Hazbin Hotel Is Winter 2024’s Best New Anime

I have a feeling these characters only learned English because they thought the curse words were cool.

Just finished watching the finale to Hazbin Hotel and I’ve got to say it is one of the most hilarious epic action spectacles I’ve seen in recent animation. That might color my opinion a tad, but not to the point where I’d say Hazbin Hotel is one of my favorite new cartoons or anything like that. It’s not quite there for me yet, but I’m not lying with that click-bait title I’m using for the post, even if none of the anime I’m watching are finished as of yet. However, they would have to literally enter my favorites list to be better than Hazbin Hotel’s first season, because that was a strong 8/10 debut. You know what? Fuck it. After rewatching this show, I’m confident in ranking Hazbin Hotel as one of my new favorite Western cartoons.

So if you don’t know, Hazbin Hotel is Vivienne Madranno’s newest show on Amazon Prime, and if you’re familiar with her work, you’ll know what you’re in for. Demons being the good guys. Lots of cursing and sex jokes. Brandon Rogers voices somebody. Creative animation. And catchy songs. Literally every episode has two musical numbers, and before you bring up that godawful Donkey Kong Country show from a long time ago, I mean musical numbers that are intentionally fun to listen to. Not that all the songs from that show were IQ-lowering, but the majority of them were.

The show centers on Charlie Morningstar, the princess of Hell, and how she wants to solve the overpopulation issue by rehabilitating demons in the titular Hazbin Hotel rather than have them all get purged by angels every year. Which would be easy to do if the majority of the angels and demons weren’t total shit heads. It basically plays out like an animated sitcom where there is an overarching story, but it’s a dice role whether there’s progress on it or they want to focus on an episodic adventure/character-focus episode. My favorite stand-out episode was the one focused on Angel Dust. I really liked how he’s basically like most porn stars in that behind the sex-flaunting, he’s mentally stressed due to being owned by an asshole, and his friendship with Husk was very heartwarming.

Alastor of course is another standout character. His radio voice along with how he’s an asshole who reluctantly helps in his own badass way is really entertaining to watch. Husk I mostly care about because he’s voiced by Keith David, but he’s alright otherwise. Vaggie gets some decent development in the later episodes. And while I wouldn’t say Charlie is the strongest protagonist in a show like this, I really like how nice she is compared to everyone else, which makes the moments when she curses or actually takes action all the more badass.

I’ve seen some criticism that with eight episodes, the show seems to rush through it’s overarching plot lines. And I wouldn’t have minded if it was longer, but I’m so used to short seasons of stuff at this point having grown up with OVAs from the 80s and British shows that unless it tries to cram too much into one season to the point of no flow that Hazbin Hotel seems normal to me. I will say that the humor didn’t make me laugh all that much. I think I chuckled when a supporting character died in a hilariously anticlimactic way, and Charlie’s father Lucifer also has some funny lines, but nothing like when I watch an episode of Urusei Yatsura. And to be fair, I don’t laugh too much at Helluva Boss either, and I love that show, so it’s not too much of a complaint.

It really is the animation and visual creativity along with the likable characters and overall sense of fun that makes Hazbin Hotel a standout debut show. Comparing it to all the other debut cartoons from this season, I’d say the only things challenging it are Solo Leveling and Bucchigiri. I’ll admit Bucchigiri cracks me the fuck up so it’s definitely got that as an advantage. But it would take a lot to beat the finale to Hazbin Hotel in terms of “oh wow I was blown away”. It’s a really fun show overall and I can’t wait to see where it goes from here. Vivienne Madranno gave us another banger.