Hetalia: Axis Powers, Vol. 3

ヘタリア Axis Powers #3

by Hidekaz Himaruya

A história de Hetalia inicialmente foca-se nas Potências do Eixo (Itália, Alemanha e Japão), especialmente na Itália. Mas, longe de se dedicar somente às batalhas e contos de guerra, explora curiosidades e detalhes que geralmente não aparecem em livros de história. Além das relações diplomáticas entre países que são representadas como relações emocionais. É uma visão original e hilária das guerras e disputas entre as nações do mundo, desde o império romano a segunda guerra mundial. Um atrativo do mangá é o cuidado do autor em sua pesquisa e a constante preocupação em citar e explicar através de notas os pedaços históricos. Assim não é preciso saber muito de história para aproveitar ao máximo essa obra maravilhosa.

Genres: Manga, Historical Fiction, Comics, Historical, Fiction, Humor, Comedy

136 pages, Paperback

First published May 31, 2010

About the author

Hidekaz Himaruya (日丸屋 秀和 Himaruya Hidekaz, born May 8th, 1985, in Koriyama, Fukushima) is the creator of the series Hetalia: Axis Powers (originally titled Axis Powers Hetalia in the webcomic run). He is sometimes affectionately called Papa Hima, by Hetalia fans.
Himaruya started the original Hetalia webcomic while he was attending Parsons School Of Design in New York City and continues the series in the present. He is currently an art design major and makes posts about his day-to-day life on his blog the Bamboo Thicket, along with the latest character designs and sketches.

Besides Hetalia, his website Kitayume (which started on June 19th, 2003) showcases his other manga projects and artwork. His latest series, Chibi-san Date, currently runs in the magazine Comic Birz by Gentosha Comics (which also published the printed versions of the Hetalia manga).

Himaruya lived in New York from late 2006 until some point in early 2009, when he moved back to Japan following the release of the Hetalia anime and his contract with Comic Birz.

In the earlier days of the Kitayume site (2003-2007), he used the name Kazuyoshi Himaruya (日丸屋 和良 Himaruya Kazuyoshi), which most notably appears in the credits of the Gakuen Hetalia demo.
Estonia's character design is based on his appearance, although his hair and eye color is different.
On his blog and update logs from the archived versions of Kitayume, Himaruya mentions that he is a fan of South Park and Happy Tree Friends. In some instances, he has referenced the song Let's Fighting Love (from the South Park episode Good Times With Weapons) by using the phrase and replacing "Fighting" with another word of his choice, such as: "Let's Flying Pan-ing Love" and "Let's Englanding Love".
He is also a fan of the horror visual novels Higurashi When They Cry and Umineko no Naku Koro ni by Ryukishi07, which coincidentally, both received animated adaptations by Studio DEEN.
Himaruya's hobbies (mentioned on the bio page at Kitayume) include photography, architecture, and collecting postcards.
The programs he uses to color and ink his artwork are: SAI Painter and Adobe Photoshop Elements 6.
He allows the usage of images from his site, show, and blog as long as no profit is involved, and encourages fans to create their own original characters, fan videos (MADs), or cosplay inspired by his works, though he actively discourages fans from copying CDs. Selling any of the downloadable site games for profit is also prohibited.
He's admitted to having a rather questionable naming sense, and encouraged the fans to call the gender flipped nations by whichever names they chose to.

Reviews

[Anna]

PRUSSIA!!!

[Crystal]

(head to desk) I have finished. I went to a Japanese market and bought the Japanese version (with full color!), but one minor error was that I can't read Japanese. Good think for online, English-translated webcomics though :D
I'm a major otaku, as well as a bit of a fangirl (keywords, a bit), and this was a great volume to read. This volume corresponds to seasons 3 and 4, the last seasons of Hetalia (or so they thought...). To any Hetalia fangirl, get this. It costed me 1000 yen, but it was a good buy. Half of the joy coming from this manga is just owning it. The other half would be to directly read it, but I was stuck finding a translation...
The first five or ten pages were in color, and then there were character profiles, a map of the world indicating which country a character was from, and there are little side doodles and notes (again, all in Japanese). The illustrations were awesome, and as an artist, they were great to refer back to when drawing pictures of the countries from Hetalia. There were pages splayed throughout the manga where there would be a picture of a country and how they would write the names of the Axis and Allies in their native language.
Overall, I LOVED IT! (sorry for the bad review. Kind of fangirling out and not concentrating well...)

[Dorian Jandreau]

YAY. :D I am so happy I read it. It was amazing!!!! I spent all morning reading this book. I started reading just when mailwoman brought me my mail and I unpacked this book, I started to read it like a mad and I couldn't even go to eat, because it was so interesting. I just loved in this volume was so much told about Middle Ages and Lithuania finally showed as brave warrior. That's the spirit of us Lithuanians! We are brave and fearless, we fight and fight to be free and strong. And it was so much about France and Prussia an many other countries. I just missed much more about England, Russia and America... And it was interesting to read about Nordic Brothers. :) And I just loved pages where it was written how other countries say names of their neighbours in their language. I just noticed that where was Lithuania's page, it might be the author or printing made mistake. :( France is PRANCŪZIJA in Lithuanian, and they wrote PRANCUZIJA. Oh well... It was just one letter wrong.

But in all case I LOVED ALL BOOK. :) So interesting and funny. I had great morning reading it.

[Sage]

Hey can I prove that I read this by saying
"WHERE IS HIMAPAPA?!"
"well... I guess. Merry Christmas ;_;"
"APRIL FOOOOOOOOLS WHY NO WHERE ARE YOUUUUU"
"did he dieeee"
"IT'S TOMORROOOOOW"
"wow...that must be...hard" (in response to homestucks)
yeah saying any of those prove that i am obsessed. and that I miss Himaruya.

[Ursula]

This one was fun to read but not as funny as the first two. I still enjoyed it!

[King Haddock]

This volume's storylines aren't the ones I gravitate to most in Hetalia, but like all Hetalia, it's amusing and enjoyable.

[Krzesla Hexe]

Trochę nudniejsza od poprzednich. Roderyk Kamieńszlachetny wchodzący do domu Antonia Ferdynanda Samochódjedzie to ja wchodząc do lo1 Żory

[Erikka]

I love the anime and figured I should read the inspiration manga. It’s not too bad. :)

[Lucia]

i still love hetalia these characters are everything to me

[Fido]

POLSKA! I więcej średniowiecza, które jakoś nagle zaczęło mnie interesować

[Panna]

While I like the silly little interactions I'm a sucker for the history ones.

LietPol my beloved! Feliks you are so fucking gay and in love, I love that for you. You picked your boyfriend right

[Tymek Gazela]

chiny mnie tak wkurwialy a ten zabojad to niech sie nie odzywa nawet

[Mariabraginsakya]

I think that`s great

[Tedders]

I was gasping and giggling through every wonderfully offensive page, but that is just par for the coarse for this series.
Too much awesome.

[Loz]

Cute but I'm lost!

[Sophia]

Hetalia is so~ hilariousXD It combines historical fiction with not so realistic ways and stereo typical people for each country...

[Jamie]

I own this book in Japanese and English.

[Katherine Fromdahell]

ASDFGHJKLÑ Germany is so sweet!!!

[Mira]

The characters are qt's
I want to hug them and love them all forever.

[Rin]

♡