Reborn! (anime/manga)
November 1st, 2007 by Lianne
PG-13/16 for violence, mild sexuality, and other shounen standards; official series website (manga)
I really want to do a full review on this someday, because Reborn is all kinds of awesome and it would take a while to explain all the finer points of why that is. But here’s the main reason:
Reborn is a complicated parody of all things shounen. And it is brilliant.
At the risk of sounding like a pretentious prick, I think this series doesn’t get enough acclaim because not enough people understand that it’s a parody. Let’s start a list of shounen cliches and how Reborn measures up.
“I’m gonna be the best!” premise: Reborn’s junior high lead named Tsuna is training, whether he wants it or not, to be the best mob boss in the world. Check.
Bizarre rules and set-up: Tsuna is being trained by Reborn, a tiny mafia baby/sharpshooter, who shoots Tsuna in the face in order to bring out Tsuna’s inner desires and the power to make them come true–albeit while Tsuna is in his underwear and on fire. Check.
Rival/best friend: Within ONE CHAPTER, a new transfer student shows up, tries to kill Tsuna, and then, when bested by Tsuna, swears to be Tsuna’s right hand man for life. Check.
Wacky teammates: There’s the nice guy classmate who doesn’t know what’s going on but joins Tsuna anyway, the evil bishounen hall moniter who dishes out justice via thugs and nightsticks, and even Reborn’s failed rival Lambo, another baby dressed like a cow who hurts himself frequently and can shoot himself with a bazooka to turn into a fully grown bishounen with a lazy eye. Check.
Cheap pandering to the female audience in order to get a bigger readership: Look at that picture above. Look at it. It’s the cover to Volume 3…and the first time I saw it, I laughed so hard I hurt myself. Check.
I think Reborn is pretty popular because it’s funny, cute, entertaining, and the above list of cliches has been proven to sell books time and time again. But I just don’t know if people get the joke. All comedy series that include good satire get extra points in my book, so for including a satire subtle and successful enough to fool a fair chunk of its fanbase, Reborn is absolute win.
Educated impression: Very much worth a try. I’ve seen more of the anime than I’ve read of the manga, but both are good, and the anime has toned down the adult content enough that it’s appropriate for a wider audience. (Lianne)
Reborn is GREAT. Yes, it’s parody, but it’s not bitingly satirical or anything; there’s still that earnest shounen tone in there, and the characters are really good…a special villain prize goes to Belphegor and Squalo.
My one complaint with this manga is that, like every shounen ever, the fights are too long. The fight against Xanxus works well as a parody, what with the ‘ULTIMATE WEAPON’ gimmick being pulled out again and again, but it got kind of tedious. Most of the fights since then have been okay, but that was definitely a weak bit.
and re: pandering to female readers:
all the khr fans I know are girls…totally understandable, given that nearly all the main characters are bishounen.
So I’m guessing you never got to volume eight and nine or the genre shift volumes because it went from comedy/parody to action/adventure of a generic shonen. I wonder if Longchamp shall ever be re-introduced because I certainly wasn’t expecting Irie to be reintroduced as an antagonist.
I’m all up-to-date on Reborn episodes, and I must say: I’ve loved it from the beginning filler episodes.
I like how it starts out light hearted (like Kuroshitsuji, D.Gray-man, most shonen ect.) and then turns into a life or death battle (ect. Tens Years into the FUTURE!)
This series covers most of the key shonen points and I think thats why this is one of the better anime shows
I tried the anime recently. I guess I didn’t get that it was a parody, because I got through about 5 episodes, and it bored me out of my mind so I quit. I’d only started it in the first place because a couple friends were on episode 60 and it was all they could talk about. Perhaps babies shooting adolescents who can’t do anything unless they are in their underwear is not my cup of tea? I guess the only character I enjoyed was Bianchi. She was funny. As for the other characters, Lambo got on my nerves because he seemed to serve no purpose OTHER than getting on my nerves. Tsuna (on my first impression) seemed weak and unable to do anything unless hit with the Dying Will bullet. Etc. I also thought the anime got really repetitive – I even worked it out to a formula of the plotline of each episode I saw. Maybe I just didn’t sample enough of it to really get a good taste, and maybe first impressions aren’t always the best, but I can say with utmost certainty that it will be awhile until I ever revisit Reborn.
Dear Misa-Chan:
Ello, your stalker arrives
I dont wanna turn this into an internet war, so I’ll get to the point: You are correct that you didn’t watch enough to get a good taste. What I feel is that you’ve watched many 20-50 episode series, so you are used to getting the character development done quickly. Reborn is an anime where you can’t just have the main character really weak then in 10 episodes be all “BOOM! I AM GOD! I KILL YOU ALL!” It just doesnt work in this kind of anime. I know I’ve forced you to watch and complain when you refuse, but if you TRULY aren’t the type of person who can watch an anime where you need to be a follower and the plot slowly unfolds, then I will stop bugging you and force you to watch Pandora Hearts
Which BTW, YOU NEED A REVIEW ON!!!!
And One more thing: This show is only a parody in the beginning. Near episode 35ish, the show drops parody-ness for a 20 episode battle (which was the first taste of epic). Then, around episode 70ish, the show drops being a pardoy COMPLETLY, and becomes a typical shonen series. To all of you who were bored, lemme tell you this: If you really like shonen, STICK WITH THE SERIES! IT WILL BECOME BETTER, I PROMISE!
Shadow Out!
Shadow:
1.) Generally, when a series moves from being a satire to a typical shounen epic, interest drops…because the world already has too many shounen epics. Besides, One Piece makes every other shounen epic of the past ten years look like crap.
2.) Here’s my micro review of Pandora Hearts (anime): it was disappointing. All the cool visuals and interesting surreal plot points couldn’t make up for the fact that the characters were painfully one-dimensional and the story ran out of good ideas and thus started repeating them about halfway through. I wanted to like it, but I didn’t. So there you go.
As I told Misa-Chan, I dont want to start an internet war, but (of course) I disagree. When I mean “typical”, I do mean that there is shonen what not (fighting, manliness, brotherhoods, ects.), but this show has more elements to it than say, Naruto. And One Piece? Really? Its good for a well developed shonen series to make the timing seem realistic (5 episodes can show a week of hard core training vs. 1 episode. ect.), but One Piece stretches thing faaaar out. I admit, I didn’t watch all of One Piece, but I got pretty far to learn that it is nothing more than a standard shonen series. And yes, I do group One Piece along with Naruto and Bleach as good, but typical and long, shonen series.
Reborn is a nice shounen when you’re in the mood of shounen otherwise isn’t by far unique or much of an improvement compared to other shounen manga out there nor is the story particularly more deep than others even with those dramatically emotional moments(which shounen manga have anyway). The biggest difference I see was the main character Tsuna was the main “buttmonkey” of the series but same goes with Naruto actually. Imho, GTO was infinitely more entertaining action and comedy-wise, than any nearly any generic shounen anime I watched including reborn(which it sadly has become). I don’t mean I didn’t enjoy it, I just didn’t enjoy it any more than other shounen anime. It hasn’t done enough differently to make it more memorable than other shounen anime. I actually do like it more than One piece, Naruto or Bleach but not by that much.
“Sleep Is For the Weak ? Reborn! (anime/manga)” was a perfect post.
If it included more images this would be even even better.
Take care ,Scarlett