#fun fact: this artwork was inspired by weapon posters!

[yourlocalabomination]

So please pay attention, attention!

[radioluminescentoblivion]

Hazbin Hotel: The Corruption of Creativity. Part 1

1. Introduction

Hello everyone, I normally don’t make huge posts like these, but I thought it would be important to make this review and discussion about the latest animated show on Amazon Prime, Hazbin Hotel, and the people behind the scenes who worked on the show, mostly the show creator Vivziepop. Back in 2019 when I first watched the animated pilot of Hazbin Hotel, I was interested to see how this show, if picked up, would go about with its story. Like many people who were still fans of Vivziepop’s work, I wanted to see this show become a good adult animated series. In fact, as the production was going on behind closed doors, I supported viv and her work via Patreon for a time and bought some merch from Sharkrobot.com to help fund her endeavors—I even still have my Angel Dust t-shirt and Hazbin Hotel poster in a black picture frame. 

2. Personal Fan Origins

Though I wasn’t an og follower of viv back in her older days on DeviantArt, I was introduced to her work around 2014-2015, that’s when I originally saw her fan-animated Kesha Die Young music video and since then I became a fan of her work and was obsessed with her means of creating very expressive and stylistic characters. Vivziepop was the artist who not only introduced me to the furry community, she was also a big inspiration for my artwork and still is to some extent now, had it not been for her, I don’t think I would’ve been in the position I’m in now to make art or it would’ve taken me much longer than where I started. 

But as much as I was a casual fan of her work, I was also a skeptic of her as a person over time. Primarily due to how she would be overly defensive towards criticism, radiate a toxic personality on others and friends of hers, and how she would intentionally and unintentionally weaponize her audience against those that landed on her blacklist. These traits would only become more apparent over time, but I like many others had the mindset of “separating the art from the artist” And while there is some validity to be made on that notion, it makes it all the harder when the person intentionally makes the art inseparable from who they are or they’re still active or alive and will constantly change their position or view on things. I know there’s a much deeper discussion to be had about this notion and how relevant it actually is, but for the sake of this post, I won’t dive into it that much. 

Watching Helluva Boss in 2019 onward would prove to be a conflicting experience since the first time watching the first season wasn’t as bad, some episodes had some strong character development, decent action scenes, and enjoyable songs. 2, 5, and 6 were some of my favorites in the series, but around season 2 episode 4, I was losing interest and I began to see the cracks in the show and noticed that the charm had dwindled going into the second season. Episode 6 was where I stopped which is funny because the last episode (at least currently) was episode 7 which I didn’t even bother to give any attention to because I didn’t like the show much anymore: The characters were losing whatever charm they had originally, making the characters I did like lose that vibe I enjoyed and those I didn’t like before I just didn’t care or it made it all the worse, the pacing didn’t get any better as the show was always going so quickly but rarely having time to sit down and digest even when there were scenes that had those moments, and for a show that would have differing times from 10-30 minutes, it made it all the more rushed, the stories were all over the place in a way I had no fun engaging with or could get behind, sometimes plot points like D.H.O.R.K.S’s evidence of demons would be revealed but never brought up again or have the same impact on the show, and some of the songs were forgettable (though I did enjoy Cotton Candy).

After I stopped giving HB a watch I decided to be patient and wait for when Hazbin Hotel would drop, and on January 18th, 2024, the first episode would drop to present the new show to the world.

3. Hazbin Hotel Review (Spoilers, Obviously)

Summary - 

Hazbin Hotel is an adult animated series about the daughter of Lucifer named Charlie Morning Star, a demon princess seeking to rehabilitate sinners in a less violent way to combat overpopulation in hell. Along the way, she manages to get support from the enigmatic radio demon named Alastor who helps Charlie and Vaggie bring in sinners in an attempt to redeem their souls for a price while trying to be as cooperative as she can with the odds stacked against her. 

When I first watched the premiere of the show, I wasn’t really blown away or impressed by it, which isn’t a bad thing since not a lot of shows have a strong start with their early episodes in the season. Where it did get interesting however was around 4-6 when it started to focus more on character development and give some time for the main cast to shine and maintain some consistency with the story, though this has its limits. There were also some decent songs, some funny dialogue, and even some sprinkling of action around the end. Unfortunately, in the later episodes, it started to fall back to where the show lost its touch. So let me get around to the pros and cons of Hazbin Hotel:

The Good -

As someone who felt burnt out from Helluva Boss, this is an improvement as far as comparing viv’s older work goes, which is a slight benefit. 

