probably one of the most individual and memorable Shonen titles ever.
This anime deals with a very fresh and fascinating subject of the Mafia and various groups. You could compare it to the usual "magic guild" concept, as they are very similar. However, the structure and style are completely different. This was also implemented authentically and the respective families had charisma.
In addition, this series has a huge number of different personalities among the characters that are both interesting and bizarre.
The whole thing is decorated with wonderfully epic and beautiful musical support.
The whole thing sounds just perfect and I wish it had been too. Unfortunately, "Katekyo Hitman Reborn" is by far one of the worst shounen I've seen in my whole life and I will certainly not watch it a second time to save me this agony. Whether the manga is better than the anime adaptation is unclear to me and I will definitely never find out.
But what makes this series so bad when it sounds so promising?
First and foremost, it's implementation. There is almost no tension in this series and is probably one of the slowest in terms of dynamics among the Shounen. Most of the fights are just hot air, drawn-out, and appear far too childish due to the visual representation and censorship. Though, as the series progresses, you notice that it was definitely intended for teenagers.
Unfortunately, there is also a disappointing story. A very interesting final act was introduced that did not want to develop until the end and ended extremely flat. Although I found the final fight at least subtle for his standards. And that was the one-sided best arc. The first 20 episodes of the series are simple torture.
As I said earlier, the show has a lot of interesting personalities in characters, and it really is. As expected, the implementation here also made a big curve around the topic. Not only were a majority of the characters ultimately hateful, no, but their dialogues were also almost catastrophic as well. The author completely lacked the creativity to make the characters appear authentic and he left them like simple sidekicks and NPCs.
The protagonist was apart from his familiar awakened mode, just an empty shell with hardly any personality. Even if he owns one of the best theme songs by far, he's just an ongoing disappointment. The 2 female protagonists are the usual sidekicks that you hardly see and that are only there to scream the name of the protagonist. Almost everyone in the team of the protagonists is completely linear and has hardly any real charisma, let alone conversations. Only a few anti-hero protagonists were able to express their personalities more and actually stay interesting. Unfortunately, these had the lowest screen time of all the main characters.
The main antagonist of this series was visually quite interesting and had a charismatic personality, his simple ambitions at least existed. Unfortunately, he had no depth of character, like practically no character in the anime, as well as little development. The characters that had even minimal development were robbed of their entire screen time.
In the area of animation, I can hardly say anything. In the course of the final arc, there were 2-3 fights in which a certain budget was used. Other than that, the animations are very dull and full of still images, like flipping through the manga. Which is also not wrong. I don't think a higher budget would have saved the series in any way.
Musically, Katekyo Hitman Reborn is definitely one of the strongest shounen titles and can definitely be on par with the most famous. Not only are the Osts individual and immensely creative, they even leave a good aftertaste and an occasional catchy tune.
In conclusion,
Katekyo Hitman Reborn is a series that had almost everything to be good, unfortunately, there was a lack of implementation and that massively. Almost everything that was touched here was ruined. From the tension, fighting, characters to the story and the dialogues.
And that's just enormously disappointing.
Story - 4
Art - 5
Sound - 10
Character - 4
Enjoyment - 4
Overall - 4
