewell to Chibitalia and leaves to go to war?
“I’ll definitely come see you when the fight is over.”
Assuming that Holy
Rome was reincarnated into Germany, the fight never really ended.
Germany was literally
born into war, which could possibly explain why he didn’t meet (see) Italy until WW1. Remember that they didn’t purposefully cross paths then.
Likewise, in Buon San
Valentino (which takes place during WW2), Germany also makes a mention of his
war-torn upbringing.
I suspect that Hima
might use the above phrase and place a fun little spin on it. The wars are
over and Germany is united with Italy, but until Germany remembers his past,
Holy Rome’s promise won’t be fulfilled.
Germany needs to come
back to Italy as Holy Rome, with the latter’s memories intact, if he’s to truly see
and recognize Italy as Chibitalia.
Side note: “I’ll make
lots of sweets for your return.”
You know who else really likes his sweets? Germany. I mean… he has an entire
character song dedicated to baking a cake.
Does the manga volumes have every Hetalia
Webtoon Hima’s made??
[Anon is talking about
volumes 1-6, not World Stars]
Oh dear God, no. There’s
so many more unpublished strips available online. (That’s not including the
card games, RPGs, etc.)
The Hetascanlations/ Hetarchive team is your
best friend in that regard, trust me. They do a tremendous service for this fandom and I cannot thank them enough.
There, you can find the original main story, extras, non-linear strips (although, some of them have been re-drawn in the
published manga), events, transcripts from the drama CDs, comic diary entries,
character notes, translated chapters of World stars, and translated posts from Hima’s
blog (Bamboo thicket).
From what I’ve seen,
there’s only Japanese (it was originally published in Japan by Shueisha)
versions of World Stars with the occasional German translation of the volumes.
I have yet to see any physical copies containing an English translation, but I
could be wrong.
***Beware: I’ve often
seen the mistake of people buying World Stars volumes without checking the language
it’s written in. That’s the FIRST thing you should be searching for when
looking at the product summary.***
Again, the
Hetascanlations team has translated most of World Stars (from Hima’s blog), and
continues to do so. There’s slight differences in the volumes regarding
the ordering of the chapters, but it’s concretely the same material.
So what do you do if you want Hetalia manga but
you live in the UK. And Rightstuf’s shipping fees are insanely ridiculous
because of that?
[Right Stuf anime is
where you can purchase English translations of the first six volumes.
Admittedly, the shipping fees are extremely high as they’re sent out from
Japan]
Unfortunately, I don’t
have much of an answer for that. Right
Stuf is the only website I’ve found that distributes directly from Tokyo
Pop. If anyone has found a cheaper route, feel free to let me know.
As a primarily soft-spoken person, Canada
dialogues with himself more than he does with others. By that, I mean that he
keeps to himself, and yet, ruminates too much on what others think about him.
He desperately wants to be noticed throughout the series, but nonetheless
struggles to do so by forming his own unique identity.
A lot of
his invisibility can be attributed to how he lurks in the largely influential shadows
of America and England.
Canada
served as England’s watchdog during both wars. A lot of the battles that
Canadians fought in were generally attributed to British victory. In other
words, they didn’t receive the credit they deserved. That said, this lacking
and undeveloped identity caused Canada to remain behind the scenes.
Likewise,
until about the 1930s, Canadians consumed a lot of American media, pop culture,
and literature (we still do, but before we virtually had none). There wasn’t
anything distinctively Canadian for citizens to relate their shared experiences to other than the wilderness and agricultural life.
It wasn’t
until the 1970s-1980s when Canada’s reputation as a middle-power, peace-maker,
and most importantly, multicultural nation, took off. I say ‘reputation’ mainly
because we still have our fair share of racial issues (especially with the
Indigenous populations), but please remember that this series is predicated on
generalizations of what a nation is known
for.
Anyways, it
was America who served as Canada’s inspiration in forming a new national
identity by also becoming culturally diverse. There’s a long-standing joke in
Canadian academia that we’re always 100 years late to developments the US has
already undergone.
I mention
all this because you’ll see that the basis of Canada’s insecurities is formulated around how he’s not well-known, especially
in comparison to America, whom he’s often mistaken for.
It’s not
that Canada doesn’t attempt to stand out either, because he does.
In fact,
America picks up on this and tells Canada that he doesn’t need to change who he
is – his identity.
Jealously,
Canada then tells America that he hates his [blunt honesty]. Clearly, this is
merely a result of Canada projecting his frustrations onto America, given that
the latter has such a strong national presence in the world.
It’s
important to mention that they don’t actually hate each other, despite going
through many ups and downs in their relationship as they were growing up.
Being
constantly forgotten has eaten away at Canada’s confidence. His expectations
are so low that he cried when Seychelles remembered that he’s part of the G8.
It’s not
just being noticed that Canada worries about either. He doesn’t have a high
sense of self-esteem, and truly believes that he’s not good looking.
Here, he
worries about others not wanting to have anything to do with him.
He also
clearly fears rejection, having once used England to communicate with and relay
messages to America. How I see it is that Canada internalized his invisibility
as part of his self-concept, equated it to a low sense of self-worth, and then
actually began to believe that he wasn’t worth
the time of others.
Despite
these obvious insecurities, it’s important to end on the note that while Canada
may be soft-spoken, he’ll still assert himself if necessary. He’s a pushover,
yes, but not to the extent that he’ll lay down and willingly let himself get
completely run over.
Ellawritesficssometimes 