Hazbin Hotel creator says BoJack Horseman showed her what adult animation could be

polygon.com:

“When we made the original pilot, it was like… I just want to make what I like, and just put it out there,” says Vivienne Medrano, creator of Hazbin Hotel.

This was back before Medrano released the first Hazbin Hotel episode on her YouTube channel in 2019. She figured specific followers would enjoy its offbeat, edgy humor and theater kid energy. But she had no idea just how much it would blow up.

At the time of writing, the pilot episode has over 94 million views on YouTube. Hazbin Hotel has a huge, passionate fan base, a marvel for something with just a single episode out. The show follows Charlie, the princess of hell, who decides to help rehabilitate demons in order to solve hell’s overpopulation problem. The dark humor, quirky character designs, and sweeping Broadway-style musical numbers sparked to many fans.

“It hit with so many different people, even people who wouldn’t normally like musical theater or don’t usually like adult animation,” says Medrano.

American adult animation tends to evoke a specific type of show: a crass half-hour comedy with a lot of male characters, probably on Adult Swim or Fox. There’s a time and a place for that, but for a while, Medrano thought she had to stick to that kind of formula if she wanted to succeed. That wasn’t always a bad thing; she says South Park was a “huge turning point” for her when she was younger. But then came BoJack Horseman, Netflix’s critically acclaimed adult animated show that Medrano says came at a “perfect time” in her career and changed the way she thought about her craft.

“Phenomenal show,” Medrano tells Polygon. “[BoJack Horseman] showed me that adult animation can not only just be raunchy comedy, but it can be a story that has intense development of its characters. It can have incredibly flawed characters. It can make you cry. It can really get deep and dark.

“[BoJack Horseman] had just started around the time that I was really making the [Hazbin Hotel] pilot and it made me go, Oh, wow, like,