#HH is good yall just have a mob mentality

[moved99999999999]

U guys wanna know what I think about that hell hotel show

I feel like twitter’s very tired of seeing ppl talk about Hazbin Hotel, so I putting my opinions on tumblr where they belong. I’m not a “professional critic” by any means, but I’ll try my best given what I know. And don’t worry, I’ll be incredibly nit-picky to suit the internet’s needs.

I’m gonna mainly focus on HH itself instead of Vivzie’s accusations because that's a WHOLE other can of worms to open.

During the time of me writing this, I haven’t watched any YT reviews, but I’ve read a few threads criticising the show, so take that as my social influence bias.

My ted talk is allllll below the cut. Enjoy~

Context: 

My first exposure of Vivzie’s work was her “Die Young” animation that I came across around 2016. Instantly I fell in love with how “smooth” and lively her animation was, and especially the fact that it was hand drawn. Animation like that was extremely rare to come by (and still is) and seeing her execute it so well with such complexed characters was amazing to my fetus self. 

A few years later and I see the first trailer for HH. I instantly went OH I RECOGNISE THAT STYLE AND THOSE CHARACTER TYPE DESIGNS and was looking forward to what it had to offer. 

On “opening day” I watched the pilot ASAP to avoid my opinions from getting warped by all of the key-mash memes and post call-out bitching (literally the extremes of the HH opinion spectrum), and overall.....

I thought it was good. 

Not ground breakingly amazing, not horrifically terrible, but charmingly good.

(Ok now it’s actual review time)

Animation Quality:

As a hand drawn animation that has the freedom to get creative with its shots, a lot of effort was clearly put into how everything moves (it definitely didn’t take any lazy flash puppet shortcuts for the main sections of the show) and I can appreciate that. However it tends to be... rather inconsistent, most likely due to the varying skill level of the animators on the project. It’ll be nice and smooth one minute, and then awkward and choppy the next which can make the viewing pretty confusing at times. I’ll be honest I found myself overlooking these inconsistencies due to the characters and backgrounds themselves being very visually engaging, especially considering how over designed some of them can be (which I applaud the team for handling cuz wow that must have been painful). However, the needle thin and exaggerated art style makes some things incredibly hard to look at. While it helps with adding fancy details, it hurts in catching peoples eyes in the right place.

It’s also chalk full of little details, visual gags, and references that are hilarious to look at if you have the luxury of pausing every two seconds (the news segment and Sir Pentious turf war w/ Angel and Cherri are good places to look). But I feel like these lil details were put in at the cost of some some continuity errors (Charlie not wearing her coat in one shot, and having it back on in the next, papers being blank, etc.) and lip-syncing issues which really shouldn’t be happening considering all of the detail they were able to put in. There are also some shots that have just SO MUCH detail put into them, only to be shown for less than a second. I get that’s the cost of animation sometimes, but save the detail for the shots that need it, because at that point you’re just causing the animators to waste their efforts.

However, I was surprised at how professional the soundtrack and editing was. Not one but THREE songs in this single episode was really surprising, and the variation and quality of each was great (as cringy as Charlie’s song is)

But overall, the production quality is surprisingly good for a project like this, the editing, sound effects, and sound track act like a cherry on top. Of course there are some noticeable drops in quality, but given time and a budget, it has enough chops to look like an actual show.

Writing: 

As far as overarching plot goes, it seems like it’s going to be one of those procedural shows that tries to be serialised, but it’s a creative twist on hell and has an interesting premise to begin with. You can get really creative with seeing how you’d dive into getting redemption out of all of these seemingly lost causes, and I’m sure there are many people willing to know the backstories our main cast. As a pilot, it did it’s job of launching the plot very well, setting up the premise of the hotel and introducing characters in a very engaging way. I was legit really interested in each segment with who in introduced, and it didn’t feel like I was being overloaded with names to remember (which can be a problem for many medias and introductions). The cohesion between each scene is VERY smooth, and I genuinely enjoyed some of the cliché cuts/gags. 

