kyle.kirlin - 2015-08-27 15:32:54

friedrich.hermann - 2015-07-17 18:27:57

Overview

Katekyo Hitman Reborn! is an anime series based on the successful manga with the same name, written by Akira Amano, which had its run in the magazine Weekly Shonen Jump.

Katekyo Hitman Reborn! starts off with an interesting premise, which in a way is yet generic. The protagonist is a middle schooler named Tsunayoshi “Tsuna” Sawada. He, unlike many other Shonen protagonists is not completely average at the beginning, not meaning that he is above average in school or confident. In fact he is the exact opposite, a complete loser in every aspect of his life, he is clumsy and completely unable to accomplish anything in school as well as private life. This kind of felt like a breath of fresh air, although it didn’t last very long. As most of these series is suddenly visited by a stranger, in this case is a rather strange character - an Italian hitman named Reborn. From that point on the actual turnaround in Tsuna’s life starts as Reborn becomes his tutor. The only issue is that Reborn will not teach him about the usual school subjects but will instead train him to become the next boss of the largest mafia family of Italy - the Vongola family. The reason for this is that Tsuna actually has Italian roots and is a descendant of the first boss of the family. Obviously as you might expect Tsuna is not exactly a fan of that, but Reborn is not exactly willing to give up.

Plot

Now, with all that in mind let us discuss the actual plot. The first arc is honestly one of the worst anime arcs I have ever seen. After the initial introduction it becomes insanely slow as it tries to introduce many characters in 20-ish episodes, which all are completely the same. Essentially this arc revolves about Reborns successful attempts to make Tsuna more confident. Sadly these bursts of confidence that he experiences are just that, bursts caused by Reborn firing special bullets into Tsuna’s forehead which allow him to enter a so called “Deathperation” mode. During this mode Tsuna will feel deep regret as he is hit with the bullet, this regret in that moment turns into strong motivation to accomplish the action he regrets not doing as if his life depends on it. These scenes are delivered comically as Tsuna’s head catches on fire and he loses all of his clothes. The first time this happens is when Reborn forces Tsuna to confess to his crush, Kyoko, who is a rather generic main heroine. This confession is actually not taken seriously and Tsuna ends up being a bigger loser than before, after all he is in the middle in the school with only his underwear on, which turns out to be embarrassing for him when the Deathperation ends.

However later through this arc Tsuna slowly loses his loser status as the Deathperation mode makes him accomplish more feats than he otherwise could. The message of this is very obvious, believe in yourself and you can do anything. While this gets repeated so often in this type of media I can’t say I did not enjoy the way Reborn! handled it, I would call it unique actually. The problem this arc suffers is that it is completely Slice of life based, which does not work well. The episodes are extremely straightforward:

New character introduced, someone is in danger/Tsuna has to prove himself, Tsuna is a coward and gets shot by the Deathperation bullet and saves the day. I assume this arc made many people drop the anime. The characters introduced several characters which become Tsuna’s friends, but more about them later.

After most of the characters are introduced it is time for the first actual battles in this anime, yay!

This arc starts as a character named Futa is introduced. A young boy with a peculiar “ability” if you can call it that, although the term habit might be more appropriate. His character trait is simple but still strange, he is able to rank everything and has this data recorded in a giant book he carries around. This book, as you might imagine carries a lot of data related to the mafia, which obviously attracts a lot of odd faces. And by odd faces I mean the first villains. The action begins with the rumors that many of the students of Tsuna’s school are being targeted and beaten in the last few days. After a friend of Tsuna, and his crush’s brother, Ryohei lands in the hospital the gang learns a clue about the identities of the criminals and decides to take action. Now this is the part where the actual fighting starts and the abilities are demonstrated.

Over a few battles the heroes demonstrate their powers and the show introduces some side villains which will get next to no screentime in the future. During this arc I was actually surprised to see that the author had several unique abilities and skills planned for the characters to use, although some of them were more stupid than actually creative. Finally the showdown between Tsuna and the main villain of the arc, Mukuro Rokudo.

This battle proves the Deathperation mode to be useless, as Mukuro has special powers which grant him several supernatural abilities. As such Tsuna gains his first powerup, gloves which allow him to fire flames in a new Deathperation mode. In short Mukuro gets his ass kicked and is imprisoned by the mafia police. Yeah, mafia police, I didn’t make that up. Turns out he is a mafia experiment and wanted to rule the world. And after he is captured it is revealed that he is able to possess people from prison, meaning that he will have more action in the story.

And with that, we enter the best arc, the Varia arc. This can be seen as the tournament arc of the anime, and we all know all shonen anime and manga have these. Essentially a second candidate for the spot of the new Vongola boss shows up, the leader of the current Vongola assassination group - the Varia.

