Do you want to become a mafia boss?

Home Tutor Hitman REBORN! is a shounen/comedy manga done by Amano Akira about a young boy named Sawada Tsunayoshi who is a loser in all things - his classmates make fun of him, he sucks in his studies, and the girl he fancies doesn’t even know he exists. Tsuna comes home one day to find that his mother has hired a home tutor for him. But this home tutor is no ordinary home tutor - he is a baby mafioso named Reborn!

We soon find out that Reborn was sent by the 9th generation mafia leader Timoteo of the Vongola Family, from Italy to Japan in order to “tutor” Tsuna into becoming the 10th generation leader. Reborn uses a specialty weapon passed down through the Vongola Famiglia, known as the “Dying Will Bullet“.

When a person is shot with the Dying Will Bullet, it makes the target become “reborn” with their strong dying will which is based on what they regretted when they were shot with it, otherwise they simply just die. While in the state of “dying will”, the body’s ’safety switches’ will be turned off and one can then achieve the body’s maximum potential strengths for 5 minutes.

As Tsuna gets trained by Reborn, they (well actually mostly Reborn) begin to recruit various classmates and friends to become part of Tsuna’s mafia “family”; such as Gokudera “Smokin’ Bomb” Hayato, who is a transfer student from Italy and came to Japan so as to test Tsuna’s worthiness to become the 10th generation boss; and Yamamoto Takeshi, who is the school’s baseball ace, never takes anything seriously, and is a very friendly person to Tsuna.

Home Tutor Hitman REBORN! is a 2 year old Shounen Jump series that has gotten into the top 5 rankings over the past few months and this gotten me to take note of its existence. I think the reason for it’s sudden rise in popularity is because of the current story arc going on in Jump now. For a little background info, there’s about 5 major story arcs so far excluding the current one:

Chapter 01 - 47: Daily Life 1
Chapter 48 - 53: Mafia Island
Chapter 54 - 61: Daily Life 2
Chapter 62 - 81: Kokuyo School
Chapter 82 - present: The Vongola Rings

The daily life arcs are the ones that tend to make most people turned off because they are mostly about character introductions, “slice of life” hijinks, and assorted comedic scenarios. There was no actual plot development about Tsuna becoming the 10th generation boss or any sort of proper fighting and ability training, and so I guess most people just got bored by that. Personally I liked the daily life arcs because they are really quite funny, especially Lambo and his nonsense.

REBORN’s popularity rose when the Vongola Rings story arc started because that is where all the cool fighting gets even better from the fighting in the Koyuko arc. The fighting in REBORN! is quite reminiscent to that of Black Cat and GetBackers, as in a mix of natural abilities and weapon gimmicks.

So to round-up with what’s out so far:

The serialised chapters in Shounen Jump are up to chapter 128.
Shueisha has published 12 manga volumes in Japan.
Tong Li has published 11 volumes in Taiwan.
Viz Media has published 1 volume so far in USA, simply titled “REBORN!”
The Reborn anime has aired 10 episodes so far.

Now I hope that I’ve piqued your interest enough to go check out REBORN! And I have also added some pictures from the manga as well.

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