天下制覇

I miss snarky banter.

In the long long ago of 2019, I posted about Hazbin Hotel's pilot episode. For whatever reason, instead of running with that, the creators instead decided to do a series about assassins set in the same universe, less focused on hope and redemption, more on crassness and ultra-violence. Kind of like a more coherent, episodic, and less insane Superjail. It's been on no sane release schedule, and some episodes have been anything from 10 minutes long to 20, but given this anime season's woes, and that the latest one is particularly slick (and took an especially long time to come out), I figured now's a good time to bring it up. Boost my indie cred too.

Impressions:

That said, I do think that the musical middle portion of the episode that was clearly meant to be the heart of the episode was a little on the weak side. Moxie's portion was all right, but it was the kind of thing that absolutely screams for a back-and-forth between Blitzo and Moxie, rather than the two sides both being in their own styles and more cacophonious, without bringing up anything new. Maybe the bar is set too high in my head from their Addict video, but that just shows they could have done so much better with even limited screentime. Blitzo's whole schtick with constantly learning that he's a jerk and to be nicer is also growing somewhat stale since it seems to happen every other episode without lasting growth or change, which is a bit dissonant with the clear love the show has for the healthier and open, communicative, and affectionate relationships like Moxie/Millie, Stolas/his daughter, or even Stolas/Blitzo at times.

But the clear highlight of the episode, and almost certainly what made it take so long was the massacre montage for the last five or so minutes of the episode. A very Kingsman-church-scene-like orgy of violence that could have used a few more in-between frames to smooth out the animation, ending with one of Stolas's few (and needed) moments of being a big ol' nightmare monster. Maybe not the best animated thing I've seen in the summer season, because… again… the animation was choppy as hell, but certainly the most choreographed and directed action scene for at least the last few months that was raw martial arts chaos.