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I rarely drop shows as quickly as I dropped Hetalia. However, I feel like I’m making the right decision.

At 5 minutes an episode, this show isn’t much of an investment. But even at that short length, I was unwilling to continue. This show is terrible – first of all, its not funny, except to maybe someone with a 12-year-old’s sense of humor. The story is non-existent. The characters are shallow stereotypes. The “Chibitalia” segments are so boring that they make me want to hang myself.

Yeah, yeah, I know, “tell us how you really feel”. I tried to give this show a chance, I really did. ... I love yaoi, shounen-ai, and cute comedies, and this show looked promising. But after 11 episodes, I couldn’t stand it anymore. Watching this show felt like a waste of time, and I really regret even bothering. Don’t make the same mistake.

tl;dr: Hetalia is an unwatchable, over-hyped piece of garbage that stifled me with its stupidity.

First things first, Ghost Stories is completely unwatchable in its Japanese version. Its like a bad rip off of Scooby-Doo. It came as no surprise that ADV decided to dub the show as a parody and not a straight dub, since I doubt they would’ve had any sales if they decided to do a serious dub. They knew the show was crap and just went with it.

The results seem to be hit or miss. The VA’s for the most part are up to the task and have decent comedic timing. I would say that Chris Patton and Greg Ayers do the best job at bringing ... the laughs. That said, the script is either hilarious or awkwardly unfunny. If you stick to the end of the show, the jokes start picking up and the laughs are more common. Probably midway thru the series is when I felt they had really hit their stride in the writing department.

One thing I didn’t understand is why they chose to censor foul language in the beginning of the series, and then stopped about half way thru. The censoring annoyed me; if you’re going to do a parody, and an adult one at that, why would you censor it? It seems pointless. Luckily the “bleeps” go away after a while.

Overall I would recommend this to anime fans that have a good awareness of modern – and not so modern – pop culture, because the cultural references abound in this dub.