Reborn!

I have to say Reborn is one of the mangas I've liked the most out of the many I've read. What I liked the most, and the reason why I even started reading it is because of the genre shift that made Reborn so famous, and it's something really amazing. It really shows you how the story grows and changes from the original lighthearted and quirky gag manga to a darker and more action based version with great characters and developtment. Tsuna is one of my favorite characters in all of manga because of his growth from a shy, insecure and cowardly boy intoa....braver version of himself, he's still pretty shy at the end but he's more open about speaking his opinion and isn't as much of a coward as he was before. The fights were great, though they started to pile up. This relates to the plot. For example, in the Kokuyo arc after the shift the fights are in a realistic level with some few points that sound too weird to be true as more supernatural stuff are added into the mix. What I liked most about that arc is how everything in the gag portion seemed to come together to the final fight against Mukuro which showed just how much Tsuna had really grown. As the story went on and the arcs came out Reborn began to escalate and create its own little plot, and this is both good and bad. While the fights start off with few things that are out of this world it eventually gets even more complex as the story unfolds, it's not like it was bad but there came a point where you just didn't know where it was going to go. This was more evident in the last few arcs, with each of the arcs starting out as the most amazing thing that would happen and ending up in a sort of rushed conclusion or as a dragged out fight, of course that's probably due to the fact that reading it week to week caused the fights to grow old even if they were pretty good. What I think the problem was is that Reborn tried to bite a lot more than it could chew and when it was finally time to close all the ties it didn't know how to. I also didn't like how it ended very much because it felt like the author just wanted to go back to gag because she didn't know how to end th emanga properly, so in the end we came full circle, except that Tsuna seemed to have forgotten everything he learned. Overall 8/10

(just for the record, this is a slight alteration of my anime review) Katekyo Hitman Reborn!, aka “The Idiotic Mafia anime”. Who would have guessed that the Godfather would get such a ridiculous spin-off in Japan? And here I thought zombies called orcs in Gungrave was too much. But let’s clarify a few things first. This show is a silly action/comedy that uses a backdrop story as an excuse for mostly random gags and some guys to come fight with some other guys. Don’t expect a captivating, multi-layered, well-thought of scenario. It is just a typical “kid wants to grow stronger and more secured with himself andlead its own empire” scenario, with the catch that he didn’t choose it. Others did that for him; specifically his father who wants to prepare him just to succeed him in his mafia family when he retires. It is not a bad premise actually; it is good to see a story where the lead character is forced to do something important against his will and gaining the support of those around him in the process. Remember Shinji in Neon Genesis? Well too bad he is no Shinji and this is hardly a Neon Genesis. It’s nothing but a silly comedy with slapstick humour, random stories and over the top characters. So we can start by saying the story is barely there, goes nowhere, and you shouldn’t even care about it. Sure, there is occasional progress in the form of having the characters overcoming a challenge and becoming stronger but that never actually heads to something important. They go here, they go there, they travel in time, they play in a Pokemon-like tournament, they assume forms from the future, they gather magic rings, blah blah, random mambo jumbo just for kicks. Pacing is another very negative thing. Having good humour and dense episodic storylines would be good but to the most part it is dragging to the point of insanity. The first 7 volumes are nothing but aimless childish episodic adventures where we just get to know the characters of the show. Past the introduction, they are boring and barely rewatchable. Down to it, it’s the characters that only matter in this show and your enjoyment is equal to how much you can laugh with them or tolerate them thereafter. The protagonist may appear to be Tsuma, but he is just a boring wimp who just has to do stuff for the heck of it. The real good ones are Reborn, the baby-mafia with a lizard gun, and Lambo, the afro cow-uniform baby. There are others almost as interesting and, yeah, again all of them are babies doing nonsense. Do you believe this is a shonen about babies? In fact, the entire show is quite juvenile in its humour and action; do not go comparing it to Naruto or One Piece because its target audience is much younger and thus has far less violence and intelligence. Anyways, even if you get to love the characters for their weirdness it is still questionable for how long you will like them before they become annoying. There is no actual character development besides getting to see more sides to them (usually involving their future selves) and most of them are defined by an extreme personality quirk and nothing else. How many times can you stand watching them doing the exact same things before getting fed up with it? It might have worked with Urusei Yatsura in the 80’s but this is not nearly as extreme in humour or episodic in structure. The artwork is ok all things considered, and so are the battles if you are around 10 years old but surely lack excitement. I mean, most of the times they shoot Tsuma with a bullet which makes his clothes rip apart (but not his trunks) and he gets all furious and powerful, doing all sorts of improbable things, only to revert back into a spineless idiot a few minutes later. And that is all the action you get to the most part. Later on it gets a bit more complicating with Pokemons and mgic rings but it never becomes hardcore action. Because it’s for kids. So is it a good show? Sporadically yes, if your bar is rather low. It’s definitely not good in the beginning, and the characters are frozen stiff in personality and mostly repeat the same joke. And of course girls are useless who can only cook while boys love to fight. And babies carry gun lizards and time machines. And all that makes no sense and it’s funny for a couple of times before you get bored with its juvenile approach.

This manga is definitely worth a shot if you have enough patience- or you do have a liking for gag manga aside from action shounen manga. For the first 65 chapters or so it is mostly composed of one chapter stories that display the somewhat comedic daily life of main character Tsuna, and many of the main characters are introduced during these chapters- my advice is, don't let these chapters fool you into thinking that Reborn! is a boring manga that is filled with filler-like blank plots, it really isn't and that is because after these chapters, the series gets very, very good- sortof like how Darker Than Black is, if you are familiar with that anime you probably know that it took it's time to amaze it's viewers. After the aformentioned daily life arc, the series mood shifts (literally) and shocks it's readers with the serious development of plot AND the characters given that you mostly see them fooling around in the first arc. From then on, the seriousness is continued and the gag-style plots are dropped, leaving it's place to a great action shounen manga- so getting to those chapters is basically like finding a hidden treasure. It is a shame that people drop this manga because they couldn't bear with the first arc. Another good feature of Reborn! is that it has a great art style which develops throughout the whole series- a feast to the eye!