Hetalia: World Series 46 Hetalia: World Series Episode 46

Plot Summary: Italy, once home of the strongest empire in the world, has changed. This is the story of Italy, now a cowardly pasta-loving fool, and his friends (other personified countries of the world) as they live through strange moments in world history.
Genres: comedy
Themes: historical, parody, World War I, World War II






It's easy to underestimate Kurau. Its plot doesn't have a single-minded linear purpose and thus sometimes seems unfocused and a little random. But what unifies the story isn't an overarching plot (and certainly not some easily-categorized narrative like a tale of revenge or a quest to save the world from whatever), but rather emotions and relationships.

For all its action trappings and rather cold atmosphere, Kurau is a very personal series, a show more about the bonds of affection that tie everyone—friends and family and even extraterrestrials—together than about telling a tightly structured story or even exploring its interesting vision of the future. It has an unusually strong orientation towards familial bonds, in this volume touching again on Doug and Teddy's slightly awkward father/son relationship and Kurau's comfortable relationship with her aunt and uncle. Even one-shot characters benefit from the series' personal, heartfelt quality. The psychotic pirate from episode 13 could easily have been left a mere plot device; instead he gets an entire life-philosophy and one brilliant, crushing moment where he admits his own hypocrisy with nothing more than single look. The rest of the volume deals mostly with Yvon and his search for a Pair. The Pair-bond (insert biology in-joke here) is Kurau's greatest, and most easily overlooked, achievement. To create an entirely new kind of relationship, one that is simultaneously heartbreakingly familiar and eerily alien, is no mean feat. Yvon's desperate loneliness is palpable, his need for companionship very human, and yet the intensity of his need and the indefinable nature of the bond are quite alien. Kurau and Christmas continue to demonstrate the positive side, the fulfillment, of the Pair bond, and their relationship is as cuddly-cute as ever. Their complete understanding, trust and devotion are beautifully warming and more than a little inhuman.