Reborn! Seems Forgotten in 2023, and There's a Reason for That

This season we have a comedy detective anime Ron Kamonohashi based on a manga by Akira Amano, and it seems like it's a good time to remember the work that made this author famous — Reborn! (Katekyō Hitman Reborn!). Back in the time it was released, it was a really popular series, amassing a huge following, yet now people barely remember it.

So why didn't Reborn! pass the test of time exactly?

From Gag Manga to Battle Shounen

The story of this series is pretty interesting. At first, Akira Amano started it as a gag manga, one that is centered around a mafioso who was reborn as a kid and the mafia clan successor he had to train, a middle school boy. But that's not a simple mafia clan, there's also a bit of supernatural powers involved.

Yet around volume 8 the author, after receiving multiple reviews, decided that gag is not something that actually fits this premise and changed the plot so it would fit the battle shounen standards. That alone makes Reborn! quite unique. Sure, there are a lot of shounen series that add gags to the plot (One Piece is hilarious, and Gintama is an absurd mix of humor and epic fights), but this complete tone change is quite rare.

Reborn! is centered not only on the mafia but also on a very intricate power system, one that is based on certain phenomena occurring in the sky that grant their users different abilities. This made the fights very unpredictable — and engaging.

Mismatched Arcs and Plot Holes: The Moment It All Went Wrong

The manga ran from 2004 to 2012 and has 43 volumes. The anime series consists of 203 episodes and a couple of OVAs. The anime ended in 2010, so it didn't cover the whole story of the manga. Some fans believe that it's for the best: because the manga arcs that cover the events after the anime finale seem rushed and some of the plot points seem to be forgotten or just poorly executed.

The amount of thought put into the battle system and in the everyday life of Tsuna, the protagonist, that heir to the mafia clan, and his mafia family, is nicely balanced. It was a series with interesting lore and loveable characters, most of them were not just combinations of cliches. But a lot of development was just not there.

Tsuna had some arcs when he shone bright, but right after they ended he went back to being a good-for-nothing middle schooler, almost as if he was reset.

The sales of the manga were gradually declining — from 16 million copies in 2008, when the anime started airing, to 3.5 million in 2010, when it ended, and 1.85 million in 2012, when the manga was canceled. This decline is ultimately what led to the cancellation — and the reason for the decline was a poorly developed story that had a lot of potential.

And this, ultimately, made people forget about Reborn!