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Hazbin Hotel Initial Opinions
Good. So good. Holy fucking shit, HH is so good.
I didn't realize how starved I was for lush western 2D animation that isn't beholden to ages 10-and-under ratings requirements. I've relied on anime to fill that niche for a long time, but anime has very different style conventions to western 2D and it's so fucking good to see western 2D operating in this sphere.
Like, nothing against adult animations such as Disenchanted or Big Mouth, but the animation style lacks the vivid, model-bending mania that you see in the bulk of 2D animation. It's as though peopel have been convinced that for western animation to appeal to adults, it much be staid and heavily on-model or hideous gross-out style. And those styles of animation are great and valuable too, but oh my god they've been the only thing you can see in adult animation for so fucking long. For decades, possibly? (My sense of the passage of time is very poor, and so is my memory, so this may not be correct).
Effusive praise for the visual design aside, it's also got musicals! About horrible things! Which is my favourite kind!
And the songs themselves are great, too, which is rad because musical interludes in animation absolute can get away with being kind of shit. As long as the visuals carry it, it's more than sufficient. But bruh, they did not fuck around at all.
There's some discourse hovering around tumblr/twitter where antis and puritans have concluded that a show about literal damned souls going to literal rehab shouldn't feature "problematic content," which I'll go into in this cut, but tl;dr: it's pointless, masturbatory bullshit to make puritans feel better about how much they hate themselves.
There are several arguments I've seen, and I'm going to speed through them and how stupid they are.
1) Vivian (the show's head artist and writer) is a zoophile. People claim this because she takes furry commissions (she isn't actually a furry herself IIRC). If you think that furries go around raping animals, that says a lot more about you than about furries. Namely, it says that you think anything you see in art that you enjoy is something you should do in real life, which since most of you are watching shows aimed at a level higher than pre-school is horrifying, and I wouldn't trust you with a fork, let alone an entire body of your own to do as you will.
2) Vivian is a pedophile. People say this because she draws pornographic art. Which. Like. There's no correlation there....
3) Angel Dust is the only gay character. People say this because they didn't watch the show. The core cast consists of three gays and an ace, so that's stupid as fuck. Then again, a lot of these people unironically think that women can't be gay, or that women's gayness isn't as real as men's gayness. This usually manifests as them saying things like, "it doesn't matter if you're a lesbian, you shouldn't be writing slash fic because you don't understand the ~*~gay male experience~*~" but apparently their opinions are Evolving. So keep an eye out for that one.
4) Angel Dust is a transphobic cariacature. People say this because Angel is a high fem twink. But there's no indication that he's trans. He could be, sure, but then, even if he is trans, where's the transphobia in a sex worker enjoying sex or in a demon enjoying drugs? It's a show about a rehab clinic for the damned. It's gonna have..... rehab themes? Also, everyone saying this is sleeping on the fact that Charlie is clearly actually legitimately trans: she changed her name, dresses so masc that it gets pointed out by the homophobic character, and only refers to herself as princess instead of as heir when she is doing Formal Royal Affairs.
5) Vaggie is a racist cariacature. This is predicated on the fact that Vaggie gets angry when two notorious horrible men intrude on her life and destroy the hopes, dreams, and careers of both herself and her girlfriend. Because god forbid a Latina woman get angry, I guess. Also peopel are saying that Vaggie is a racist cariacature because she gets angry on Charlie's behalf, which is proof that she exists only to "save the white girl," which is a weird way to say, "cares about her girlfriend," but okay.
6) The show says you go to hell for being gay. People say this because the core cast is all queer. Which would almost be a fair complaint, if it weren't established that Angel Dust is in hell for being an absolute shit fucking asshole who destroys lives and murders people for fun, that Charlie is in hell not because of grave sin but because it's her birthright, and that the radio demon is in hell to literally take it over. The only person about whom this argument could be made is Vaggie, and given her emotional reaction to the whole line about people being in hell because they deserve it, and there's no redemption to be had, I suspect there's a tragic backstory hanging around over there.
7) Charlie is Peak White Feminism and White Saviour-ism. People say this because she's blonde and wants to save the world. This would hold a lot more weight if literally everyone, including Charlie herself, didn't openly acknowledge that this project is basically a pipe dream, and if everyone around her didn't run her into the ground for suggesting it, and if she actually had narrative-warping levels of skill and charming that allow her to save a foreign society, and if it wasn't literally her own home, culture and kingdom that she's saving. As it stands, Charlie is "white" (we assume, as she is blonde, but she is also some sort of mime-themed furry or clown demon), and wants to save people. This is not what the white saviour trope actually means.