At the same time a new concept in introduced, or rather the concept of the Deathperation flames is revised and it is split into 7 elements: Sun, Rain, Storm, Thunder, Mist, Cloud and the main flame being the Sky. Both groups, aka Tsuna’s group and the Varia have 7 members, each representing one these elements as it is said that the elements represent one’s role in the mafia. Symbolically the position is represented by ring which all sides posses, that is the contestants on each side own one half of each ring and battle to put them together.

After Ryohei, the Sun representative of Tsuna’s group wins the true face of the Varia, led by the cruel Xanxus is revealed when they try to kill their own ally for losing. After this many battles unfold which all end up being rather entertaining. I can certainly see why this arc is considered the best as it improves on old concepts and does not introduce unneeded characters or complete bs powers such as the following arc.

The future arc is the longest one of the anime and can be split into several arcs, even if we remove the filler arcs. Essentially the group is transported into the future to protect the world and themselves from a new threat, the Millefiore family. This arc is incredibly stale as it starts off with nothing but dragged off conversations happening during the main characters hiding from the enemy. After this and way too much training they decide to take on the Millefiore head on. These battles are radically different as a new weapon type is introduced - boxes. Literal boxes opened by rings such as the Vongola ones which end up releasing weapons, tools or most commonly animals with superpowers. It is as dumb as it sounds and it won’t really improve much in this arc, sadly. Despite the silly powers the fights actually are fun to watch as the group infiltrates the enemy HQ.

This arc then makes a 180 as the guy we thought was the villain was actually the good guy and tells the group to train… for more tournaments, yay!

Turns out the big bad guys they fought were not as bad as they thought. The real bad guys were actually in the shadows and challenge the Vongola to a battle to take their rings to…. take over the world, as usual. This part is incredibly boring, the whole battle is very rushed and only a few characters participate not even revealing their new powers properly. I lamented this choice simply because the battles were hyped up quite a bit and yet didn’t quite deliver. So, with this the bad guys won. Kinda. Of course the heroes won’t lose honorably and escape. Only to fight much later, and win in a final battle which actually was fairly impressive. Afterwards there is an ending for the anime and it stops. Of course the manga contains two arcs that follow after this story, but were never animated.

The main problem the story in KHR suffers from is inconsistency. The plot will often change between slice of life section and action part. Normally the SoL would be perfect to develop characters, and while it is obvious that the author tries that, the character remain the same for the most part of the series, except maybe for Tsuna. So you can pretty much say that these SoL parts are a complete waste of time and budget. The action parts are the ones where everything else happens, in other words the whole plot.

And let’s be honest, they are the only reason to watch this anime. Midway through the anime the pacing becomes abysmal, and it took me a while to figure out why. At that part episodes had a very strange structure, after the opening the last few episodes were recapped, which takes a surprising amount of time, and after the ED there is always a strange post-show segment to fill out the time, sometimes these segments will take a huge amount of time, almost as much as the actual plot, which contributes a lot to the slow pacing. The other gripe I have is how several plot devices seem like asspulls and have next to no actual background. The most notorious being the boxes and the rings. They apparently were developed separately but that would mean that the rings didn’t have any real function prior to the boxes, same really goes for the Deathperation flames, unless you are Tsuna. Despite all of this the story is pretty straightforward, if you have enjoyed shonen stories in the past you probably can’t go wrong with this one either.

Characters

In my opinion the biggest problem this anime faces is the absurd amount of useless character that get way too much screen time. The first SoL arc introduces many characters with peculiar quirks that are supposed to introduce us to the crazy world of the mafia in KHR, problem is that they overstay their welcome. Naturally these are not the only characters that do that. For the most part I blame the two love interests, Kyoko and Haru. Most battle shonen have at least two love interests for the MC, such as Bleach with Rukia and Orihime, Naruto with Sakura and Hinata. Difference is that these girls, while not always the most useful actually do something in their series. Kyoko and Haru waste an absurd amount of screentime being worried about the boys and motivating themselves to cook, clean and do chores every episode. You can’t even really talk about their personalities, since they kind of don’t have any, which is a shame as most female characters suffer from this. If you are looking for an anime with strong female characters or are a feminist, stay away from this anime.

Now with that out of the way let us talk about the worst character I have ever seen in an anime, ever. The gimmick some of the characters in this show have is that they are basically babies, or even small children around 5 years old. Normally this is no problem as this characters are shown to be mature, except for one, Lambo. Lambo is a young boy dressed as a cow, and boy is he annoying. Throughout the series his selfishness will consistently keep getting the characters into trouble and extend the SoL arcs, which are a chore even without him. The only time he manages to be an enjoyable character is when he switches place with his future self from 20 years later. This version of him is actually really cool, unfortunately, he stays around for a few minutes. Lambo would not be as much of a problem if he would get less screen time, unfortunately he is one of Tsuna’s top “men” and carries the ring of thunder, despite having no combat abilities, skills or even the knowledge of being in a battle. This obnoxious excuse of a character will make it very hard to enjoy this anime, be warned.

