It Doesn't Feel That Good To Critique Hazbin Hotel, I Want To Give It All The Support I Can, But...the

It doesn't feel that good to critique Hazbin Hotel, I want to give it all the support I can, but...the story just isn't living up to the hype.

I was expecting, wanted, a story about what it really means to be redeemed. About self-improvement and learning, that instead of continuously yearning for a better place "grass is greener on the other side" style you should try to make the place you're in better, be the change you want to see and find the strength to do so in your loved ones and family. And once you make the place you are in and yourself happier you fight to defend it.

Instead, we get a rushed story about hell vs. heaven with an idealistic (to the point of feeling dumb) and underdeveloped disney princess protagonist with side characters who I vastly prefer to her. There are plot holes, the original premise of the pilot gets shoved to the backseat. A good mystery is set up only for it to be mostly solved a bit later and for the deed to have been done by a character we don't even know. We are told a sinner has made great progress and they don't even fucking show how he got there, just that he somehow did. And two episodes prior this character wasn't even near being redeemed! They lean a lot on the popularity of the pilot and don't try to build the characters or develop their relationships, we're just left to assume that they do grow closer when we're not looking.

Hazbin hotel has its merits. The songs are great, the style is amazing and unique, I like the side characters, the story has stuff that I like, too. I will watch it to the end. But I can't help but feel that the original premise, the one we were promised, is being trampled in favour of a narrative without depth and little to no cohesion. It's not the discussion of morality and self-betterment and found family I wish we had instead.

You can disagree with me. Rather, I wish you do. These are just my thoughts and I'm sad I have them. But I wanted to get them out there. Hopefully you won't rip me a new one.

Thanks for listening to my screams, void

"(Although Vox is hot, and episode 4 was great)"

You and me both there, pal.

The fuck is Charlie doing and is it interesting?

I don't mean this in a bad faith analysis type of way. I do tend to be very critical of media, tearing apart writing flaws is something of a hobby, and I will admit I haven't loved the first three episodes (Although Vox is hot, and episode 4 was great). HOWEVER, I'm genuinely curious about what the fuck Charlie plans to do with the hotel, because we saw her idea get shot down by heaven in EPISODE ONE.

I was honestly surprised to see stuff about Heaven so early, and I was especially surprised to see Charlie's idea get directly shot down by an angel so soon because it makes me question Charlie's behavior. If you don't understand my surprise or confusion, let me explain. Typically the story structure in a cartoon like this would be that the start of the show is building up the hotel, and getting someone to a point where redemption seems actually reasonable for them, and THEN they go to heaven and get shot down, potentially sending characters spiraling towards relapse in their good behavior and bringing up new challenges. This sets up the one at fault to be HEAVEN, which would eventually unite the group and bring them together again to figure out redemption for real. But that's not what's happened so far.

With Charlie getting shot down so early, and getting shot down alone, it sets up something that could potentially become very interesting if it's handled correctly, because at this point Charlie is keeping secrets from the group (aside from Vaggie). From what we've seen on the show, nobody else knows she brought her ideas directly to an angel, she pulled Vaggie aside to tell her this. Now, imagine the scenario I described previously again. They build up the hotel and get someone to a point where redemption seems reasonable, go to heaven and get shot down. But this time the interaction ends with the angels telling the group that they ALREADY told Charlie that it'd be impossible. Now in this scenario, despite the fact that heaven is still at fault, the group now also has a reason to be upset with Charlie, the one who brought the whole thing together. This could lead into a WAY MORE FUN path to coming back together and building the idea of redemption up for real, with everyone eventually believing the same way that Charlie does with actual character work necessary for the group to get there. And I really hope this is the direction that the show goes.

However, I'm nothing if not a critic, and I was let down very heavily by Helluva Boss, so I'm not impressed by Vivzie's writing. This could also get brushed off. This might've just been a rushed way to set up the extermination coming sooner and heaven being bad and dangerous. This ISN'T a hate post, I enjoyed episode 4, and I'm sure future episodes will be good too, but Vivzie's work has a bad habit of never giving interesting conflict to the female characters and never exploring them in favor of giving us more backstory for the male leads. I really hope that Charlie gets an interesting conflict with the other characters, I don't care if it's not what I described in this post, I love being caught off guard by a show, I just really want something interesting with Charlie, she deserves better than to be brushed aside like the women of Helluva Boss.

He's simply one hell of a hedgehog.

(I honestly never knew this fact until now. The more you know. 🌈⭐️)

when i found out that Silver the Hedgehog and Sebastian Michaelis are both voiced by Daisuke Ono i had to draw this.

why is it unironically such a good piece what art god possessed me bro 😭

It seems like the Hazbin Hotel series has been usually doing a lot more telling than showing, and one of the things that especially suffers from this is Angel's path to healing.

Episode 4 marks the start of the process; Angel starts to talk to and confide to others about his personal problems.

Episode 6, however, tells us "yeah, he's doing pretty good btw". They even show us him standing up to Valentino and shit.

Which, don't get me wrong, I'm always happy to see people giving Val the ass-kicking he deserves but like-

h o w ?

We barely see any progression of Angel Dust resolving his personal issues. Again, he learns to talk to others about his problems in Episode 4, but that's about it. And Episode 6 wants us to believe that he's been pretty good breaking his old habits (it's supposed to serve as proof for the angels in heaven that "yes, sinners can change and get better.")

Angel has been dealing with his personal addiction since even before his death (reminder that he died from an overdose in 1947). He's even chosen to name himself after a drug.

Drug rehabilation is a very slow and gradual process. Addiction to drugs, alcohol, smoking, etc. isn't something you can just turn off with the flick of a switch. It's not a habit you can easily break within a week or even a month. People say that they're going to quit, but they don't. Because they can't quit. Not without a steady rehabilation process and therapeutic/medical help.

We don't know how much time passes between each episode of the show. No matter how long the time gap between episodes 4 & 6 is, the fact remains that we're only seeing the beginning of a healing process (episode 4) and either a "third act" or the ending to that process (episode 6.)

The series shows us the beginning of the pathway to healing but then suddenly jumpcuts to a much later point.

It's like giving us a book with 80% of the pages missing.

"Lucifer became a fallen angel because he wanted free will for the humans. But heaven banished him to hell. Long story short, Heaven is full of assholes."

"...So I'm gonna open a hotel that redeems sinner demons to get them to heaven. And I'm gonna go propose this idea to heaven."

"Oh shit heaven is full of assholes that don't give a damn about sinners."

"...Anyway, I'm gonna work together with my staff and redeem sinners and get them to heaven."