#analysis fridays

If you’re up-to-date on adaptions of Tolkien’s work, there is not an adaptation that goes without presenting a song or 10. The scholar, writer, and linguist loved music! But he didn’t include songs for the sake of it. Tolkien loved songs so much that he made music carry themes, story, and his world itself.

At the start of the Silmarillion, it reads like the Bible’s creation account. Eru Iluvatar sang the Ainur(gods and spirits), Eä(universe), and Arda (earth) into existence. Likewise, Melkor disrupts the song with his own strange one, corrupting other Ainur and introducing darkness to the world.

Words carry great power in Arda, and songs are often powerful prayers. Many of Sauron’s schemes hinge on manipulating others’ desires and insecurities. Finrod defeated Sauron through song. And Disa’s failed attempt to get the mountains to bring back the sunlight was very poignant to me last week because of the relevance song has in Middle Earth.

Tolkien’s Songs on the Screen

Hobbit (Rankin-Bass) - 7

Lord of the Rings (Bakshi) - 1

Return of the King (Rankin-Bass) - 3

Lord of the Rings (Jackson) - 6, 2, 2

Hobbit (Jackson) - 2, 0, 0

Rings of Power (up to S2E4) - 5?

For more Tolkien music:

BBC Radio Dramatization of LotR

LotR Musical (apparently quite bad (jk, it’s officially on my to-watch list now thanks to the comments!) mixes Tolkien’s songs with original ones)

Andy Serkis’ LotR audiobook readings

Clamavi de Profundis - family music group that adapts fantasy songs, lots of Tolkien!

And I’m impressed! I can’t tell if Alastor won just because we all love him though. 😂 I personally like the costumes equally.

But the best part is that these costumes and their associated roles play into Vox and Alastor themselves!

Vox likes clout. He may like to have it in a more mature, business way than Velvette, but he’s still a clout-chaser. So, posing as a televangelist during his song makes complete sense! Despite humility being a big thing Jesus focused on, televangelists are known instead for their bombastic, fake, hell-emphasizing, prosperity gospel-embracing sermons spread across the screen. I remember the days of early Saturday morning being plagued by these guys as a kid.

As for Alastor? He’s hard at work behind the scenes, just as nuns and monks historically have done forever. While not necessarily humble, he doesn’t chase attention so much as asserts dominance if anyone questions him. Alastor’s disarming smile downplays his real power, so people pay attention when he does make his presence known. Similarly we are still guessing about his intentions and deal, as he would much rather not have either announced. And, nuns aren’t trying to outdo each other, unlike the sorts of preachers seeking to get rich rather than help others. Alastor is so out of Vox’s league that he doesn’t even see him as competition!

Naturally, these takes are opposed to each other just like Alastor and Vox are.

And bonus points for personal details on their clothing! Vox’s signature static waves on his robes, and the x symbols (matching his death injury in life) on Alastor’s habit. Love that these are on his habit at all, as he was shot in the head.

As a fun extra bit of religious trivia today, let’s just note that the inverted cross only became a Satanic visual in the late 1800s due to Eugene Vintras’ possibly occult masses, and definitely his eccentric followers. Lucifer uses the pentagram himself, which has been a symbol of divine powers since Babylonian times at least. It also became Satanic in the same time period due to an entirely different reason.

Before I begin, I want to issue a reminder that

Alastor is a bad guy.

He’s not the villain (yet), but definitely bad. He’s a cannibalizing serial killer, and took out other overlords just to assert his dominance upon arrival in Hell. I’m also pretty sure his velvety voice and smile probably lured victims to him in life.

He has finally shown a sign that he could be redeemed, buuuut… not for a while. I know we love him, and his place on the main team is fun, but he’s still not a good guy.

Anyway.

Alastor didn’t make a deal with Lilith

Okay, I will concede that things still point to Alastor and Lilith having a deal. However, this no longer makes for great writing if true, yet Hazbin is remarkably well done (Yes, season length aside). If the 7 year absence they share isn’t a red herring at this point, it’s because Lilith and Alastor were not the only people present.

We discover that Adam(?) made a deal with Lilith in Season One’s final scene. Alastor also having a deal could be fun to show that deals are neutral ground. That also can be handled in an easier fashion than what was done. And while it is reasonable to assume any demon would like to have many powerful souls under their contract, narratively this is a sloppy, uncharacteristic route.

But again, Viv is proving that she doesn’t do sloppy.