Now, let us talk about the main characters: Tsunayoshi, Gokudera, Yamamoto, Ryohei, Hibari, Mukuro and Chrome.

These characters represent the top of the tenth generation of the Vongola alongside Lambo, which each representing one of elements of the rings.

The characters are not terribly original at all no matter how one looks at them, in fact most can be aligned with a common anime character trope.

Tsuna is the MC who starts off as a hopeless loser who later through his friends becomes more confident and stronger. Ryohei is powerhouse guy who is simply too short tempered too actually think before getting into a fight, same can really be said about Gokudera, the boss’s right hand man. He since was, unlike the rest of the characters, involved with the mafia since birth, and is part of a family allied with the Vongola. He is quite aggressive when it comes to protecting the boss, and will do anything to impress him. His fighting style is rather interesting as he throws… dynamite at his enemies. Yamamoto can be considered one of Tsuna’s closest friends who has a rather shallow personality, it is not quite sure what his motivation is. Another noticeable thing is that he seems to be unaware to what is happening for the majority of the series and shrugs everything off as a game, at some point he realizes everything, but we never really found out how.

Moving onto Hibari. This guy is the ultimate edgelord asshole of the series, basically Sasuke. He literally doesn’t give a crap about anything but his school, which he loves dearly, for whatever reason, and will not tolerate anything that might damage it leading to some violent measures ironically. His only motivation for occasionally helping the Vongola gang is simply him wanting to fight a strong opponent and he actually is the strongest member of the Vongola next to Tsuna. He represents the cloud, which represents his role perfectly, he does what he wants and is completely free, he only sides with the boss when their goals align. Next up is the strangest member(s) of the gang, the representatives of the Mist ring. This part is pretty damn spoiler-ish so you might as well skip it if you want. Basically Mukuro the first villain of the show possesses a young girl from inside prison to allow himself to pursue his goal despite being imprisoned. Of course the young girl in question, named Chrome, benefits from this as Mukuro’s illusions keep her alive. I am not quite sure who is the actual owner of the ring, so we have to assume it is both of them.

There are plenty other characters in the show allied with the Vongola, but due to the absurd amount of them and their lack of any character development or importance I don’t consider it to be worth talking about them. This being said I don’t think I actually hated any character, Lambo aside.

So, the characters face the problem most shonen characters have, lack of development and originality, if you can ignore that you probably won’t be bothered by it. Sadly don’t expect any off their allies without flame powers to do anything later in the series, they just become waste of space.

Animation and Music

Not much is to say in this aspect. Animation starts off a bit wonky but by the time of the Future arc it improves fairly well. Other than that the art style is not noteworthy, nor are there any QUALITY moments, or I just missed them.

Music is really good my opinion, the first, second, third and fifth openings are really fun to listen to and the anime has some impressive tracks during battles and many fitting character themes, such as Hibari’s. Though some tracks tend to get overused, such as a sad and tense theme which plays whenever the girls get sad, which is every episode of the future arc.

Enjoyment & Judgement  

Even with all this criticism I have to say that Reborn! was not that bad. If you skip the useless SoL episodes and focus on the action and the plot it is really enjoyable. The characters offer a wide variety of fighting styles and powers which kept surprising me over and over again which kept the fun factor quite high in my opinion. I guess that can be considered to be Reborn!’s main strength, it introduces a familiar world many quirks that keep the interest of the audience alive. This anime however probably is not fit for hardcore anime fans and fits a casual fan of shonen anime much better. If you enjoyed, Dragon Ball, Naruto, Bleach and so on, you will probably enjoy this show as well. And even if not, who knows, it might surprise you just like it surprised me.

swaniawski.kristina - 2015-06-26 04:58:35

Honestly one of the best Anime I seen in a long time and I do hope they one day will continue it.

