Katekyo Hitman REBORN! is an episodic anime about a useless kid named Tsuna (it's not his full name) who gets a home tutor named Reborn. Reborn is a baby. A baby who is the most intelligent, best, and deadliest hitman in the (Italian) Mafia who went to Japan to find a new Mafia boss, Vongola X. He went to Japan to find a new (11 y. o.) Italian mafia boss. Makes sense? This is only the beginning. Every couple of episodes a new character is introduced; all of them better than Tsuna. Because he's a tuna. And tuna is not very successful in life, though it may have more success as a dish. Tsuna has a crush for the most popular girl in his school, and she seems to like him as well, especially after he shows his super hax his home tutor has learnt him. Well, how original is THAT?
The everyday life of Tsuna & co. is doing implausible things while the MC breaks his clothes every couple of minutes for deathperation mode. He seems to have an infinite supply of clothes. And the amount of people that ends up living at his place is ridiculous; but don't worry, momma doesn't care (I wonder if Tsuna's family is rich?). Your reaction to what I have written here will be: 1) Sounds kiinda interesting, or 2) This will be quite boring.
The correct answer is 2.
So, yeah, Katekyo Hitman REBORN! is very boring and should definitely not be ranked that high.
Thanks for reading. Now you may just drop this series.
...Or that's what the first 20 episodes make you think. Do not worry, for after that lame and long introduction finally an interesting arc appears (though it has a length of only 5 eps). Tsuna is still a weakling, but, it becomes a bit more interesting due to what happens. This show is made out of battle arcs, and in between them there always are episodes to relieve the tension, which is not bad. It seems to become the typical shonen, in which you get the usual "become 20x stronger in 3 days", and "beat the strongest, most experienced people even though you have started fighting a couple of weeks ago". Oh well, it's quite fun because there are times at which you think: "I'm sure he's going to win", but then you get a surprise; he does NOT win. Sometimes. Sometimes.
The second arc is quite well done, since it is much more entertaining than the first, despite the before mentioned typical shonen elements. In this arc the powers that everyone has are explained quite convincingly (at least there IS a reason why it works like that). The villains that appear have their reasons to do what they do; it's not that they are doing mad stuff on a whim.
And after that arc you may prepare to cry... because we get around 40 episodes in which nothing notorious happens, after which the longest battle arc starts (I think that the rest belongs to this arc). One thing that I personally did not like at all was that the screen-time of the people who don't go to battle is ridiculously big. This typically consists of 30% of the episode in which we see a screen (our TV or PC screen) in which people are looking at another screen in which they see their friends doing something (sometimes); or something about the daily worries of a house maid. A lot of doing nothing, in short. I think it would have been a bit more enjoyable if this time was reduced by, say 20%. MOAR ACTION!! Special mention: episode 132, with an astounding 40% of story and rest filler!
That aside, villains have good reasons to fight; in this arc I even thought that it would be plausible to act like that, given their circumstances.
In this arc we get to see new mysteries that are really interesting and well transmitted; again the superpowers and their origin are explained quite convincingly, adding to the overall enjoyment. This arc is where I found the first obvious plot holes and incongruencies. I think it is best to not touch this subject further since it would make everyone who hasn't seen it hate me. Besides, spoilers aren't allowed anyways.
Though the fact that our gang of kids wins against people with way more experience than them is still going rampant in this arc, it is done in a way that is much more believable than in previous arc (though this is not obvious at first).
All these events, powerups and fights culminate in the final 15 episodes, where asspulls are rampant and battles are very intense. The author didn’t even try to hide the cliffhangers since there were more here than in all of the other episodes combined. Now, this doesn’t mean that it is something bad; it’s almost the opposite, since the battles are highly entertaining and keep you on the edge of your seat.
Finally, the conclusion. It is very rare in series to have a satisfying conclusion, as nearly all shows end in episodes that are like “Our fight has just begun!”, or every character is shown as if they still have some unknown objective. This kind of conclusion leaves me (I don’t know if this is true for everyone) an unsatisfying feeling, as I will never get to know if there really was something else. Katekyo Hitman Reborn!, however, is different. The conclusion is neatly wrapped up and no loose ends are left, making the conclusion, however cliché it might be, very good.
Okay, that's the end of the story part; let's delve into the characterization.