The more common something is, the less impact it has. That’s why collectors stand in long lines to get the special edition of an umbrella. Unless all the overlords are contracted to the Queen of Hell, or some similar setup, this makes such a contract meaningless. The narrative clues we have been gathering around Lilith would be retconned, and Alastor himself would disapprove of that!

Alastor Made a Deal with Eve

Yep, you heard me right. The narrative checks out on this, given she too is missing. If Adam is powerful, then Eve must be as well. Additionally, if Eve didn’t matter, I don’t think she would have been mentioned outside of the prologue.

As an aside, I would love clarification on if Angels can be “overlords” in their own right and make deals.

Eve is Bad, Maybe Even the Baddest

I still maintain that we have many hints that Eve is bad. I still find it very possible given the prologue sequence that Eve has embodied the very concept of evil rather than merely being bad.

Let’s reread my first bit of interest on Eve early on:

So, taking a bite of the apple just might have put Eve on a fast track to becoming evil itself, given the root/tree growing symbolism. AKA mother, IE evil’s physical embodiment/host.

And if that’s true, that could explain Alastor’s deal. How did he appear and take over so quickly? Eve made a deal with him as a human (Goethe’s masterpiece Faustus, hello?!), possible because the human plane is very prone to listening to evil of all sorts. He could have even been tricked into the deal if he thought she was Papa Legba or an angelic spirit.

Art by thelilnan

Both stories at their core give honest views of the condition of being human. And one of the biggest parts to being human: juxtaposition.

The speech by Gloria that knocks Barbie out of her existential crisis is all about this, for women. It’s never being enough on any scale of any category, regardless of approach. It’s also endearing when we consider the pain she experiences in the end, yet she still chooses the real world.

Similar is Oppenheimer’s reasons for directing the Manhattan Project. He feels an obligation to have a piece in the war effort due to his Jewish heritage as well as being an American, and a remarkable physicist that could do real good in a dark time. His reward? Massive regret for what he unleashed despite winning the war, regret that his government does not care about the bomb’s implications, and the government vilifying him and the project he was hired to do because his old friends had views McCarthyism didn’t like.

Music and abstraction show us Oppenheimer’s mindset and progress:

Shots of glitter in motion replicate particles and space, a direct reference to Heisenberg’s Quantum Theory of Fields and Elementary Particles

When there’s rumbling, Oppie is conflicted or failing

When there’s orchestral music, Oppie is in the zone or has succeeded

But first - this is probably my last Hazbin Hotel-related analysis until the next season; give me asks during this long dry spell!

Why on this specific topic? Because I’m tired.

Y’all.

Listen.

I’m all for subjectivity. People can just like or dislike things regardless of quality. Heck, I know Helluva Boss is part of the Hazbin world, but it gives me too much cringe and vicarious embarrassment to handle.

(Yeah, I’m weird. I know)

But I keep hearing people say Hazbin Hotel is mid or just relying on hype.

Those are fighting words!

We are getting quality on par with Disney movies for a tv series!

That’s crazy! Let’s break it down.

Musical numbers

Talented singers play the main crew. Stephanie Beatrix plays Mirabel Madrigal, Kimiko plays Izzy, etc.

There were 2 songs per episode! And because it is truly perfect for a musical, we even get thematic reprises and callbacks!

Does anyone recall when similar things have happened in animation? MLP:FiM had a glorious episode that was ALL musical with a reprise. That’s all I have at this scale outside of Disney.

Characters

I’ve always known Vivzie to put thought into her work, and this shines through so well in Hazbin.

Lucifer’s depression is similar to my own

Angel’s gradual changes and struggles are realistic

Charlie’s breed of passion is the same as mine in my career

Alastor’s extremely manipulative yet we all love him

Velvette had one of the best formal character intros I’ve seen in a long time

Hazbin Hotel works really hard to get away from stereotypes, and dives in past superficial traits.

Also, we get things like Valentino sounding like he’s squeaking because moths squeak. We don’t need these things!

Animation

You know what else we don’t need?

Airplane arms!

Complicated dance moves!

Cute leg swishies with cuter sound effects?

Every second you see is 10+ frames traditionally. (Idk the studio’s technical details). That’s wild to add in these complicated extra details! And they flow so nicely! This level of quality for 2D (and honestly 3D too most of the time) is unheard of in the West nowadays.

And on that, western adult animated shows typically are so poorly made, especially in the art. Even the few I have seen that have okay stories to tell absolutely stink in terms of visuals and movement.