Unfortunately I can’t extend this interest to our main character. Charlie is one of the most generic tropes we’ve ever seen. She’s a boring Disney princess who has a “cute happy positive goal to change her world” and the only thing that would make her more generic is if she wore a dress and cried “I’m tired of being so privileged”. 

(Although it’s impossible to tell, I honestly think Viv is just projecting through her, especially considering how horrifically accurate the hotel’s opening mirrors the internet’s reaction to the pilot itself)

I would be more forgiving if she was a supporting character or someone less important, but she’s the freaking protagonist, arguably the character that has to be the most interesting. Angel’s personality seems to be “flirty porn star”, and while that’s just as bad as being a boring Disney princess, at least he gets a few jokes and has a profession more interesting than Charlie’s. Around the end of the pilot he just seems like he’s getting involved because Viv likes giving him attention. If he’s supposed to be leeching off of the hotel, wouldn’t not care if it survives or not?

(There’s that whole stereotype issue that everyone keeps bringing up, but I genuinely think that’s BS because people are blatantly ignoring the fact that Angel is a porn star, Vaggie is portrayed as helpful, and that the show takes place in H E double hokey sticks.)

The transitions may be smooth, but the dialogue pacing can get really awkward at times. This paired with the animation sometimes having awkward quality drops makes some movements incredibly jagged, and has some detailed shots show for incredibly unbalanced screen time as mentioned before. 

I don’t have enough to give voice acting it’s own section so I’m just popping it down here:

The voice acting is legitimately better than several big name projects I know. It’s consistent, great at expressing the character’s mood properly, and each voice fits each character perfectly. My only gripes are that Alastor and Sir Pentious tend to grain on you after awhile due to them keeping a single tone for too long. 

Character Design: AKA the only thing I have legitimate experience with.

First thing’s first. The characters are WAY too over designed. There are so many markings and accessories that are incredibly unnecessary. I think the mindset for these characters was “the more complicated and attractive the better”, which makes them look like they’re designed by an edgy tumblr artist (heck I fall for this too some times).

Especially if a character is going to be animated, you have to keep in mind the value of simplicity. You absolutely don’t have to fill in your character with markings and trinkets to make them look unique, I mean just look at the gen 1 pokemon starters. Thanks to the limitations of the game, the sprites were forced to be simple, and it was that simplicity that made them such unique and varied creatures. You can tell Blastoise is a bulky water blasting turtle just with a quick glance. 

Many of the characters suffer from over complication, but I’ll look at Husk for example. He has these stripes all over him that do not contribute to who he’s supposed to be at all, and only look like they’re added to make him more unique. The markings that DO help are the little card suite marks on his wings, because those at least infer he’s linked to a casino/gambling type of theme. I would say his outfit helps as well, but formal wear and bowties are worn way to often by the main characters, which brings me to another problem.

They may look different, but they feel way too similar. From the same skinny body type, to generic head shapes, to outfits, the focus characters just don’t stand out amongst each other. Even the ones with interesting features still suffer from feeling generic. I’d say Sir Pentious is a good example of this. He has a serpentine/naga body and clever hair style that make his concept really creative, but his skinny body type, complicated eyes all over his tail, and generic “young but supposed to be at least middle aged” face just push him back into obscurity. He’s even wearing the SAME outfit as Alastor (who's an even worse offender of that generic face problem), and unless Viv has some plan to link the two, I’d say the characters need to stop using a dress code.

A successful character design can to tell you who the character is just by looking at them. You should be able to tell if a character’s personality, function, age, the universe they belong in, and if they’re important or not, and that’s a big problem when it comes to the background characters. If you pause on one of the extras for a minute you can see all of the effort put into designing them, and that takes away so much attention from the main cast. Not only that, but they have actual variations in their body types and outfits, which makes them more intriguing than who we’re supposed to be interested in.

Regardless, this pilot has potential, and if they can get someone to comb out the flaws, you can end up with something good. No one can deny a legitimate animation was made here, and the team successfully executed the start of a story, and that’s something anyone can look up to.

TLDR: The pilot is good. It has some major flaws, but it has potential to be a good show.

If you actually read this far epstein didn’t kill himself.