Hetalia, Aaah Hetalia, that hilarious satirical anime with personifications of countries acting like complete jackasses, yet they are all so lovable. Sure, the fandom can get a bit out of hand from making x-rated yaoi out of two characters, to the point they are fangirling over serious and sad topics like war. But it doesnt stop Hetalia itself from being a great show....Or so I thought.
In this era of 2013, the fandom, especially on Tumblr, was getting excited about the new upcoming fifth season, "The Beautiful World" they called it, the fandom literally went nuts with the new improved art style and new episodes were coming out every Friday!
However, as I searched for some episodes of season five to watch over and over again until a new one came out... there was a strange looking thumbnail... something that looked like a hyperrealistic demonic spirit, it said: "Hetalia - ?????? Episode X". It didn't even say what season it belonged to. I thought it would be fun to upload a screenshot of it on Tumblr and mock the thumbnail while I was at it, because I thought this video might be from a troll trying to troll us fangirls... But then again, I never really uploaded the image to my blog, because after I got it, I noticed something even weirder about the video: there was no description (it didnt even say "no description available" either), no source of the uploader, or the date it was uploaded. However, It did have the number of views though: 666, 666 views. What the hell? Isn't that the devil's number? I was getting a weird feeling about this, but I still had enough courage to click on it...of course, it was rather foolish of me to do so.
As I clicked on the mysterious video, the screen immediately shut down for 5 seconds, then eventually slowly faded back into my desktop. It seems that YouTube was automatically closed. Then suddenly, I spotted an icon, it was the exact same thumbnail that I encountered while searching for Hetalia season five episodes. The miniature version of the thumbnail had the title: "hetaliadoom.avi". Okay, that title was a little bit too much for me, I didn't want to watch it after that so I decided to just drop the file straight into the recycle bin and not look at it again, however, after I dragged it to the recycle bin, it woudn't delete...and the freaky thing was... it got out of the recycling bin by itself... and started to play automatically.
The opening played just as normal, except this wasn't the Beautiful World's opening, or even World Series, It happened to be the classic opening from Axis Powers (which is season 1 - 2) with the orchestra playing the theme similar to 2001: A Space Odessy's. However, the opening suddenly changed colours in the blink of an eye... with some offkey music playing as the title was slowly fading.
The episode's art style still happened to be the same old Studio Deen style and there was no music playing in the background. It began with Tony, America's pet alien, creeping behind a door while spying on every single country during a world conference, and I mean, every single country in the world (the countries that were not introduced in the series like: Phillipines, Morroco, Ireland and all the rest just simply looked like pictonians with no anteni and had the words "No Official design yet" written on their blank faces).
All the characters were all dolled up for the conference and staying seated on their chairs and behind their flags, all silent. There was no overly-excited America, no England and France arguing, No Angry Germany, not even a smiling angelic Italy daydreaming about pasta either. Literally, every single character, including the minor characters that havent made an appereance in the show yet (well..Prussia, Germania and Rome obviously didn't make it to the conference), had stoic looks on their faces and were completely silent, heck, even Japan looked far more aloof than usual.
The silence lasted for 1 minute, I was getting kind of bored until the camera turned to Tony... acting all cute and cuddly behind the door, he kept swearing in that adorable voice of his like he always did...to the point his voice was getting lower and demonically screechy and some creepy unfamiliar music started to play, as he said his final swearword in his new voice... the camera zoomed to a close up of Tony... smiling demonically, as you can see in the next screenshot I took.
I literally flipped when I saw this happen: Tony doesn't even have a mouth! he speaks telepathically! how is this happening? then later on the camera focused on a realistic looking knife that Tony was holding, then back to Tony..as he began to speak to the camera...in FLUENT ENGLISH (I am assuming that this episode was not even dubbed by Funimation..or even subbed for that matter) "So..... you think war and massacres are funny and sexy, is that right?" my eyes widened.... how the hell did the creators of the anime find out about the weird side of the fandom? I was a little bit upset by this.. sure I know fangirling or laughing at world issues, using wars as shipping fuel or anything else of the sort is pretty wrong but....is making a creepy Hetalia episode directed towards those kind of fans really neccesary? nevertheless, I continued watching, even though I was feeling appalled and terrified at the same time.
"You want kawaii war? I'll give you kawaii war!" said the new satanic Tony as he headed for the conference table with a giantic leap holding the realistic looking knife upwards while grinning evily, making all the nation's eyes widen in terror (even the faceless nations looked terrified without any facial features). Then later on, as expected, the camera switched back to Tony...but this time something strange was happening, as some really offkey piano music started to play along with some ear-raping 8 bit screeches, the world conference room in the background started to distort and the episode's colours started turning black and white, then suddenly, Tony was transforming...his face was becoming very bony and his eyes were shrinking and turning black...and his mouth was hanging open in the shape of a 0, I slowly backed away while sitting in my chair...the creature that Tony was turning into..was that very same hyperrealistic demon that was shown in the video's thumbnail..I just..I just coudn't believe that thing was Tony...
Later on, the camera switched to one black and white close up at a time of the main 8 (which is Italy, Germany, Japan, America, England, France, Russia and China) looking terrified, almost as if they were all about to cry..then the camera switched to a second close up of America, shaking in terror while whispering the japanese words "Nazedesu ka? Tony.. Nazedesu ka?", there were no subtitles but I am assuming he was saying "Why Tony? why?". And yet again, as you would expect from this haunting Hetalia episode, the camera switched back to Tony's new form (The episode was getting freakier and freakier that it was impossible to get bored from seeing Tony all the time), as he started to release some weird looking gas and his eyes started to glow red..which stood out in the black and white atmosphere, he screamed the words (along with his favourite swearword) "HAPPY FUCKING DOOMSDAY" as he began to distort completely and the background went from blury to black for 1 minute.
After the minute was over, the episode was now in colour...but it wasn't very appealing to look at...the world conference room looked a mess...and the walls were all bloodstained...all the nations were lying dead..covered in blood..then later on..the camera switched to a birds eye view of 11 personified nations holding hands lying in a circle while dead and bloodstained (which happened to be Italy, Germany, Japan, America, England, France, Russia, China, Canada, Hungary and apparently Belgium), the episode ended with a fade, no credits, no happy Marukaite Chikyuu, nothing.
I was deeply disturbed and horrified, I closed Windows Media Player and was finally allowed to drop that monstruosity in the recycling bin, to my surprise I found this weird error message after I deleted it, It had the message "Where is your beautiful world now?" in all the main 8's languages.... luckily after I clicked the only response button available there was, nothing happened to my computer,,it was still the same and still protected from dangerous viruses, otherwise I woudn't be able to write up this article....
But still, after I watched that abomination, I lost my faith in that show, I am never going to look at it again..ever, I am also planning on selling my DVDs to car boot sales, I will still enjoy to read the webcomics and look at the artwork by Mr. Himaruya himself though, Just his work! not the anime based on it. Draw a Circle that's the earth, my ass!
By the way, I heard the episode was deleted from YouTube recently, Thank the lord.