People have been whispering about Hazbin Hotel here and there, and I tend to be pretty soft on it. We all go through our edgy phase as teenagers, and after seeing people try and "fix" the characters by making them all extremely round, it's just like, no, it's fine actually, I see the vision.
The problem is just what every single one of these types of shows have, where they have a big pile of their childhood OCs and want to turn that into an extravagantly produced epic musical like Moulin Rouge, and also make it dark and scary... but... the writing matters. It's the little things that matter, actually, and that's the problem.
Part 1: The 2000s deserve their flowers
This might sound like a bit of a niche example, but I think the original seasons of Winx Club were a good example of a well structured show.
A Season 1 like this tends to be rather simple because a lot of it is just introductions and setup, all tied together within a self-contained story. In this case, the through-line was learning the truth about the protagonist's origins and her own powers. We've seen this, it's been done a million times before.
Season 2 does something rather brilliant, I think, by lowering the stakes and making it extremely character driven, giving everyone a chance in the spotlight. It takes everything that worked about the first and doubles down on it, adding to and fleshing it out as much as possible.
The big highlight for me back in the day, was the episode about Musa's turbulent relationship with her father, over her mother's death. It's the kind of thing you see a lot less of nowadays because it's seen as "unnecessary filler", but if you take that away, you take away a lot of what makes TV worth watching in the first place.
Season 3 is where the stakes amp up, where everything gets thrown at the main characters as their lives get propelled into chaos, leading to the final showdown. It was the final season of the show and this is normal, it was uncommon for a cartoon to get more than 3 or 4 seasons spread across 65-ish episodes, as that was the ideal package size for syndication.
Part 2: Why modern cartoons often suck
Now, I'm not an expert on anything, but you'll notice that a lot of cartoons entering the streaming era consistently shit the bed about half way through Season 2. And if you look at my example, I think the problem is simple.
You can argue that it's just the fault of streaming services and you technically wouldn't be wrong, but really, now that they've got all of these characters, they don't know what to do with them, so the solution... is just skip to the bombast. More bombast! More bombast!
You know the Lord of the Rings? What was the fun part? Was it only the big fantasy battles, or was it the quieter parts where people are just talking and sharing sentiments about home, family, peace, and getting really melancholy about war? Because that second part is really important.
There's more to a Ghibli film beyond how cool it looks, most of them are about something. Takahata's films in particular are always about something really specific, like feminism, or how pride can be deadly, or the burning hatred he feels towards the stifling culture of urbanism, or how you should totally beat cops with your hairy ball-sack. And no, I'm not kidding.
Even in the realm of American sitcoms, I always thought Mike Judge was a "real one" because he seems to have some interesting observations about life. Even something as simple as Beavis and Butthead working at Amazon, that's the sort of thing that can only come about if you've been thinking and observing, you've been able to touch some grass.
The problem with a lot of these newer cartoons, ultimately, is they forget about the part where it's supposed to be about something. And they want to be like all these other shows, except for the part where it has something interesting to talk about. And if they'll never succeed in their aspirations to be taken seriously, it's because they don't have anything to take seriously.
Part 3: People aren't all that complicated
Not to use Hazbin Hotel as an example, but in the case of the Vees, their plotline basically revolves around the media manipulating the public against their will, but real life doesn't work like that. If you had an embarrassing Jordan Peterson, Andrew Tate, etc. phase in middle school, it's because people like being told what they want to hear. And people really like to be told that all of their problems can be blamed on some overblown, fictitious boogeyman, rather than themselves.
Oh boy! Is it liberals, elites, intellectuals, or the jews again?!
The media simply panders to a sadistic, apathetic, and deeply insecure public. It is the public who are ultimately the ones who are guilty of the media's sins.
There's a YouTuber I like who doesn't want to be named so I'll respect that, who spoke up about how "TikTok is miserable". At the end of that video, I agree with his point of view that people aren't being tricked, manipulated, like they don't know any better, or they're just getting caught in the algorithm, they're just miserable, awful, and toxic people.
Using his words, said miserable people will often seek out negativity and toxicity wherever they go. And their favourite thing to do, is to find toxicity where it's actually not existing, and they create it in that space, like they've just found new oil or like a new feeding area. They don't mean well, they don't care, they're not interested in improving the lives of any individual person, they just want to play in the mud.
You know that Family Guy clip I just posted? That's what bad guys in real life are more or less like, they're just insecure losers with an inferiority complex. George Carlin once said that Hitler was just a guy, and indeed, these are all just guys at the end of the day. Hitler was an art school dropout whose mommy passed away, ultimately, you know a lot of people like this.
Parents will often completely forget the ways in which they've abused their children because there was no deeper reason for it, it was just another Tuesday for them. They haven't thought too hard about it, it's not like it's been eating them up inside. Most people can barely remember what they ate last week.
Truth of the matter is, when people act with cruelty or malice, there's rarely ever a deeper reason for it. They're just insecure losers who need something to feel better about themselves, so picking on the nerd who seems pompous makes them feel big and powerful. It's why they like picking on anyone with less power to fight back and any other justification for that is made up.
Part 4: Maturity isn't on the fence
The thing about Mike Judge is that, at the time of writing, he is 63 years old. So, lately, what you're gonna get is from the perspective of a 63 year old man. The problems I have, conversely, is that a lot of my issues tend to stem from cartoonists having a thoughtless and extremely childish point of view of the world around them.
The most obvious example is whenever there's a story revolving around some political issue or conflict, and all the writer has to say about said conflict is that "both sides are bad".
I'm not gonna beat around the bush about it, but the struggle for liberation and equality is the correct side of the argument. Those who uphold the status-quo in retaliation towards pronouns or content warnings or whatever, are simply just insecure, melodramatic little crybabies. There is no "both sides are bad", the bad guys in real life are the status-quo itself and those who enforce it. And supporting an oppressive status-quo makes you the bad guy.
If you're someone who thinks, say, civil rights protesters "go too far" for being rude and disruptive, then they're not the villain's of that story, you are.
Keep reading because this is all coming together. I think if you want to write an anti-oppression group as the antagonist and do it well, then that requires... making the protagonist the insecure bad guy, actually.
The third act twist would essentially be "are we the baddies?", coming to terms with the fact that they've been lied to, or rather, they've been told what they want to hear. They've been supporting an oppressive status-quo and that makes them the bad guy.
The milquetoast, relatable main hero you can project onto, would be the one getting the redemption arc, who ends up redeeming themselves by switching sides completely. In other words, move, I'm gay.
It's pretty much the only way an anti-oppression group as the antagonist works. It's the only way a sympathetic bad guy works at all. You can't make the anti-oppression group the bad guys unless you sincerely believe being anti-oppression is bad, or rather, *so rude, so annoying, like oh my gosh*.
The problem is just that it's uncomfortable. People aren't being lied to, they're just getting told what they want to hear. And what they want to hear... is that they're already doing the right thing. All of your problems have nothing to do with you, your problems are the responsibility of a comic snake.
Is this shit making any sense yet? Anyways, they keep sucking because they often lack a good sense of direction past the first season, they don't know what they want their show to be about or what they want to do with the characters, and villain redemptions aren't really made for the type of person that I am, who is gay. And less is more, you feel me? Cool.