jobibu's portal

hazbin hotel

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p.s. i finished the show after i wrote this. the writers clearly are having growing pains to where i feel like season 2 has crazy potential. my thoughts: hazbin hotel right now is at the cusp of being either:

• hot garbage i can't stop watching. e.g. solo leveling and typtical shonen jump anime
• greatness that changes a generation. e.g. adventure times, attack on titan, etc.

the yt pilot was spectularly great. i swear back in 2019, when it came out, i thought western animation was priming for a renaissance. i thought hazbin hotel would elevate western animation's reputation beyond its usual fit for kid's entertainment or adult swim smoke-sesh.

well, it took five years to make that shit. and during that time, the western animation landscape did rise in popularity, but not in the way that i thought it would.

the adult humour and gen-z aesthetic that hazbin hotel's pilot encapsulated? still niche. lgbt and other recent cultural emergence? not exactly prominent outside of "kid-animation shows" like she-ra or owl house. i'm still very thankful for spiderverse or invincible for making people realize that animation is not kid content but animation is still boxed in the rep of being still not meant for mainstream audience. besides those two (and maybe legend of vox machina), not many animation projects are getting greenlight for mainstream entertainment.

so how is the show? currently on episode 4 as i'm writing this and it's enjoyable? pretty good but it doesn't have the charm of the pilot. many reddit comments say that the show's pacing was too fast and there was too many storylines squished into the debut season but i feel like it's more of the corporate influence from amazon prime's leadership.

for some reason, hazbin hotel's prime show feels more of a typical show. the singing scenes (and there are countless of them) feels patched in to resemble the disney musical formula. and the show lacks the punchy and chaotic energy of the pilot. furthermore, the swearing seems more forced in compared to the pilot. I swear constantly but the way it sounds in the show feels patched in. and the main character, charlie, seems dumber? dumber like as in a bad disney princess way which makes me believe corporate influence is strong here. it's not like there is jsut 1 writer. there is a team of 10 writers here (a bit too many as well). nevertheless, i do see the outlines of ideas and topics being fleshed out so perhaps there are growing pains transitioning from yt to tv format.

i'm not here to discourage anyone from watching it since i'm still quite entertained to continue watching it. the show communicate gen-z angst and anxiety quite well. the criticism written here just comes from someone strongly rooting for the success of the show.

in fact, hazbin hotel's prime debut was the largest of any animated series on prime video. and the yt pilot recorded ~100 million views back in feb. 2024 and is still climbing up. there is a clear audience for what the show is offering and whether it's prime's or the writers' struggle to fulfill the vision, i believe if hazbin hotel catch its footing and realign to the pilot's energy, we can be talking about the defining animated show of the 2025.