My Thoughts On Hazbin Hotel
Recently, every weird person on Twitter has been obsessing over this thing called Hazbin Hotel. The first episode is nearing 10,000,000 views on YouTube despite only being up for slightly over two weeks. A half-hour long video by some guy named Pkrussl has almost 400,000 views and 17,000 likes — compared to 52,000 dislikes.
Was this man ganged up on for the simple fact he made a video disliking an animation tons of people like that just so happen to be awful? Will the same thing happen to me? Oh man, better prepare my mental defenses in the most obvious and least interesting way possible.
Let me do a brief equation:
Positive Reception to this review = Hazbin Hotel fans are reasonable people who are able to hear mild criticism of things they like and can either agree to disagree on some things or admit things they like aren’t perfect.
Negative Reception to this review = Hazbin Hotel fans are unreasonable, didn’t read the review anyway, and eat their own poo.
Oh 17,000 people who liked this video, you all say the darnest things.
But this post isn’t about a stupid review made by a person of which I’m unsure the intelligence of — although I’m pretty sure he’s stupid. Instead, it’s about my thoughts and feelings on this new video, the pilot to an entire series apparently.
(Note: I have nothing against Pkrussl. The same cannot be said about MangaKamen though. I very much have something against him, but that’s another story.)
The point is I’m right no matter what, and either you can accept that and be a smart individual or have your own opinion and be part of the collective. There are people who think this is a good argument.
Okay, enough with the bit. So what is Hazbin Hotel exactly? Well it was made by this YouTube channel called Vivziepop. Looking through, I can tell this channel got popular for anime speed drawings and dark animated music videos.
The first video to have anything to do with Hazbin Hotel was uploaded about four years and was about the character Molly. Who, far as I could tell, was not in any part of the one episode we currently have.
However, it is worth nothing this thing has been in development for quite a long time. According to The My Ass Institute this thing took exactly 516 people, 666 days of slave labor, and 69 law suits for violating current labor laws.
(Note: I have no evidence anyone who worked on Hazbin Hotel engaged in any form of slave labor. In fact, far as I’m aware, all labor laws were followed in both letter and spirit. Do not go around citing my obvious joke as proof of something, specifically if it could get me sued for slander or defamation.)
The point I have no idea how they made animation this great in less than ten years. The animation in Hazbin Hotel is stunning, especially for the standards of YouTube. I would even put this as some of the greatest animation I’ve seen period, even including big budget animated films from just a few years ago. It’s very energetic, always moving, and just all around a blast to watch.
I watched the video twice for the sake of this review, and the first time I was so blown away by the animation that I hardly even noticed the writing for the first half of it. I will say, when I went back I was surprised by just how sharp the dialogue is throughout the video.
While true, not every joke is the wittiest thing in the world the video finds a good balance between chuckle worthy quips (most of which come from Angel Dust) and good old fashion wit. There’s always something going on, which is quite impressive as the genre of fast pace comedies become more and more rare with each passing year.
I should actually talk about the characters at some point. To sum it up, I like all of them — although Angel Dust has the most funny moments while managing to also feel like a real person. Angel is easily my favorite, although I could not say I dislike any of them.
However, I feel like Angel is really the only one I could cast as both funny and real. The others fall into a trap of either being serious characters or funny, when it should be possible to do both.
The worst example on the serious end is Charlie. While not a bad character, I struggle to think of a single funny moment she had on her own — instead, it felt like she was just a generic straight man. This wouldn’t be an issue, but she’s just as crazy as the rest of them. For God sake she’s Hell’s 2nd in command! Why is she the sane one?
Also, I felt it was a bad move to open it with a sad song by her. It didn’t really do a good job setting the tone as it was much more a sad emotional moment than anything we see in the entire episode. It actually made me a little confused as to the genre this was the first time I watched it. Thankfully, it was just a bad way to open the video — wait, that’s still a bad thing.
On the other extreme you have Alastor, who really only works as a prop for the comedy as oppose to a serious character. His entire bit really only works for comedic purposes and as such there’s a disturbingly high chance he’ll be stuck in this role forever.
Don’t get me wrong, as a stand alone comedy this is not a big deal. However, remember this is suppose to be a pilot for a full series — and these characters already appear to be quite one-dimensional. While I assume these characters will be developed more as the series goes on, I would recommend the team working on this show keep in mind going forward.
Would I recommend Hazbin Hotel? Yes! I find it to be a good work of comedy and am excited to see what this series does going forward. However, I am worried about a possible future of one-dimensional characters and having to see a theme song that doesn’t mash with the tone of the series at the start of each episode.
Mind you, that’s still far from the worst thing in the world. And even then, many of the flaws I mentioned are common with early episodes, so I’m not all that worried about it.
As for what we have now, I find it to be quiet enjoyable.
