User blog comment:Freelance Grammar Nazi/Kind of a Rant...?/@comment-66.176.149.199-20100630023342

"I don't take the excuse that portraying the middle east or Africa is too controversial."

It's not so much "Africa and the Middle East are controversial" as it is "Africa and the Middle East are depressing." The USA may be controversial, but there are things to make fun of without being offensive. There are definitely things to get touchy about - remember why Korea is not in the anime. Do you honestly want more things to piss people off with, especially something that will polarize people like Israel-Palestine? I'm not sure that such issues would even be handled tastefully - Hetalia really risks falling into "offensive" and when you get into REALLY touchy things like this, people can and will feel bad (and oftentimes, they do have a reason for doing so).

Also, for what I can tell, Mr. H. is INTO European history. If he doesn't care for African or Middle Eastern or Latin American (or Australasian?) history, what exactly is he going to have to work with? He'll have to research and unless he's more of a nerd than I thought, he may prefer working with what he knows.

As a Cuban, I think Cuban's portrayal is weird. I mean, dreads? Dreads do NOT come from Cuba... I can't even think of any Cubans that have dreads. Would the government even allow dreads (I know long hair was definitely looked down upon for males)?

As for Latin American nations, I read something the other day that would be fantastic for Hetalia! Apparently, there used to be some friction between France and Mexico... once, some Mexicans vandalized a French pastry store in Mexico and so France invaded Mexico. Something like that. That could be Hetaliazed to something like "France invaded Mexico because he trashed his bakery and ATE HIS CAKE!" There's definitely potential... you just have to be careful. Really careful. And research - lots of research.