Where has the Nuance (in Media) Gone?

Recently I subscribed to a streaming service called Funimation. I only got it for the one month free trial so I could watch that swimming anime "Free!" and while I was there, I went ahead and watched the hot new show "Sk8 the Infinity". However, I noticed that an old show I remember watching a few episodes of in like 10th grade. It's called "Hetalia" and it's about these personified portrayals of different nations. I remembered it being kind of funny and since my husband is a bit of a history buff, I decided we could try to watch it.

A lot of the humor of the show is based on stereotypes of different cultures. Japanese people are super proper, Italians are flirtatious, Americans have a hero complex, Germans are super fastidious, etc. etc. The rest of the humor is based on real quirky historical events. For the most part, I find it harmless. I will admit that choosing to make the protagonists of the show the Axis Powers of WWII is an odd choice... Maybe tasteless or tone deaf? But Germany isn't evil. It's a country. It was the people who led the country who were evil. Same goes for Japan and Italy. The show doesn't really talk about moral issues at all. It doesn't portray anyone as "right" or "wrong." It just covers the relationships between the nations and the events that happened.

Nevertheless, a lot of people go so far as to call the show "Nazi propaganda" and say that the creator of the show is a fascist. I obviously think that those people are way over-exaggerating. Are some things in the show problematic? Yeah. Is the show trying to indoctrinate anyone? Absolutely not. I find that in this day and age, most people way over-exaggerate issues in media, accusing people who consume it of being toxic or whatever, when in reality, they are just trying to enjoy themselves a little bit.

All this to say, a TV show doesn't have to spoon feed the audience a moral lesson. It shouldn't have to hold the viewers' hands as it leads them to the correct conclusion about the plot, the characters, and the themes. It's okay for there to be nuance.