Performances are great as far as voices go, especially when you have people like Keith Davids in your line up, though I would be a little more positive on the casting choices if it didn’t also come at the cost of the old cast, I genuinely believe they should’ve been given additional voice roles if not main ones for the show, so that sucks. 

Songs can be hit or miss in this show, with More Than Anything (both the first and reprise) and Loser Baby being the better examples and the rest not sticking out to me as much, either because I don’t think they had as much impact or they felt out of left field. I think it would’ve been better to not have every episode with a song number unless it was a grand introduction to something (i.e. Poison, Loser Baby, More Than Anything). Though I don’t expect this to be a popular opinion so whatever

The visuals are fairly competent with few to no issues that caught my eye, my only critique would be that due to how fast everything feels it can be hard to follow what's all happening, not to mention having the background and background characters look as eye-catching as the main cast can throw people off of where they should put their focus on. It's not as terrible enough where I loathe it, but it could make some contrast of who/what you should pay more attention to. 

The Bad -

The story loses track of the main premise of Charlie trying to redeem sinners and her relationship with Vaggie. The side plots don’t interest me as much aside from Angel Dust and Husk having some empathy for each other slowly through the series, and the other main cast aren’t nearly explored as much. Idk the best way to describe it, but it seems that most of the focus of the side characters isn’t where it should be (the hotel’s residents) and more so on those outside the hotel, which I think would’ve worked better in the second season rather than just the first. If season one was just focusing on the residents, Charlie and Vaggie more than the other characters, I wouldn’t mind that. I think the only exceptions to this would be the hell overlords discovery of how to fight back and Lucifer helping Charlie with the hotel. But back to the main cast, Charlie and Vaggie’s moments of romance and bonding seem few and far between, which sucks since this is supposed to be about them right? RIGHT?! The potential is just wasted.

Not every song is needed or has a place in every episode, though that could be because I wasn’t feeling them as strongly compared to the ones mentioned. Not much else to say there that hasn’t already been said.

Characters don’t appeal to me as much aside from Niffty and Sir Pentious (they’re the best) and unfortunately, the characters I should care about don’t get enough time to shine due to how this show is hastily paced—which leads me to my next negative.

Pacing is absolutely atrocious, for episodes that last 30 minutes, it feels like everything has happened yet also little has happened in such a short period of time (which is insane to me) Viv has had pacing issues in the past with her work which is concerning to me, mostly because she wasn’t always this speedy with her series, there were times she had more breathing room for her older works for instances like the Son of 666 and Timber, even the short Bad Luck Jack (which I liked) suffered from this in ways. Idk what exactly happened, but it seems like viv’s workflow has just gotten worse over time, and her artistic magic, patience, etc has just vanished.

Jokes? For what attempt of humor was there, it was very little. Once in a while, there was a joke that stuck the landing or made me chuckle, such as Charlie and Alastor swearing unexpectedly, only because it’s so out of left-field you wouldn’t expect it, so the joke works. Or when Niffty and Sir Pentious act their usual awkward selves in front of others. But everything else is just not funny to me because the majority of the humor is either sex or profanity jokes that don’t have that great of build-up or go for something more than just “haha adult words” which ironically makes it more juvenile than adult. I don’t mind stupid humor, but make it funny and not because you want to say “fuck” for the sake of it. Even if it’s just for casual talk, it's overly excessive. It doesn’t hurt to find humor in other ways even if those don’t land either, it's better than just resorting to profanity and sex.

Additional Comments -

When it comes to Vivziepop’s older works, it’s better than Helluva Boss but weaker than her shorts or animated music videos (fan-made or original), the strongest elements within the series lie within the hump of the season and fall short from the beginning and end. Though as annoying as that is, it pales in comparison to the other elements in the show. 

Heaven’s methods of carrying out exterminations every year to dissuade the populace of hell from rebelling is just a very dumb thing to do when there are so many other ways to shatter the morale of a persecuted people or nation without lifting a single sword that would’ve been better implemented and create a larger divide between heaven and hell and less costly as well. Perhaps this is just to further showcase how arrogant and incompetent Heaven is, but I have my doubts on that. 