Story

Yeah, this is the biggest weakness Hazbin Hotel has, no doubt. The story is actually an incredible premise, and truly done pretty well within the awful time constraints. I think everyone is valid in saying it was far too fast! Hopefully we get more (or longer) episodes in upcoming seasons.

But at the same time, this is also the nature of musicals. If you think this is fast, don’t watch the Les Miserables musical where everyone only sings. Idk why, but singing the entire time makes everything seem like you’re in a race car on autopilot.

Don’t forget; the symbolism just drips out of the screen in this show. The fact that I could still do more analyses even now is a testament to that with all the content I have done since it aired. Vivienne goes hard on the details.

But put yourself in Vivzie’s shoes. You do the impossible, shot for the moon while hoping for maybe the top of a 5-story building, and you were offered the stars. Your project has been a part of who you are before you even went to university, and a major company gives you a way to bring it to life? Why wouldn’t you settle for this good of a deal?

Innovation

People do not bring up often enough that Vivienne broke a glass ceiling separate from that of gender. She showed that YouTube animations can be taken seriously, and even be aired.

In this age, the Saturday morning cartoon blocks I grew up with no longer exist. There were tons of great shows, and I could talk with other kids about it. Nestled within these weekends were shows that ran short pilot episodes for potential series. The last time I saw one was Adventure Time’s pilot.

It’s been a whiiiiiiile.

So having a cutesy little indie pilot animation amongst thousands on YouTube be such high quality and get a mainstream platform? Spindlehorse made history!

Moreso, Helluva Boss is also demonstrating the capacity of indie studios like never before - and what may pave the way for the future of animation too.

Out of all the animated series running on YouTube, Glitch is the only creator who does 3D that I am aware of. Even Glitch’s work has only started within the past few years, ie after Vivienne managed the impossible.

So please, stop complaining about subjective parts so much. Hazbin Hotel objectively has some of the highest craftsmanship in western animation.

Do you remember the majestic voice calling out to Elsa in Frozen II? It is called kulning, a Scandinavian form of singing used as a herding call, or for fun.

Able to bounce off mountains and travel far distances, shepherdesses (and a few shepherds) used this technique to call their livestock home, communicate with other shepherdesses, and locate lost animals.

But the craziest, coolest part? Many kulning songs were passed down by the family, or by previous shepherdesses. These special songs also often contained names of animals under their care.

On my tumblr, I try to point out things other people miss. That’s been the point of Analysis Friday from the start. However, sometimes the things missed are so obvious that I dare not write about them. So, here goes:

Charlie is destined for Heaven.

Now, I don’t think if this were to happen, that Charlie would stay in Heaven unless Hell officially becomes a temporary state. She would definitely stay to facilitate while working towards redemption isn’t popular.

Charlie is half-Angel

I don’t think we’re entirely clear if Charlie’s other half is human or demon, but since Lucifer retains his Angelic powers, she’s already got that influence partly. She’s definitely takes most traits from Short Duck Daddy, including the kinder, more even temperament he has versus… nearly everyone else in Hell.

Side note: did Lilith ever die? Did she become a demon upon falling with Lucifer? Or does Charlie only have some demonic features because she was born in Hell?

Charlie knows the rules

For example, Adam’s being in Heaven is weird, and he definitely got the free pass as first human. He guesses the way to get in, which technically works for Sir Pentious, but ignores all that Charlie was coaching him on.

TFG isn’t even confident and looks to Sera for validation twice during the court.

Charlie knows the rules to getting into Heaven better than Adam, too! And honestly more than the Angelic Council.

Pacifist, trusting, honest, apologetic when wrong, are all things straight out said by her and Vaggie, and got Sir Pentious to Heaven. She actively sticks to these and sees the best in people as well.

Charlie is a reliable narrator

I have serious doubts that the Threeden (Adam, Lilith, and Eve) + Lucifer are giving the whole picture from the prologue.

And it doesn’t end there. Sera is a problem, too.

Sera did a back door deal with Adam in fear of Hell uprising for one. But during You Didn’t Know, her parts are admissions of hiding knowledge.

She probably does know exactly how everyone after Adam can get to Heaven, and is possibly tinkering with that process. Certainly there is a large pool of lawful Heavenly residents to figure that out at the very least.

You cannot tell me that God(?) didn’t translate Sir Pentious straight to Emily and Sera as a wake up call, versus just letting him appear like normal at Heaven’s gates.

By contrast to of all that, Charlie is earnestly asking painful questions. As the protagonist, she is as in the dark as we are to reveals. We see her doubt herself and work through problems while keeping her inferred values intact.