Now, interestingly, you may notice that none of these complaints center around the gender-conforming male character who (at the time of the pilot) appears to be straight*. What a weird little coincidence that gender conforming straight men aren't considered a danger to humanity and good taste, even though they're established multiple times in narrative to be by far the most unrepentant, heinous, dangerous, monstrous, and outright evil people in the entirety of hell.
Weird how that works, ain't it!!
*The creator has confirmed that the Radio Demon is asexual and this will be addressed in later episodes.
Back to the goods!
If I were the kinning type, I would kin Angel Dust. What a glorious queer disaster slut. Bless him.
Vaggie and Charlie's relationship is cuter that fuck, I don't know how to cope, it's so good. Like, they know eachother flaws and help compensate for them so well and so immediately, and it's glorious.
A main cast that consists exclusively of queers is rad. I love that. I love it!!!! There's not enough of that! Even in adult animation, where it should by rights be everywhere!
Sssir Pentious is great, I assume he's dead for real and we won't see him again, but dude. His lil obsessive step-on-me-daddy Egg Henchmen were also fantastic.
I want Cherry Bomb to rail me behind the denny's at 3:47 AM on a sunday morning.
The voice acting was so good!
The manipulation of the fourth wall as an artistic choice without ever actually breaking it was glorious and I nearly pissed myself when the Radio Demon pulled that shit.
My basically only complaint is a throwaway line and a couple of implications that drug addiction is a cardinal sin which can get you damned to hell, but given that it's a show about a rehab clinic in a christian theology, I can let that one slide. Might be somethign to consider if you're especially sensitive to drug addiction jokes, though.
I didn't realize how starved I was for lush western 2D animation that isn't beholden to ages 10-and-under ratings requirements. I've relied on anime to fill that niche for a long time, but anime has very different style conventions to western 2D and it's so fucking good to see western 2D operating in this sphere.
Like, nothing against adult animations such as Disenchanted or Big Mouth, but the animation style lacks the vivid, model-bending mania that you see in the bulk of 2D animation. It's as though peopel have been convinced that for western animation to appeal to adults, it much be staid and heavily on-model or hideous gross-out style. And those styles of animation are great and valuable too, but oh my god they've been the only thing you can see in adult animation for so fucking long. For decades, possibly? (My sense of the passage of time is very poor, and so is my memory, so this may not be correct).
Effusive praise for the visual design aside, it's also got musicals! About horrible things! Which is my favourite kind!
And the songs themselves are great, too, which is rad because musical interludes in animation absolute can get away with being kind of shit. As long as the visuals carry it, it's more than sufficient. But bruh, they did not fuck around at all.
There's some discourse hovering around tumblr/twitter where antis and puritans have concluded that a show about literal damned souls going to literal rehab shouldn't feature "problematic content," which I'll go into in this cut, but tl;dr: it's pointless, masturbatory bullshit to make puritans feel better about how much they hate themselves.
There are several arguments I've seen, and I'm going to speed through them and how stupid they are.
1) Vivian (the show's head artist and writer) is a zoophile. People claim this because she takes furry commissions (she isn't actually a furry herself IIRC). If you think that furries go around raping animals, that says a lot more about you than about furries. Namely, it says that you think anything you see in art that you enjoy is something you should do in real life, which since most of you are watching shows aimed at a level higher than pre-school is horrifying, and I wouldn't trust you with a fork, let alone an entire body of your own to do as you will.
2) Vivian is a pedophile. People say this because she draws pornographic art. Which. Like. There's no correlation there....
3) Angel Dust is the only gay character. People say this because they didn't watch the show. The core cast consists of three gays and an ace, so that's stupid as fuck. Then again, a lot of these people unironically think that women can't be gay, or that women's gayness isn't as real as men's gayness. This usually manifests as them saying things like, "it doesn't matter if you're a lesbian, you shouldn't be writing slash fic because you don't understand the ~*~gay male experience~*~" but apparently their opinions are Evolving. So keep an eye out for that one.
4) Angel Dust is a transphobic cariacature. People say this because Angel is a high fem twink. But there's no indication that he's trans. He could be, sure, but then, even if he is trans, where's the transphobia in a sex worker enjoying sex or in a demon enjoying drugs? It's a show about a rehab clinic for the damned. It's gonna have..... rehab themes? Also, everyone saying this is sleeping on the fact that Charlie is clearly actually legitimately trans: she changed her name, dresses so masc that it gets pointed out by the homophobic character, and only refers to herself as princess instead of as heir when she is doing Formal Royal Affairs.