Alastor as a manipulative radio host works well between Charlie and Vaggie, though I wish they wouldn’t have explained his ties to the disappearances of hell’s overlords so soon, it just takes away from his mysterious nature as this eldritch being. That part to me would’ve worked later on. (Yeah, I’m also aware they did something similar in the pilot too, which brings up another issue I have) 

Continuity between the pilot and the first episode is pretty murky, it doesn’t help matters when the plot of the pilot and the series episodes get collaged in so haphazardly. If I never heard of Hazbin Hotel or Vivziepop’s work before, I’d kinda be thrown off a bit and try my best to catch up on what’s going on. I don’t expect an expose of how everything works, but an organic flow of how things come together would’ve been nice. For instance: the pilot itself feels more like an episode one than the actual episode 1 of the first season. I know the point of the pilot isn’t as strict in its rules, since it's supposed to sell an idea to a network or distributor. Hell, The Amazing Digital Circus does something similar to how Hazbin Hotel does with presenting a first-episode introduction into the world and characters, only it does it far better and it hasn’t even gotten its first episode out yet, but I don’t want to compare apples to oranges on two different shows. The point is, the first episode should’ve had a better flow to it or at least maintained something more consistent like the pilot did. 

But by far the most glaring problem in the show isn’t part of the show itself believe it or not. But to keep this short, I’ll leave that for part 2. 

4. End of Part 1 

Originally when I watched the series I gave this a 7/10 on IMDB because I came at this from a perspective of how I would judge the work based on viv’s prior craft, this gave it a point above Helluva Boss, primarily with pacing, and direction of what it should be about and where to focus the story and characters. That being said, I was being very generous and didn’t also factor in on how it stood on its own two feet, and to be honest? It's not that good. For the first season of a new adult animated show, it’s too rushed, and not fleshed out enough in areas where it needs to be, The majority of the characters I have little interest or investment in, and despite having its moments, it's not enough to keep me hooked to know what happens within the next season. 

This would bring it down to 1 point for that to a 6/10, I know some fans would put the blame on Amazon, A24, or Bento, but here’s the thing, other shows have had episodes with similar limited space and time to tell their stories yet do a far more superior job in doing so than this, from what I understand, Amazon seems pretty open for a studio big or small to do as they please with what resources they have to get out what they can regardless of the restraint of episodes to be made, thereby making studios try their best to work harder on making a show work with such little episodes, so I see this mostly as a personal thing with viv and her team than just amazon. 

Now I would just leave it at that and move on, but I’m afraid this is where things get more muddy and grim.

[aion-rsa]

Best Mandalorian and Baby Yoda Gifts: A Star Wars Holiday Buying Guide

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Presented by:

On Nov. 12, 2019, pop culture was forever changed when Disney+ launched The Mandalorian. Although the Star Wars saga had already established a presence on TV thanks to cartoons like The Clone Wars and Rebels, there had never been a well, good, live-action attempt to bring a galaxy far, far away to the small screen. (And no, The Star Wars Holiday Special, The Ewok Adventure, and Ewoks: The Battle for Endor don’t count, but at least the latter had Wilford Brimley). The Mandalorian changed all this.

The series is packed with motion picture-level production values, A-List talent on screen and behind the scenes (the show is largely the baby of Jon Favreau, a million miles away from his role as Gutter in PCU), and, in general, pure entertainment. Before its premiere, The Mandalorian was shrouded in secrecy for reasons that have now become obvious—it was protecting its biggest, er, asset, The Child. A member of the same species as a certain wrinkled green Jedi master, the character is a breakout sensation that transcends the show and Star Wars itself due to its inherent cuteness. And so, Baby Yoda mania and a million “chickie nug nugs” memes were born.

Since the show premiered before last year’s holiday season, there wasn’t enough The Mandalorian merchandise to go around. As you’ll see in the following gift guide of Mando and The Child-centric items available on eBay now, that is not a problem that the series’ devoted fans have this holiday season.

Topps x eBay Exclusive Mandalorian Cards

Featuring retro-inspired art reminiscent of the work of Topps’ famed Mars Attacks line, this exclusive print-on-demand 10-card set is available only on eBay.com! Featuring never-before-seen artwork from The Mandalorian, this set will be available for one week only… meaning that you need to act fast before they become rarer than Beskar!

Buy Topps x eBay Exclusive Mandalorian Cards here

Pedro Pascal Signed Items

Take your gift-giving (or your own collection) to the next level with memorabilia signed by Mando himself, Pedro Pascal. Hollywood Memorabilia has several autographed items from The Mandalorian available, including a Funko POP! set, action figures from Hasbro’s The Black Series, a Lego Brick Headz release, and several exclusive posters. These are stunning, unique items that will give their owner bragging rights…and impress collectors from all corners of the galaxy.

Buy Pedro Pascal Signed Mandalorian Memorabilia

Funko POP!: 10” Chrome Mandalorian with The Child

TV’s hottest show meets pop culture’s hottest collectible in this super-sized Funko POP! collectible of Mando in his Beskar helmet clutching The Child.

