While I see most of these complaints as subjective so its hard to argue with them without devolving into \"Not Unh\", I can\'t help but to disagree entirely with every point you brought up, except maybe the overuse of the color red. I have not once noticed cussing to be the end result of a joke, if anything its little more than a peppering here and there used for emphasis. The character who cussed the most at any one time was Adam and he was meant to be annoying. I would also bill the show more a dramady, were are dealing with characters who in one way or another have a lot of baggage they are carrying around and while there maybe moments of levity there will also be points of drama and angst, a series of sad clowns if you will. Personally I see nothing wrong with the pacing and tone, I have never once asked how we got to a certain point. By the sound of it the mood disconnect you are talking was in episode 4, but again everything that happened made sense for the characters involved.
So basically the same problems of Helluva Boss, but under a different shade of red? Thanks for the confirmation of what I suspected. What\'s left of my curiosity wonders if the drama-abuse-cancer will return with a vengeance.
I mean, if it\'s not your sense of humor it\'s not your sense of humor. I just don\'t think it\'s fair to paint the fandom as 14 year olds; plenty of adults do find Hazbin and Helluva good, if not for the comedy for the characters, or animation, or music, or what have you. The shows definitely have problems and I haven\'t even seen the new Hazbin episodes so I don\'t want you to think I\'m just some angry fan here, but the way the situation was described is unnecessarily reductive and unfair. Let people enjoy things; just because you don\'t, that doesn\'t mean you can insult whoever does.
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It honestly would be better to wait for the show to release all of its episodes before passing judgement. I find Hazbin Hotel better on pretty much all fronts compared to Helluva Boss so far, and episodes 5 and 6 only cemented that. Honestly, I'm half-tempted to flag the review because of the very reductive and mean-spirited tone.
Sadly I agree. I like the show but it\'s flaws are pretty prevalent.
Find the Light in the Dark
\"Honestly, I\'m half-tempted to flag the review because of the very reductive and mean-spirited tone.\"
I don\'t know if that\'s such a good idea. I tend to trawl the reviews from time to time, and the reviews that tend to get deleted tend to be out-and-out troll reviews, or things that aren\'t reviews - like leaving a single sentence or a single, obtuse paragraph that doesn\'t give any insight into the work or the reviewer\'s opinion.
I can at least trust that this review is maninahat\'s opinion and offers a good-faith insight into how he feels about the show. Dude makes plenty of reviews like this. And in regards to the thing about \"not being 14\" - let\'s be real. Even if you\'re not an edgy teenager, you can accept that a show\'s humour and/or design is a bit puerile and still enjoy it. I\'m in my late twenties, and I still laugh like an asshole about Happy Tree Friends. It\'s a very juvenile show that goes for shock value above all else, but what else can I say? I grew up with it, and I have a soft spot for it. Doesn\'t make any criticisms about it any less valid, and those criticisms don\'t invalidate my historical enjoyment of that show.
And to cap off, \"let people enjoy things\" is such an unnecessary criticism here imo. You definitely have stuff like \"Stop Having Fun\" Guys and people claiming that if you like this media property, you explicitly and implicitly support [any number of societal wrongs]. Dude here is just explaining how he feels about a cartoon, and you\'re free to pick and choose what you value about his opinion and what you disagree with. That\'s kind of how reviews work. He\'s a bit dismissive of the design and the humour, but whether you agree that it\'s juvenile or not - again, textbook matter of opinion. Chill and enjoy your thing. The reviewer probably won\'t do the same, and that\'s okay too.
I\'m not concerned about them thinking the humor is juvenile, but they did essentially say that the fanbase is made of children and that essentially means, if you\'re older than 14, you\'re immature and childish if you enjoy it. That\'s not a criticism of the show, but a statement that paints the fanbase badly.
Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
Perhaps I could have worded it more gently, but what I'm trying to get at is that as I'm not the natural target audience for the show and that might be the reason for me not enjoying it. I'm not trying to say you can't or shouldn't enjoy it as an adult, only that I wouldn't expect other adults to.
