User blog:Ceras SanMarina/MoeKan scanlations + a few interesting old bits of trivia

I've been meaning to post a link to the scanlations of MoeKan, but kept getting sidetracked. Here they are, though! The scanlator has also been doing work on "Susume! Kitakou Housoubu" and assorted things related to it. A friend found the raws when I was doing image-gathering in the "hidden" files of Kitayume. They posted the raws, and the scanlator did this translation. It's an unfinished comic though, and was deleted from Kitayume itself:


 * http://noto-sama.livejournal.com/5948.html

Hetalia Trivia?
Lately, it seems the old Megalodon-archived update logs at Kitayume have become a goldmine for more trivia. I've tried copy-pasting text from them to translate myself, since web translators don't work on Megalodon archived pages. Though web-translators just gave me mostly gibberish, so I'd rather wait until someone finishes translating all their finds and posts them to a place like the Hetalia community. Or even bothers to translate the entirety of those logs, of course (they're long). Megalodon only archived a few certain months from 2007, too, so it's not entirely complete.

Here are a few things that are known for now, though (from one person's finds, a person who actually could read that stuff). Keep in mind, these are from 2007, so they're kind of outdated and Himaruya's plans could have changed considerably since then.:


 * In 2007, Himaruya answered a fan's question about North Korea and stated that they were male and a musician. North Korea is also apparently a "twin" of South, timid in personality, and was to be modeled after a close Korean friend of Himaruya's. They say that Japanese fans are now uncertain if North Korea will ever debut in the comic now, due to North Korea's infamy as well as Himaruya's friend having moved away.


 * HRE's clothes are modeled after philosophers' clothing from the time period HRE grew up in.


 * "Sweden is a real one. But, please feel relieved, he never ever reacts to anyone but Finland in that way."

A clarification of this translation revealed that Himaruya meant that Sweden is in fact homosexual. This has raised some controversy due to the insinuation that the characters could have set sexualities, as well as people who aren't very hot on Sweden/Finland.


 * As far back as 2007, Himaruya was dead-set on having Vatican be an old/middle-aged man type of character. In the Bamboo Thicket blog sometime back, he mentioned he had a page in his notebook with sketches of him. It's just a question of when he'll appear.


 * Holland/Netherlands is a lolicon, tsundere, and xenophobic. Yeeeahh, something tells me that if his characterization is still like this, Dutch fans won't be too happy.


 * Russia is "unaware of his own cruelty". Makes sense to me.


 * Belgium is a tsukkomi-type character ("straight man") and finds herself pushed around by both Netherlands and Luxembourg.


 * Spain is incredibly affectionate and doting to Romano, but is terribly strict and not as warm to his other colonies. Himaruya himself wondered why Spain was historically "stuck" on Southern Italy so much, and said that Spain likely has "two faces" like Russia.


 * America's biggest fear and his true enemy is "weight".


 * Germany was slightly based on a German acquiantance of Himaruya's.


 * Spain was originally just going to speak in Kansai dialect when he was excited or when around characters he felt close to. Himaruya instead opted to have him go full-blown Kansai in the end.


 * Hungary was originally going to be a cross-dressing man with a Nagoya dialect, Poland was to be female. Then Hungary was to be a snide, hot-tempered woman, before Himaruya decided on her canon personality. Yeah, we've seen this before, but it's still funny to think of what could have been.


 * Japan's worst enemy is a cockroach.


 * England trims his eyebrows, though it doesn't make much of a difference.


 * Himaruya mentioned that he wanted to draw Portugal and Spain's troublesome relationship, and said that it was as bad as the relations between England and France.


 * In 2007, Himaruya said that he was considering making a female Ireland character, as he found the Irish national costume very cute. She would be very emotional.

(Personally, I was hoping and still am hoping for a male Ireland, though a female one would be interesting. Ireland just seems like they'd be a male character, IMHO. I just worry about what fandom would do with her, and I hope she wouldn't be like one of the overdone blonde Ireland OCs on Pixiv. Female Ireland could lead to some very squicky oppression-type art and kinkmeme prompts, though it would also be appalling in the case of him being a boy too, since some fans aren't known for being too respectful to other cultures, sad as that is.)

...by the way, there's some more to come, including Himaruya's "answers" (in actuality non-answers) to the "HRE=Germany? "HRE=/=Germany?" questions. He really loves to avoid that one. Hopefully someone will have those fully translated. I'm hoping that someone will ask him about Baltic Prussia one of these days, it seems that apparently it's one of those questions that fandom hasn't asked him yet. I've actually fielded two questions to him myself, but time will tell if they made it through Gentosha's fanmail filter (it was quite exhausting in trying to formulate a letter in actual Japanese and not some fan-bowlderization of it). The first was about the ages and relation between both Irelands, and the second was asking him if he had plans for a San Marino character and what their relation to Italy would be.

If either of those questions show up on his blog in the distant future, I will be very shocked.