Reborn 11
Posted: February 27, 2009 Filed under: Reborn! 3 Comments »Akira Amano – Viz – 2009 – 26+ volumes
I decided not to read this when it first started coming out since at the time I had too many active series I was reading, but let me tell you, it was a hard decision to make. I’m hard pressed to believe I could ever get bored of something where a kid in junior high is whipped into shape by a little baby from the future who claims to be some sort of mafia hitman.
This was a little easier to get into than D. Gray-Man, but I’m still not clear on a lot of the details. As far as I can tell, Reborn came from the future in order to train Tsuna to take over the mafia family when he comes of age. As you can imagine, this involves fighting, but there’s also some sort of weird special powers mixed in, and apparently Tsuna is followed by several friends… who are all given different powers with rings they wear? I wasn’t too clear on this, but they seemed based on elemental powers, which linked them forever with the Planeteers in my mind.
Anyway, in this volume, Tsuna and his friends are finishing up various training sessions and are getting ready to enter a tournament where they fight a gang of assassins who want to claim their rings in order to take their places along their candidate for head of the mafia family.
So: kids with special powers fighting in a tournament with their friends against bad guys. The thing that makes Hitman a little more awesome, as far as I can tell in this volume, is the whole mafia family thing. Everyone seems pretty serious about this. Also awesome: many of the characters are these babies from the future. Only one of them really acts like a baby, but he can blast himself with some sort of 10-year ray that ages him and makes him a master of his powers. Otherwise he acts like any other baby. Well, any other baby aside from the other baby characters, who like to make snide remarks to the older kids.
The special powers throw me off a little, because it just seems like it doesn’t need them. It could be made to work, and with all the awesome stuff in play, I’d be willing to read future volumes. I’m not quite convinced to go back and start at volume 1, though.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
[...] Devil Blues (Eastern Standard) Tangognat on vol. 1 of Peace Maker Kurogane (Tangognat) Connie on vol. 11 of Reborn (Slightly Biased [...]
If you go back to the beginning you might find yourself wondering if you’re reading the same series at all. The first seven volumes are straight-up comedy, with no action whatsoever (well, maybe some, but it’s never the focus). Around the eighth volume things become a bit more serious, and it starts to become more of an action series. If the sheer randomness of the mafia/hitman babies and odd powers storyline entertains you, I’d say give the first few volumes a look. The artwork is definitely not as good in the earlier volumes, though.
And I’m pretty sure the babies aren’t from the future. What’s been implied so far is that Reborn (and some of the other babies) are cursed, so they’re probably not allowed to age or something because of that. Lambo and I-pin are actual babies, though.
Okay, that that makes more sense about the babies being cursed. I couldn’t figure out why only Lambo was acting like a baby. At least one of the characters mentioned being able to at least speak to people in the future (I think?), so I thought time travel might have been an element. It also makes a little more sense because of that now, too.
And now that you say that, I think I will go back and read the early volumes now. The fighting was my least favorite part of this volume, but mafia hitman babies are something that I can get into.