AMINE AND MANGA

Hetalia: Axis Powers (ヘタリア Axis Powers , Hetaria Akushisu Pawāzu) is a webcomic, later adapted as a manga and an anime series, by Hidekaz Himaruya (日丸屋秀和, Himaruya Hidekazu). The series presents an allegorical interpretation of political and historic events, particularly of the World War II era, in which the various countries are represented by anthropomorphic characters. Hetalia (ヘタリア) is a portmanteau combining hetare (へタレ, Japanese for "useless") and Italia (イタリア). This is to make light of Italy's apparent cowardice during World War II.

Himaruya originally created Hetalia as an online webcomic, and so far two tankōbon have been published by Gentosha Comics, the first on March 28, 2008 and the second on December 10, 2008. The series was later adapted into drama CDs, and an anime series created by Studio Deen has also begun streaming online. On January 8, 2010, the anime series' international distribution was announced to be handled by Funimation Entertainment.

The main historical events portrayed in this work occur between World War I and World War II. The series often uses satire and comedy to address well-known historical events as well as historical and cultural trivia. Historical political and military interaction between countries is allegorically represented in Hetalia as social and romantic interaction between the characters; the webcomic version in particular depicts military and economic incursions using various innuendo.

Renji "Range" Murata (村田 蓮爾 Murata Renji, born October 2, 1968 in Osaka) is a Japanese artist and designer, known for his unique style combining Art Deco and Japanese anime elements. He is best known for his conceptual design work on anime series Last Exile and Blue Submarine No. 6.

He began his career in the early 1990s doing design work for video games. He still continues to do some work in this area today, having recently done the character designs for the PlayStation 2 game Spy Fiction.

He has published more than a dozen books of his work, some of the most notable being robot, rule, and futurhythm. He is also voted "Best Artist of the Year" 2006 in the Seiun Award.