First off, Tsuna. Loser Tsuna is a failure in absolutely everything, which apparently makes him a normal kid (for real?). He does nothing well until he meets our favorite baby, Reborn. That meeting is a turning point in his life, after which he all of a sudden gets a heap of very very loyal friends and gets two girls who love him. He's a kid everyone has high expectations of and he's supposed to become Vongola X because his latent abilities. Will those expectations be met by our protagonist?
Our main character undergoes some character development, but it is not something spectacular, since his beliefs don't change during the anime. His way of acting does change a bit, though. And since there was no real mystery surrounding him, there is not much more that can be said.
His gang is made out of a few incredible people that decide to join our protagonist because... Tsuna is fun? Anyway, these people are not failures in life, since there is the rebel tsundere genius Gokudera (a hitman), the baseball pro Yamamoto (he's dumb), the apathic and mysterious and invincible Hibari (a madman), the EXTREME boxer Ryohei (noisy man), the illusionist C.D. (who doesn't do much but moan) and I can't say more since that would be huge spoilers. The fleshing out of these characters is done quite well, though some characters are more interesting than others.
Gokudera deserves special mention, mainly due to the mystery surrounding him: Where does he come from? Why is his personality like that? All these questions are answered later on, adding to the overall satisfaction of the show. But all these characters are interesting in their own way, and though character development is not much of a thing here, the fleshing out of them is done well.
The supporting female cast is made up by about 4 persons; of which one is the mother of Tsunayoshi. She is your typical nice and young house wife, and nothing else. Then there are two girls, called Haru and Kyoko, who have their unique quirks (Haru, at least); these go to different schools and are best friends. Furthermore there is a young woman called Bianchi, who is a charming woman that throws food at other people.
I see one major problem with these characters, though. They are portrayed stereotypically as housewives. This means that the only thing they do is house chores, cooking, and doing very dangerous and totally useless stuff ("Let's run straight into the open arms of the enemy :D"). The sole purpose of the weird things they do is making the male characters, though mostly Tsuna, worried. It is no real problem in itself, but in my opinion it was waay overdone in this show; they have no deep purpose, they only serve as "mental support". My only reaction to this was annoyance.
Another notorious character is Reborn. Reborn is a baby that belongs to the Shichibukai Arcobaleno, which is composed of the 7 strongest babies of the world (this probably means that they are stronger than every other person, not amongst only babies). Since Arcobaleno means rainbow, and the rainbow supposedly had 7 colors, it's very fitting, is it not? These babies all have fancy nicknames which actually are their real names, and they all look equally ridiculous. They all have an air of superiority that's kind of annoying, but anyway that makes it funny at times, so it isn't bad.
There's other babies, like Lambo, the one, the best, he whom everyone will love because he rules. He has that oh-so-catchy phrase: HOLD IT BACK!!! Another one is I-Pin (this name...) a chinese fart kenpo hitman, who turns out to be a girl and has constant wars with Lambo.
As for the sound, I think the music is quite fitting; epic battle music is reserved for epic moments, and calming music is used for mundane moments. Nevertheless, some tracks are overused, which may result in irritation. Some of the openings have a nice ring to them, which is quite an achievement, in my opinion, since I usually find openings not worth listening to. The voice actors are good as always; but I personally liked the voices of Tsuna and Haru, just because Tsuna's isn't your typical MC voice and Haru's voice is done in a, let's say, unique way.
The animation quality is not bad, but your widescreen is useless for watching this, since it's done for 4:3 screens. Well, not quite, since at episode 102 it is adapted to widescreens. The battle scenes are well done and transmit all the information you need to see what's going on. Another plus point is that the faces are not all the same, which is not the case for many other anime.
The last section is enjoyment. As you might have noticed, my enjoyment varied a lot during the watching of KHR, since there are many ups and downs in this show. The downs were the episodes focused on the jokes, which would get boring after being reused throughout the entire series (though there were some very funny moments) or the ones in which nothing happened. The most enjoyable parts were mostly the battles, though some of them were not that well done. And as I mentioned before, I really liked the conclusion; and the combination of all I have written gave me my final score: 7.
So now the final judgement; the question everyone will want to see answered: do I recommend this? Yes… and no. You see, there are many people who are totally not prepared to wait 20-40 episodes to see things become more entertaining. These people should definitely not watch this show. For those who may want to wait that long, you also need to like shonen anime, because this IS a shonen, in the end. If you can meet both requirements, I would say: give it a shot! (pun intended).
Thanks for reading, and I appreciate any feedback.