5) Vaggie is a racist cariacature. This is predicated on the fact that Vaggie gets angry when two notorious horrible men intrude on her life and destroy the hopes, dreams, and careers of both herself and her girlfriend. Because god forbid a Latina woman get angry, I guess. Also peopel are saying that Vaggie is a racist cariacature because she gets angry on Charlie's behalf, which is proof that she exists only to "save the white girl," which is a weird way to say, "cares about her girlfriend," but okay.
6) The show says you go to hell for being gay. People say this because the core cast is all queer. Which would almost be a fair complaint, if it weren't established that Angel Dust is in hell for being an absolute shit fucking asshole who destroys lives and murders people for fun, that Charlie is in hell not because of grave sin but because it's her birthright, and that the radio demon is in hell to literally take it over. The only person about whom this argument could be made is Vaggie, and given her emotional reaction to the whole line about people being in hell because they deserve it, and there's no redemption to be had, I suspect there's a tragic backstory hanging around over there.
7) Charlie is Peak White Feminism and White Saviour-ism. People say this because she's blonde and wants to save the world. This would hold a lot more weight if literally everyone, including Charlie herself, didn't openly acknowledge that this project is basically a pipe dream, and if everyone around her didn't run her into the ground for suggesting it, and if she actually had narrative-warping levels of skill and charming that allow her to save a foreign society, and if it wasn't literally her own home, culture and kingdom that she's saving. As it stands, Charlie is "white" (we assume, as she is blonde, but she is also some sort of mime-themed furry or clown demon), and wants to save people. This is not what the white saviour trope actually means.
Now, interestingly, you may notice that none of these complaints center around the gender-conforming male character who (at the time of the pilot) appears to be straight*. What a weird little coincidence that gender conforming straight men aren't considered a danger to humanity and good taste, even though they're established multiple times in narrative to be by far the most unrepentant, heinous, dangerous, monstrous, and outright evil people in the entirety of hell.
Weird how that works, ain't it!!
*The creator has confirmed that the Radio Demon is asexual and this will be addressed in later episodes.
Back to the goods!
If I were the kinning type, I would kin Angel Dust. What a glorious queer disaster slut. Bless him.
Vaggie and Charlie's relationship is cuter that fuck, I don't know how to cope, it's so good. Like, they know eachother flaws and help compensate for them so well and so immediately, and it's glorious.
A main cast that consists exclusively of queers is rad. I love that. I love it!!!! There's not enough of that! Even in adult animation, where it should by rights be everywhere!
Sssir Pentious is great, I assume he's dead for real and we won't see him again, but dude. His lil obsessive step-on-me-daddy Egg Henchmen were also fantastic.
I want Cherry Bomb to rail me behind the denny's at 3:47 AM on a sunday morning.
The voice acting was so good!
The manipulation of the fourth wall as an artistic choice without ever actually breaking it was glorious and I nearly pissed myself when the Radio Demon pulled that shit.
My basically only complaint is a throwaway line and a couple of implications that drug addiction is a cardinal sin which can get you damned to hell, but given that it's a show about a rehab clinic in a christian theology, I can let that one slide. Might be somethign to consider if you're especially sensitive to drug addiction jokes, though.
no subject
This is what happens when you didn't watch the show you're critiquing, and you're basing all of your critique on the opinions of people who also didn't watch it, and THOSE people are basing their opinions on people who went through the whole thing with a fine-toothed comb looking for shit to be pissed about.
(and everything about hazbin hotel is fuckin wonderful. Vaggie! And Charlie! They're queer and in love and I fuckin love them!! Angel Dust is the best and I love that slutty little spider twink with all my goddamn heart! The animation!!!! The fucking hogwild animation!! And this is a fucking YouTube cartoon!!!)
no subject
Who the fuck thinks "this character clearly based on the fox news anchor archetype and designated as a villainous antagonist in the narrative is homophobic" somehow means the QUEER LATINA ARTIST is homophobic
Holy shit what the fuck
no subject
(like, seriously. SHE WAS FUCKING BORN THERE. she didn't stride in one day and decide that she knew better than the people there and was complitely validated by the narrative.
in fact, literally the exact oppisite.)
no subject
"I don't touch the gays. I have standards."
"Yeah... how's that workin' out for you?"
As for the "drugs = Hell" thing, that's in the song which also cites Hell being full of "crying babies", so I didn't interpret that as a reason to go to Hell so much as a coping behaviour a lot of people do there. I mean, they're in freakin' HELL, wouldn't you?
no subject