Emergency Puff Piece: Hazbin Hotel
🚨Demons and drama queens to your stations!🚨
Offt. Sorry. I truly didn’t envisage one of these appearing in my life so soon after opening up TEFN but nevertheless, I’m coming at you hot and fast with this one.
Emergency Puff Piece is what is says on the box, it’s mad ravings about something I’m truly jazzed about. An impromptu hap-dash of words that I slap together without much forethought other than “WOW I *REALLY* LOVE THIS”.
This column isn’t intended to be intellectual nor is it here to be held to any kind of literary standard. I’m purely just trying to share a reasonably articulate description of something that’s rocked my world while still in the meet-cute stage.
I’m autistic, what do you want from me?
I truely don’t know how the debaucherous work of Vivienne Medrano has evaded me for so long but I will not have this travesty happen to anyone else.
Vivienne is what I would call fucking brilliant. While her demonic baby Hazbin Hotel has only just launched her into the mainstream, she’s been known as “Vivziepop” online for over a decade now.
Under this name she’s earned more than considerable fame for her incredible webcomics and animations that have resulted her in amassing billions of views and an incredibly dedicated community. Medrano is a visionary in the animation world and powerhouse, earning what I’m going to call the title of ‘master threat’ after consistently shining in writer, director, producer, voice artist and animator roles throughout her entire career.
A24 produced and Amazon Prime distributed, Hazbin Hotel is the result of incredible talent, crowd support and a full length pilot episode that has just shy of a ninety five million views on YouTube.
The official IMDB synopsis reads:
In an attempt to find a non-violent alternative for reducing Hell's overpopulation, the daughter of Lucifer opens a rehabilitation hotel that offers a group of misfit demons a chance at redemption.
But it painfully leaves out that the show is musical. Musical. In all honesty, a show with a consistent musical element can be make or break. They’re few and far between, with Central Park being the only other example coming to my mind.
On most occasions I would find it hard to watch a show that continually breaks out into song whenever there is desperate need for introspection or conflict however the small musical numbers suit the show really, really well. They’re not a cop out for traditionally finicky dialogue exchanges at all.
The show’s core elements are crafted into a beautiful layered mess which is precisely why they work so well and making for some truly show stopping moments. I would even go as far to say that it’s the musical moments that what make the show truly pop.
The writing is strong, and while the show can at times be sexy or sexual (purely by virtue of it being set in Hell) I’m not cringing in these moments because the voice performance and animation isn’t dramatising things outside of the genre mashup that Medrano has spend the best part of her career perfecting.
Hazbin Hotel boasts a strong central cast of characters that are complex, flawed and, apart from the show’s protagonist Charlie Morningstar, neutrally aligned. The entire recurring cast are memorable and even just watching the opening episode you can understand why it’s has a cult following for years before its release.
Fan art is abundant, fan-fiction surely must exist (though truth be told, I simply cannot reopen Ao3 without the fear of flashbacks) and a second season is already underway.
Asides from all the usual things I look for in a show or film, what stands out to me about Hazbin Hotel is its limited colour palette. This version of hell is, unsurprisingly, set in a red tone but instead of a cold and undying place of suffering, the world comes up warm and inviting. The setting of the hotel nods to the art deco period and the choice of purples and golds work effortlessly to bring the space to life.
Truth be told, I haven’t even finished the 8 episode season but I don’t need to. What started as free to view pilot that took the internet by storm has transformed into a labour of love and dedication by all of those involved.
The show is a fun, campy romp in a world (ironically) built from love and is something that I’d implore anyone check out.
If you’re not someone who a regular watcher of animation Hazbin Hotel may feel like a full frontal welcome the genre but I implore you to look at it through the lens of creativity and passion. And for those of you who, like me, will watch pretty much anything animated do yourself a favour and put this on your list.
I could go on about how underrated adult animation is, but that’s enough for now.
Until my next emergency.
Rudy
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