MyMMO demon Cortyn has fallen for a new series that has been waited for 7 years. Hazbin Hotel meets all expectations, but is definitely not for children.
Anyone who follows my articles a little closely knows that I have little interest in series outside of anime. I have to force myself to give other things a chance – with one big exception. I was extremely impressed by the animated series “Helluva Boss” on YouTube and the pilot episode for “Hazbin Hotel”, by the same author, immediately captivated me.
My anticipation was correspondingly great when it was announced that Hazbin Hotel was finally getting a full series on Amazon Prime after almost a decade of waiting.
A few days ago Hazbin Hotel was released on Amazon Prime and to put it briefly: Hazbin Hotel is much better than I expected.
I was always worried that the vulgar, dark charm of the pilot episode from 7 years ago would be lost and smoothed over by Amazon to appeal to a wider audience and not be quite as offensive. I’m more than happy to say: That’s absolutely not the case.
Hazbin Hotel has no mercy, no taboos and is just as dark, vulgar and at the same time endearing as fans expected.
Hazbin Hotel – German trailer for season 1
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Hazbin Hotel: A Way Out of Hell
The plot of Hazbin Hotel is quickly explained. Overpopulation occurs regularly in Hell. In order to get this under control, heaven sends its exorcists down once a year to finally destroy as many demons and hell-dwellers as possible.
Charlie Morningstar, the daughter of the chief demon Lucifer, is not particularly enthusiastic about this. She wants the annual murder to end and give the inhabitants of hell a chance to reform and ascend to heaven. That’s why she founded the “Happy Hotel”, where sinners should regret their actions and become better souls.
While Charlie, along with her friend Vaggie, a powerful demonic ally Alastor, and porn star Angel Dust, try to get their hotel up and running, there’s a much bigger threat lurking in the background. Because the demons have managed to kill one of the attacking angels for the first time, so the idea of a war between heaven and hell is in the room. At the same time, heaven decides to no longer carry out the cleansing every year, but every 6 months – and is not very cooperative with Charlie’s plans.
What makes Hazbin Hotel so great?
Hoping not to lose you after this sentence: Hazbin Hotel is more of a musical than a regular series.
Each episode has one or two longer vocal interludes and they add immensely to the charm of the series. Because while Charlie is something like a singing “Disney Princess” at heart, her environment is anything but harmonious. Demons blowing each other’s brains out, sex and depravity on every corner and constant insults show just how out of place Charlie actually is in her job as Princess of Hell.
But all the characters are multifaceted and mostly much deeper than it seems at first glance. The porn demon Angel Dust, who tells pretty much anyone who will listen (or doesn’t listen) that he likes to “suck cock” or utters a mischievous “Harder, Daddy!” when physically abused, turns out to be a pretty broken soul , caught between drug use and the rush of being wanted by others, while he actually has to cry himself to sleep every day, overwhelmed by his own misery.
Even supposedly irrelevant supporting characters like the angel Adam or the hellish overlords thrive on their vocal performances and every single song is really strong – at least in the English version:
But the songs aren’t everything. Although the concept of heaven and hell is a few millennia old, Hazbin Hotel has a lot of fresh ideas here, shown primarily through the characters. It has a deep backstory and after each episode you feel like you’ve only really understood the tip of the iceberg.
Regardless of whether it is Alastor the “Radio Demon”, who even changes the drawing style of the entire series in particularly scary moments, or the clichéd “Vees”, who want to subjugate the population with clever marketing and media control – they all have their own Style and tangible motivations that are not immediately obvious.
Hazbin Hotel often manages to switch surprisingly quickly between silliness and suddenly dramatic, emotional moments – that was already a strength with “Helluva Boss” and it has obviously been retained.
Hazbin Hotel – Really good in German too
Because I liked the series so much, I watched the episodes again in German so that I could form an opinion about the dubbing.
In most cases I was pleasantly surprised. The voices fit and are hardly inferior to the English original. In some places a German translation actually does the series a lot of good because some insults or conflicts seem a bit “harder” in German.
However, the German translation is not perfect. What is most noticeable here is that the character Angel Dust is spoken by two speakers – one during the dialogues (Hannes Maurer) and another during the songs (Laura Leyh). Both do their job well individually, but the difference between the voices takes you out of the series for a moment. You stumble a bit over these passages because you can clearly hear the change in your voice.
Unfortunately, this is seamlessly linked to the second problem – while many of the songs have really good German translations, the song “Poison” (YouTube) sung by Angel Dust simply didn’t turn out well in the German version. The translation is tricky, the lyrics don’t really fit the message of the English song and at no other time is the gap between the English original and the German dub so clear.
Apart from this one song, the translation is terrific – it is just as vulgar, merciless and without mincing words as the original. In fact, I think that some sentences in German are even nastier than in English. But compare:
When I was choosing the words I thought to myself “Wow, they’re not cutting corners” – and it’s good for the series. The world of Hazbin Hotel is a hell full of unscrupulous sinners who don’t mince their words and the fact that here in German they even go one step further is just fitting. After all, swear words are somewhat rarer in general German usage than in the American environment, where “fuck” has simply become a filler word.
In the end, Hazbin Hotel is much more than its vulgar choice of words. Because even though it’s about horny demons, a conflict between heaven and hell and a lot of cruelty, behind it all there are extremely detailed, multi-faceted characters and mostly even instructive moral concepts.
If you want to listen to just one of my “weird recommendations” this year – check out Hazbin Hotel on Amazon Prime. The 7-year-old pilot episode is available for free on YouTube and the first episode of the Amazon season is also available for free (in English), also on YouTube:
Oh – and in case for some reason this hasn’t been completely obvious up until now. Hazbin Hotel is of course not for children, even if it is an “animated series”. Topics such as sexual abuse, genocide, sexism, violence and drugs are the order of the day here – but what else would one have expected from hell?
Despite these tough scenes, Hazbin Hotel doesn’t treat the subject matter lightly or just introduce it to create a shock moment – but you should still be prepared for what you’re getting into here.
If the two episodes don’t convince you – then go where the angels live.