Buy the Funko POP!: 10” Chrome Mandalorian with The Child here

Operation: Star Wars: The Mandalorian Edition

Given the fact that The Child will eat just about anything, it’s no surprise that he’s gonna need some gastric surgery to remove all the debris he’s devoured from his belly – and invasive surgery has never been more fun than in this The Mandalorian-branded take on the classic electronic game Operation. Whoa, dude even ate a Stormtrooper helmet!

Buy Operation: Star Wars: The Mandalorian Edition here

Funko POP!: The Mandalorian: Heavy Infantry Mandalorian Vinyl Figure

Although there’s been much exploration of Mandalorian culture in the Star Wars expanded universe, it wasn’t really until the show premiered that viewers began to get a feel of what these noble ciphers were really all about. That said, much about what drives Mandalorians is still shrouded in mystery. But what we have seen? Absolutely bad ass! Perhaps no other Mandalorian other than Din Djarin has captivated viewers than the Heavy Infantry Mandalorian (AKA the thicc one). His flying, flamethrowing antics are the stuff that Star Wars fans dream about – resulting in this popular Funko POP offering.

Buy the Funko POP!: The Mandalorian Heavy Infantry Mandalorian Vinyl Figure Here

The Mandalorian: Men’s The Child Precious Cargo Pocket Sweatshirt

Available in your choice of black or navy blue, this 2XL pocket sweatshirt features a typically adorable picture of The Child so that you can keep him close to your heart, always.

Buy The Mandalorian: Men’s The Child Precious Cargo Pocket Sweatshirt here

The Mandalorian: This Is the Way Poster

Mando and Baby Yoda can become a cherished part of your home décor with this 24.25 x 35.75 poster that comes in your choice of five different framing options. (The unframed poster is also available).

Buy The Mandalorian: This is the Way Poster here

Funko POP!: Star Wars: The Mandalorian: Moff Gideon with Darksaber Vinyl Figure

Hot off of his role as Gus Fring in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, Giancarlo Esposito headed to a galaxy far, far away for his role as Moff Gideon. As The Mandalorian’s big bad, he’s seeking to recover The Child for his own nefarious reasons. Despite being the show’s villain, you’ve just got to love Gideon thanks to the menace that Esposito embodies the character with. Then there’s the Darksaber, arguably the coolest Star Wars weapon – and the highlight of this Moff Gideon Funko POP! Vinyl figure.

Buy the Funko POP!: Star Wars: The Mandalorian: Moff Gideon with Darksaber Vinyl Figure here

Star Wars: The Mandalorian: 2021 Wall Calendar

Show off your love for The Mandalorian all year long with this calendar showcasing dynamic images from the series. With plenty of The Child, obviously.

Buy the Star Wars: The Mandalorian 2021 Wall Calendar here

Star Wars: The Black Series: The Mandalorian: The Child Figure

Judge Baby Yoda by his size, do you? An impressive addition to Hasbro’s The Black Series line of Star Wars figures is this 1.1” figure of The Child that comes complete with several character-specific accessories – including an amphibian creature who is not long for this world. Alas, one creature’s misfortune is another one’s lunch

Buy the Star Wars: The Black Series: The Mandalorian: The Child Figure here

Star Wars: The Mandalorian: The Child Metal Tin

Emblazoned with retro trading card inspired art, this metal tin (i.e. lunchbox) has Mando seemingly chastising The Child…most likely due to the kid’s ravenous appetite. This one is great as a display piece or to actually use to keep your food in. Unless Baby Yoda gets to it first.

Buy the Star Wars: The Mandalorian: The Child Metal Tin here

Star Wars: The Mandalorian: The Child Plush Doll

Mattel presents this 11” adorable plush doll of The Child that features a vinyl head more than capable of withstanding all of your kisses and snuggles and smooshes and oh my god we want to eat him up gahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Buy the Star Wars: The Mandalorian: The Child Plush Doll here

Hallmark 2020 Star Wars – The Mandalorian: The Child Ornament

This is most definitely adorable but a disclaimer: Neither eBay nor Den of Geek is responsible if The Child eats all of the other ornaments on your Christmas tree.

Buy the Hallmark 2020 Star Wars: The Mandalorian: The Child Ornament here

Baby Yoda The Mandalorian Star Wars Pet Costume

We wrap up this gift guide with a gentle reminder that dogs can be geeks too. Happy holidays folks, for this is truly the way!

Buy the Baby Yoda The Mandalorian Star Wars Pet Costume here

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

The post Best Mandalorian and Baby Yoda Gifts: A Star Wars Holiday Buying Guide appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/36lGSWE