What is your opinion of Hazbin Hotel?
What is your opinion of Hazbin Hotel?
I've heard some mixed reviews, I personally think the concept is interesting but I haven't actually seen anything besides like, 10 minutes of episode 4. I'm not expecting anything exceptionally deep or even that great, I was just wondering if it was even fun to watch.
Top tier animation and style.
Bottom tier writing.
It fucking kills me because I wanted it to be good so badly due to the high quality art and animation, but it's written so amateurishly and immaturely, I can't get past it. The writing was dead before the ship even sank.
It's like a teen who just figured out how to cuss for the first time. Even Cannibal the Musical handled it better than this, and that was pre-South Park from the South Park numbskulls, who aren't exactly known for being "mature."
Absolutely agree on Hazbin; all style no substance. I think the writing is where the South Park guys have always excelled, even with Hannibal. They are juvenile at face value, but the stories tends to dig into something deeper. I feel like Hazbin and South Park are quite opposite when it comes to style & substance.
Late reply I know, but it's weird how in this thread I mostly found negativity towards the show but when I look other places the reviews seem to be largely positive... Is it just that only the people who enjoyed the show bothered to write one?
That tends to be how everything is. The critics are always the loudest voices, while people who enjoy things tend to be pretty quiet about their enjoyment.
I wouldn't think too much of it. It's enjoyed by a large number of people, and the creator and the community should be happy enough with that. My critique isn't going to impact its popularity.
It also depends on who you're dealing with. I have a background in literature, so I'm a lot more picky about my stories. I also love animation, so I was drawn to the series for its style and quality animation but was driven away by the writing.
The thing is, imperfect writing is happily enjoyed by many. My curmudgeonly attitude toward it shouldn't impact their enjoyment, or I certainly hope it doesn't.
Further, maybe the creator is reading these kind of critiques and learning from them. I've seen many things with rough starts grow into something more special. Time will tell if Hazbin Hotel is able to achieve the same. I wouldn't count it out of the running, the creator seems thoughtful enough, and if they take valid writing critique to heart, they may become a much better writer well into the series. I could come back in Season 3 and be blown away about how much better it is than the first season, you know? Some folks aren't willing to let people cook.
I have my opinion about it now, but I'm also happy to have that opinion be changed over time. No reason to write off a new artist for a weak start in some areas. Almost no one is a Leonardo DaVinci who can do great art of various styles right out of the gate. No, we have an excellent animator and songsmith who has weak (but not terrible) writing chops. Those writing chops will now have a chance to grow and hopefully become better.
I agree. The artstyle is great, but it unfortunately doesn't have enough runtime to flash out a good story.
I'm CIS white dude who is rapidly approaching 40, the show is not made for me. When the pilot came out I watched it and I was rooting for the production crew; even watching some of the animatics the production crew made while podcasting.
The contents of what I've seen from watching the pilot and a little bit of the full series isn't intended for me. The struggles the characters are going through are hard for me to relate to. I'm also never a fan of Abrahamic religious framing, I find it banal. I wish the production crew the best, but I have no intention of watching more than what I've seen.
Same IRL situation.
I thought I'd hate it. Especially with the singing, I'm really not into musicals. Ended up absolutely loving it though, partially because of those songs. Poison and You're A Loser are fantastic, as is Happy Day In Hell.
It's just annoying to me. You know when the creator of Ren and Stimpy was able to make an uncensored version of the show and it wasn't funny because he didn't need to write around the restrictions? Vizziepop is like that for Invader Zim. A PG version of the show would almost certainly be funnier because it would force the writer to change up the punchlines. Right now, she uses swearing to punctuate her sentences.
I was never a Hottopic or tumblr type, so the show was definitely not made for me. That being said, all the fans I know irl are cis, white, and at least 50. I also have had to become "a hater" because they can't take the hint that I don't want to watch the show with them otherwise.
I liked it a lot, its a tier above most of the streaming services. Helluva Boss set my expectation high and they were nearly met.
I'm happy for the artist but I am also longing for more Helluva Boss as well. I hope the artist kept their IP in the deal.
Apparently a new season of helluva boss is coming soon so well see. I'm hoping for the artist as well
It's a musical, the songs are catchy.
However I disliked how fast paced the writing was, and how even though it's called "Hazbin Hotel" and the pilot framed it as a sort of slice of life "bunch weirdos" hanging out and getting redemption, instead that weirdly became the B plot?
Somehow they took the whole story and shifted it over to the B plot and pulled this other big high stakes thing out as the A plot.
That's not really what I was wanting to watch, and it feels a bit like they hit swapped out the story on me, so I kinda got a bit turned off by that.
I don't give a shit about some high stakes angels vs demons war end game shit.
I wanted to see interpersonal relationships of weirdos learning to co-exist.
Tl;dr: I was expecting something closer to The Good Place, but instead that got side lined by some huge MCU style plot no one asked for.
Tl;dr: I was expecting something closer to The Good Place, but instead that got side lined by some huge MCU style plot no one asked for.
What is it with media blowing their load early these days? There's no preventing them from slowly becoming some huge MCU style plot no one asked for slowly over time naturally. The X Files is a great example of evolving from Monster-of-the-Week to an overarching big story. Adventure Time had a big overarching story, but it took time for that story to warm up... like a lot of time. In the meantime there were a bunch of standalone stories.
Anyway, really good and unique take that I haven't seen a lot but rings true. It absolutely feels like a bait-and-switch from the original proposition, which was definitely more slice-of-life-of-freaks-seeking-redemption.
The fact that they prioritized Helluva Boss (which does follow that type of storyline), on their own YouTube (which they have control over), whereas Hazbin was put onto Amazon Prime with only 8 episodes honestly is what I think caused it.
My gut instinct was to assume they had to agree to certain conditions to get onto Amazon Prime and the money from that is what got us Helluva Boss (which if you haven't watched that, it's so fuckin good)
I loved the pilot (ep. 0?) but was disappointed by episode 1. The change in voice actors really threw me, and the writing wasn't as clever.
Now I have my eyes on The Amazing Digital Circus.
I enjoyed it, but not a lot. It very clearly panders to former drama kids and fanfiction.net readers. Overall, I think helluva boss is better.
I'm also not super into musical numbers in general though, which is a big part of the show.
I quite liked it, don't usually like musical shows but the tunes are catchy and somewhat funny sometimes
Used to be cool, not any more
I really enjoyed watching it with some friends. I’m not usually a fan of musicals, but most of the songs were good and paced well enough I actually looked forward to them
I watched and was mildly interested until the singing kicked in, then I had to nope out.
I really quite enjoyed it, but if you have 0 stomach for musicals you won't like it
I don't. I hated wizard of Oz being on TV every year at Xmas yet I liked the songs on hazbin hotel.
I love musicals and musical movies but really didn't like this one.
Having soundtrack on the loop :)
I didn't enjoy it. It seems lime something I would have enjoyed when I was in middle school or high school.
I'm CIS white dude who is rapidly approaching 40, I really enjoyed it overall.
The way I like to think of it is being like Labyrinth if Labyrinth was set in a hotel tycoon type of setting. It's eye candy and ear candy but not food for thought. It's literally just pizzazz.
I personally really don't like the art style but tried watching part of the first episode before I stopped and had to say "nope, this really isn't for me".
Fun setting, concept, and animation, but the overall writing quality is extremely poor. Significantly worse than the pilot, especially when it comes to the exposition.
I only saw the first two episodes or so, but I didn't really enjoy it. It reminded me of Drawn Together, same kind of "irreverent" humor, though admittedly I enjoyed Drawn Together when it was on TV as a teenager.