Question: why kanaya ;_;
Hussie: I'm not going to pretend I didn't think it was a very sad event. Feferi was one thing, as a pretty tangential character. But Kanaya was the one that hurt.
Sad things happen in stories. Even funny ones!
Probably the most memorable episode of Futurama for me was the one where his dog waits for him on the street corner for years, until it dies. And then? THE END.
That was awful! I don't know anyone who ever watched that episode who wasn't emotionally crushed by that ending. Almost to the point where it was unbelievable they made such a thing happen. I was not alone in speaking to the TV "Futurama, what are you doing to me? FUTURAMA??? You're not supposed to do this, you're FUNNY!!!"
And yet, that episode was great! Even the ending was great, all things considered. In retrospect its very gesture was sort of darkly hilarious.
I'm not exactly comparing this character death with that moment, but just pointing it out as an example of a piece of entertainment which I believe successfully blended emotional tones. That's what's been going on with HS for quite some time.
In fact, Futurama always struck me as a really good example of something that did that, and I can think of very few other examples. Futurama was perpetually hilarious, while doing a pretty great job of making you care about the characters and what happened to them. It actually successfully pulled off a lot of poignant moments, not just dog killings. I'm trying to think of of other comparably humorous pieces of entertainment that worked a serious side well and not thinking of much. The Simpsons, not quite. Certainly nothing of Family Guy's ilk. (ok I'm really just thinking of TV shows now) Arrested Development could be a good example. Certainly off the charts in hilarity and characterization, though in hindsight I don't think it ever laid the drama on all that thick. It usually played its serious notes to set up gags, and often shortchanged drama by making continuity itself a gag (NEXT TIME ON ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT jokes jokes jokes)
If I had to grope for another example, I might reach back years and years to something called Red Dwarf. Which was a British scifi comedy tv show. But not the show, the book! The novelization of it was my first exposure to it, and when I was a teenager I remember thinking it was the funniest, greatest shit ever. It might have been my teen goggles tinting it though, I really don't know how it would hold up for me now. I didn't even know it was based on a show, and later when I saw it, I thought it was good, but not as great unsurprisingly. Oddly, the concept was essentially the same as Futurama. A guy is frozen in stasis for a long time, wakes up in the future. But he's the last guy alive, a la Hitchhiker's Guide. I always liked this way better than Hitchhiker's though for some reason, which I was never as gaga over as so many seem to be. This story struck me as not only funnier, but more heartfelt, and really captured the essence of the lonely journey of the last human alive, alone in a giant space ship with his idiot hologram friend.
Thinking back on it, I'm probably weirdly influenced by that series in ways I'm probably not even aware of.
END RAMBLE
