CRITICAL REVIEW

The Rambunctious Assassins With No Filter in Helluva Boss

Assassinations who love to kill in the overworld with style and a twisted sense of comedy. 

May 9, 2023

CalisDraws. “Continuing on My Contribution for Ep7, I Got to Make a Lock Screen and Wallpaper for Blitz’s Phone as Well as Design the Apps!! Big Thanks to @janegumball for Helping Me Find Such a Cute Idea for the Wallpaper!!#helluvaboss Pic.Twitter.Com/azbzo5zRko.” Twitter, 1 Nov. 2021, twitter.com/CalisDraws/status/1455229953071538186?t=w3h0-QdEdRy9ZpRPtXr_bg&s=19.

Helluva Boss came crashing into Youtube’s platform on November 25, 2019 with a pilot episode. Millions watching Vivienne Medrano’s original adult animated web series. The show follows the misadventures of an Imp named Blitz(the “o” is silent) who runs an assassination business with his team, Millie, Moxxie and Loona. Now for Hell, having a business like that can be a basic average day there but I.M.P.( Immediate Muder Professionals) makes it clear that their business is about killing those who screwed you in the living world when you were still alive. How do they get access to the living world? Thanks to Blitz’s access to a royal, named Stolas, they have an agreement of using a spell book in exchange for passionate fornication.

 The series thrives in it’s way of animation and excellent character design as that can be luring when watching an episode. The art becomes progressively better as each episode is released. It’s pleasing to the eyes of an artist with the way color and lighting are used. The artistic elements are an excellent gravitational pull but then the elements of it being both a musical and dark comedy start to make its way rather devilishly well. Animations are currently taking over right now with the way that most tv shows now are animated.  Lincoln Geraghty says “I do suggest, however, that by paying closer attention to the historical, industrial and cultural contexts of just a few examples of the animated genre we can see how important and influential they have been and continue to be today”(Geraghty, Drawn to Television…). Helluva Boss could be superior to some of the shows that are on tv now with just within the art itself. Animating and illustrating dead bodies and gory scenes can be rather difficult but, they do it so well, you would think that the animation team must’ve been skillful assassins themselves. There is no lack of action and the fast pace of the episodes keeps the excitement of emotions up and running.     

 Moving forward to the genre it’s categorized in, nothing about this show is appropriate for those under the age of 15 but can be enjoyable to those who love sick twisted dark comedies. As it is in the genre of dark comedy, there’s no denial that this show can get dark as in the pilot they accidentally murder a child. Which ironically enough was their actual target. Currently at this generation and time period, there are a lot of distasteful and tasteful decisions to jokes and comedy. 

Current adult animated series of this time that are popular such as South Park and Family Guy make brilliant decisions of using modern day events in their jokes. Sometimes they can go far but Helluva Boss keeps it in a good range of dark comedy that does not take it too far, “Modern animated series highlight the most incisive social issues: unemployment, organized group crimes, migration, poverty, dissatisfaction with the authorities…as well as it covers philosophical and psychological ones”( Demina, pg 1129). The show’s setting being in hell opens the pathway for this show to flourish on modern day social issues in a tasteful way. Blitz pokes fun the most at the audience and his associates with jokes, his love of watching the homeless and even saying that goth girls like his adopted daughter Loona should not be alone in the living world with freaks aka us the audience.

The musical aspect of this series can be either emotional, comedic or plain out sexual. In the pilot, Blitz makes a commercial to promote the business that ended with “kids die for free”. With the right sense of taste, it could get a chuckle out of the viewer. The jingle will always have no hesitation for dark, emotional, and explicit content even in their musical numbers. Any show can be explicit and inappropriate but with the fact that these are creatures from hell, where all good morals are basically gone, these aspects work together even in music. In the episode called “Truth Seekers”, Moxxie gets his own musical number with lyrics that speaks on his emotions about his relationship with Blitz. Then in another episode “Spring Broken”, one of Blitz’s ex’s was singing about vacationing and sex.The music is captivating and memorable enough for it to stay in your mind even hours after watching the episode. 

The premise of the show can be basic at times; they are just killing targets who they are paid to kill but the show likes to dig deeper into the characters. Each one of their back stories can be promising of a reveal on how they got into the business or better how they even became connected to Blitz. Despite each of them getting a backstory for the exception of Millie, it keeps it interesting with what could possibly be the next episode. The story stays intriguing because instead of staying in the direction of assassins, there’s more to them other than swinging an axe or shooting someone.

If you want to view a show that puts effort in its production, art and animation style, Helluva Boss makes the wait for a new episode worth it.  Especially episodes that reveal more about a character or develop the relationships of the characters. With the way they use dark comedy it’s easy to make a decision of watching the series. Not only would it be easy to watch on a platform like Youtube, you wouldn’t have to think about paying to watch a show you may turn out to love. The show is highly recommended as it’s unlike any other show in the present day and in addition to that maybe you could hire them, as mentioned before, kids die for free, it’s a great deal. 

WORKS CITED

Demina, Olga. “Linguistic and Stylistic Means of Satire Construction in the Animated Series”. RUDN Journal of Language Studies, Semiotics and Semantics 12.4 (2021): 1124-1146. WEB. doi: 10.22363/2313-2299-2021-12-4-1124-1146

Geraghty, Lincoln . Shibboleth Authentication Request. go-gale-com.ccny-proxy1.libr.ccny.cuny.edu/ps/retrieve.do?tabID=T002&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&searchResultsType=SingleTab&retrievalId=e07a71b8-4804-42de-a3df-9d0271f6e84a&hitCount=1&searchType=AdvancedSearchForm¤tPosition=1&docId=GALE%7CA243358134&docType=Critical+essay&sort=RELEVANCE&contentSegment=ZONE-MOD1&prodId=AONE&pageNum=1&contentSet=GALE%7CA243358134&searchId=R1&userGroupName=cuny_ccny&inPS=true