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I don\'t believe the show explicitly confirms this (although Word of God does), but it\'s heavily implied that demons only actually die if they\'re killed by angelic weapons. Most Hellish violence is nasty, brutish, and shortly over, with few lasting consequences for the victim. It would be interesting if the show explored what repeated violent \"death\" might do to a demon\'s psyche, but I don\'t think it\'s especially inappropriate or jarring that it depicts ongoing mental, physical, and sexual abuse as the greater (and considerably more serious) evil of the two.
That would have been useful if the show would clarify that; it takes the bite out of the slapstick comedy violence, but it also undermines the dramatic weight sometimes given to the threat of violence. Who cares if Alastor kills you, if you can just brush yourself off the next scene?
It also would have been nice for the show to clarify how exactly angels and demons work: it seems they are mostly made up of dead humans, but some are clearly born locally, and some appear to be manifestations of technology or other concepts. It's all very vague.
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It becomes a little more clear if you watch Helluva Boss, set in the same universe. Hell-born demons, like Charlie, the imps, hellhounds, and succubi can travel all over hell and might be capable of normal death. Sinners are dead humans stuck in pride and can only die of Heaven weapons. It's still kind of confusing but it at least clarifies who is born in hell and who was a human.
Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
Yeah but to this point it\'s the same issue than with the MCU: you shouldn\'t have to do homework to understand a show.
Oh, I\'m not arguing that. It\'s annoying that it\'s not all in the one show. I\'m only explaining the extra context.
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As Fun As Red Tide at the Beach
Hazbin Hotel was first announced by Vivziepop some eight years ago. After all that time, alongside a whole cult of personality built up around its creator, the show has finally made it to Amazon Prime via the arthouse studio A24. As much as I want to celebrate any such marathon effort by an indie animator, I can't bring myself to do that with Hazbin Hotel. I can barely bring myself to finish the fourth episode of the miniseries.
The premise of this adult cartoon comedy is that Hell is overflowing with demons, and it has gotten so bad that the only way to keep the population in check is through annual massacres. The princess of Hell, Charlie, resolves to find another way; rehabilitating demons into being better creatures in her brand new, dysfunctional hotel. So follows wacky hijinks with colourful characters. By colourful, I mean the one colour, mauve.
This is the first problem of the show; everything in Hell is saturated in shades of wine, right down to every last over-designed character. It leads to monotonous visuals, despite the clear efforts to make unique demons. We have one character called Alastor, who has a monocle and suit, a fuzzy radio voice, shark teeth, clock eyes, furry fox ears and occasional antlers too. It is a jumble of character parts that don't really have anything to do with each other. Most of the characters are like that, to the point where it makes them all kind of visually uncommunicative and confused.
The far bigger problem though is the writing. This is billed as a comedy show, and Hazbin Hotel's approach to comedy is to have every character say "fuck" a lot, and that's it, that's the joke, they said fuck a lot. Not only do the characters look like something off of a 14 year old's Tumblr page, the jokes do too. It was so desperately unfunny I found it unbearable to keep watching by the third episode. On top of that, the show at one point violently whiplashes the audience between tones, moving from comedy killing and dismemberment one minute to a serious sexual exploitation subplot the next, both undermining each other. The only quality bit of writing consists of some of the musical numbers, clearly produced by someone with far more talent.
In a previous review of the pilot, I talked about how much the show desperately needed better oversight to workshop the characters and the material, and it looks like A24 have instead been completely hands off with them. After all, with their pilot racking up tens of millions of views, who could argue with those results? They clearly just let Vivziepop get on with it, and that's probably going to please a lot of people. So perhaps that's it, perhaps I'm not getting it because I'm not 14. But then again, if you're reading this, you're probably not either though. And you're in for an insufferable show that's irritating on the eyes and ears.