dpowlowski - 2014-06-17 05:17:20

Probably the most honest shonen there's ever been, though you could certainly put Yu Yu Hakusho in that ring too. Reborn is an anime that sets out to show a side of shonen we never really see. What happens when those "Nakama" of yours are all deeply disturbed and toxic individuals? What happens when you step back and realize that your best friendships and most cherished relationships have been toxic to everyone involved? When you realize that your best friends have almost nothing in common with you and would probably be better off without you?Well what Reborn says you should do is suck it up, because being in a toxic relationship isn't what matters. Making sure you have even someone with whom you can share your deepest fears and regrets, making sure you have someone to count on, even in all the doubt you hold against them, and most importantly, making sure you have someone you can just sit back with and shoot the shit after taking a couple days to bring down a mafia empire.Our three main heroes, Gokudera, Yamamoto and Tsuna, are all best friends, but that friendship is toxic on all accounts. Tsuna is a black hole for potential, who's friendship has drawn Yamamoto away from his dream of professional baseball and drawn Gokudera further into the mafia underworld the talented boy may have had a chance of escaping. Gokudera is awful at hearing people's real problems, which is stressful enough for Tsuna, as he cannot rely on his best friend for good advice, but it also puts him at odds with the rather frank Yamamoto, and the two seem to speak entirely different languages. Yamamoto meanwhile is just such an alien person to Tsuna. A boy who is almost impossible to break. And Yamamoto's happy-go-lucky attitude further isolates him and Tsuna despite the efforts the two put into their friendship because of the sheer difference in attitude the two bring to almost anything. This is all of course to say nothing of the many different toxic relationships the show brings up. Indeed, I cannot think of a single positive and wholesome relationship the series has to its name. And yet, despite how toxic these friends, family members, enemies, lovers, rivals, etc. are to one another, you can't help but feel that there's something worth protecting in there. That there's something precious in having to make your friendships and relationships work. In accepting that life isn't gonna hand you your missing puzzle piece. The story is about a lot more than just a loser teen who gets wrapped up in a mafia empire with magical fire mittens, transforming geckos, baby hitmen, pokemon, and time travel. Every one of those things is awesome, but the series fundamentally and finally is about the fact that every single person you meet is gonna be fucked up in some way you cannot help. You'll hurt each other, you'll fight, and you'll question whether it would be best to leave them be. But amid all that, the two of you can create something beautiful. Something worth protecting. Again, it probably isn't the best message to give children, but it is an honest message, and Katekyo Hitman Reborn! Does a great job of entertaining as it provides that core honesty.

hellen72 - 2013-08-30 22:53:23

Katekyo Hitman Reborn! - Spoiler-free review

When I first started watch Katekyo Hitman Reborn, I thought this going to be another generic school-life anime but with a twist of mafia to it. For the first couple episodes it was, but then it takes a big turn to the shonen genre. Katekyo Hitmn Reborn is a good anime to watch, but if you don't have the patience to put up with filler-like episodes, you might not like it. But if you're a big shonen fan, you'll be more than pleased to watch this anime.

Story: 7/10
Katekyo Hitman Reborn has a very original idea of mafia. It's way of telling the story gets you hyped wanting more, but not for long. The first couple episodes were filled with pretty comical, but boring school-life. Throughout almost half the anime, it gives you boring filler-like episodes and that's the worst part about Katekyo Hitman Reborn. But what it lacks in story, it makes up for it in the tense and serious moments. These moments awesome to watch and will keep you engaged in the series, but only if you have enough patience to sit though filler-like episodes.

Art/Animation: 8/10
The art and animation were good and consistent for the most part. I had no problems with the art style and the animation was mostly really good. I just don't like the freeze frames in battles, but other than that, it's good.

Sound: 9/10
The sound is the best part of Karekyo Hitman Reborn. No matter what situation it is, the sound track always sets the mood right, from it's calm and peaceful moments to it's intense battles. Katekyo Hitman Reborn's soundtrack is one of the best soundtracks that I've ever heard in anime. It's so good it could give you goosebumps everytime it comes on. Try listening to this soundtrack and tell me it isn't good. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2JQIvZNDX8

Characters: 6/10
The characters in Katekyo hitman Reborn are cool and likable but they're unoriginal, receive almost no character development at all and some characters are just plain useless *cough* Kyoko. *cough* Haru. For example, Hibari does not deveop throughout the whole anime. The same goes to our main protagonist, Tsuna. Tsuna's opinion about the mafia does not change throughout the whole series and he could be annoying at times, but he's a likable guy and when it's his time to shine, he doesn't disappoint.

My Enjoyment: 7/10
It was really hard to enjoy Katekyo Hitman Reborn at time because the boring filler-like episodes that took up almost half the anime. But when it became serious, it didn't disappoint me at all. The intense battles and great story are what makes Katekyo Hitman Reborn really stand out among all other shonen out there, but only if you can put up with fillers.

Overall, Katekyo Hitman Reborn is worth the watch if have enough patience and no exception if you're a big fan of shonen. Katekyo Hitman Reborn is a good anime and one of my favourite shonens of all time. My name is ohhenry2, and I give Katekyo Hitman Reborn a good 7/10

regan.watsica - 2013-08-04 08:59:18

I may guess that many people have already watched this anime (this review would be for the people who have already seen reborn!).

So straight to the point:

Through watching this anime what did you feel? Hope? Understanding?

I believe that all anime try to project a meaning or sometimes a moral to the audience. So what did I feel?

I felt the need to make or take action of my actions in my life (sorry for the double meaning), actually do what others say is best, helping your friends through their life. I would recommend this anime to the people who like anime filled with hopes and dreams, with a main character who has a similar trait to you.

Thank for Reading!!!