Hetalia

Nations-as-pretty-boys anime Hetalia’s live-action cast appears in costume 【Photos】

Next month, Hetalia, the anime and manga franchise featuring anthropomorphized nations and a hefty amount of homoerotic subtext, is getting its very own live-action musical adaptation, and the play’s producers have just released the first photos of the cast in costume as their respective nations.

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Countries become anime characters, anime characters become real men in Hetalia musical

Anime featuring anthropomorphized battleships or samurai swords seem like no-brainers, given that they have a certain cool factor among young otaku and by their very nature make it easy to develop action scenes. Filling your cast with personifications of sovereign nations, though, sounds like a harder hill to climb.

Nevertheless, Hetalia, which started as a webcomic starring anthropomorphized versions of World War II’s Axis powers, succeeded, thanks to its non-stop winks to historical events, willingness to skewer every country on the planet (Japan included), and undercurrent of homoeroticism. The franchise has since spread to print manga and animated TV and movie forms, and now it’s invading new territory with the Hetalia stage musical.

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