Sure thing, characterization post on Canada coming up tonight!

About Germany having difficulty smiling, I had seen times where he smiled in the anime in episode 3 of Axis Powers, in the second part of hetalia of the dead (ep 18 of the Beautiful world, while italy was sleeping), and in some parts of Hetalia Paint it white. Looks like that Italy would be one that can make Germany smile.

We don’t take the anime
as canon material. You go to the primary source of material for that – the strips
or any character notes/ blog posts that Hima shares.

Anyways, the scene from
Hetalia of the Dead that you mentioned is added. It didn’t happen in Volume 5,
where Hetalia of the Dead pt. 2 is located.

As for episode 3 of Axis
Powers, Germany isn’t smiling because Italy’s there. Germany’s smiling because
Italy’s not there given how much stress and annoyance the latter caused him in
WW1.

That said, Germany
smiling in this episode isn’t canon in the strips. This is the same scene from the
strips = no smile, but otherwise the same content. Again, he’s glad that Italy’s
not there. Problem is Italy shows up anyway.

As I mentioned in a
previous post, the only time we see Germany widely smiling is when he’s drunk.

He comes close to
smiling when he feels elated, though.

Ex: His love for
machinery. Here, it’s implied that he’s smiling, but it’s not shown. It could
just be something close to smiling too. It’s left open-ended.

Ex: He gets close to
smiling when he goes sight-seeing in Italy. He loves it there.

However, you are right
in that Italy does cause Germany to smile. We see that happen right before the
two of them go off to war in WW2. This is the most explicit example
of him smiling with full conscious awareness.

Why are you so cool?

I’m literally not. I tried to flick my hair in front of my crush today and ended up whipping them in the face with it. I still haven’t recovered :)))))))))

Do Austria and Prussia hate each other?

There’s a big difference between hating someone, and not
getting along with them.

Even when they were in an alliance and were considerably more
pleasant with each other, they still went head-to-head.

This post took soooo long to do 😭 I love this boy, so I had
to make sure I did it right! There’s a reason for his egotism. Hopefully,
I can shed more light on it.

Post coming up tonight!

About aph Russia being happy that he got captured by aph Germany really says something about how terrible he was treated by his own government because POW camps on the eastern front were said to be the absolute worst place you could’ve ended up.

Mmhmmm. Wild, right?

Do you remenber of some scenes where Italy is pissed out about something?

It doesn’t happen very often, but this is the most striking one to date for me.

He calls Germany a “rough-up idiot” prior to making an alliance with him.

In the ask about countries with secret strength, Finland says there’s nothing to gain by capturing them. What does this mean? Did humans try to use them before, or have there been hints of it? (I’m sorry, I have yet to read the manga 😅)

[Pssst. Read it! Most of
the strips can be read online thanks to the amazing mods at Hetarchive.]

It’s more like the
nations have been taken as prisoners of war before, and their bosses don’t seem
to care all that much. They’re treated just like any other human soldier in
this case. I’ve already mentioned before that they don’t have all that much say
in their gov’ts, other than being able to cast a vote and hold meetings to discuss
world issues with other personifications.

Anyways, post coming up
tonight!

Hey! I can’t begin to describe how amazing all your posts are. I have a question about Finland’s association with Santa. I know it’s because Santa is said to reside in Finland but what’s Finland’s role? Is he Santa’s helper? Is it the result of being able to travel around the world and transcend the countries’ borders more easily just on account of being a nation? We often see Finland as Santa but we aren’t given much of an explanation as to why or how it works so I’d love to hear your thoughts.

All right, so there’s
a few things to unpack here.

My understanding of it
is that America’s artificial creation of Santa by Coca-Cola actually created a real-life
need for a Santa personification.

Since the legend formulated
in America made out Santa to live in the North Pole, that’s why Finland assumed
responsibility for ensuring the delivery of presents on Christmas. He’s noted
to “answer America’s expectations.”

It’s also important to
note that before capitalism globalized the American version of Santa, each
nation experienced their Christmas differently:

Further, Santa in the
strips is used more as a metonymy. There’s multiple Santas – The term Santa is
used to refer to the whole collective of Santas, which just so happens to
include Finland. So in a way, yes, I would consider him as Santa’s helper
despite being one himself.

“Well, Santas born in Finland are used to the cold. We can even walk around with short sleeves in the Canadian winter!”

Ex: Finland frets
during Christmas 09’ when he loses three Santas.

What’s even more odd
is that the economic recessions in the American economy (the sub-prime mortgage
crisis of 2008 in this case) caused the Santas to undergo job cuts.

As for the travelling,
that’s a bit more open-ended.

Given that we see the Axis using a magic flying
sleigh without any problems, I would guess that their ability to fly across
borders is made to be even easier than their typical travelling abilities. I say this
only because Finland in the 2010 Christmas event isn’t able to transport to nations
far away from Europe (i.e Seychelles and Cuba).

Have the nations ever feared their citizens?

This subject is rarely touched on in the manga, but it did
happen with France following his Revolution. He was forced to give up aristocratic
clothing, otherwise he risked being beat up by his citizens.