Katekyo Hitman Reborn

Anime Title: Hitman Reborn
Reviewer Name: Cool Beans
Anime/manga Rating: 4/5
Creator/Artist: Akira Amano

Short Summary: Tsuna is nothing short of a loser, he has low grades, is unpopular throughout his high school and cant pick up the courage to even talk to the girl he likes, however his life changes on day when his mother hires Reborn the home tutor/ greatest mafia hitman alive to give his grades a boost, however reborn intends to train Tsuna to become the 10th heir to the Vongoloa mafia family's throne. With the help of dying will bullets Tsuna unintenionally gathers together a loyal mafia family however rival familys are always on the horizon to stir up trouble

Hitman Reborn is in short a brilliant anime but with one of the slowest most painful starts to the series in recent memory. What begins as a comedic plot stalling anime going nowhere in particular quickly spirals into one of the best shonen animes you can find on the market today.

The amount of characters in the series is quite overwhelming at times, imagine if say bleach started the series right off in the soul society arc with all the main cast introduced by episode 10 or so, well this is the case with Hitman Reborn anyway, roughly 10 episodes of character introductions and 10 of random comedy segments that will not affect the main plot in anyway. If you appreciate the comedy aspect of it then your in for a real treat to begin with but after the so called initial training arc the series takes a real darker twist and becomes another typially brilliant shonen action series, and the prospect of the later arcs in the series

Spoiler:

are very entertaining.

The characters themselves are all very loveable and each has their moments in the series, 5 year old hitman Lambo with a seemingly unlimited arsenal of grenades in his hair tends to steal the scene whenever he appears, and Hibari is just one of the most calm semi evil characters you could come up with.

The fighting is very varied with each family member adopting a different fighting style than the last, Gokuderas dynamite, Yamamotos sword play,Hibaris seemingly invincile tonfas but most importantly tsunas dying will mode, which develops throughout the series and becomes one of the best modern super sayian rip offs if you ever saw it.

Hitman reborn is again censored down significantly from the manga, a very good example is when students of tsunas school begin to be targeted by a rival mafia to get to him by pulling teeth out of the students as a twisted countdown, in the anime bizare clocks are placed on them instead. While it does affect the impact of the fights blows to some extent, the fights still remain interesting and fun enough to not be to much trouble for concern.

Overall Hitman Reborn is a slow burner but once it gets going it really does steam along steadily and as stated before later story arcs settings and concepts will really blow your mind. If you appreciate the comedy then by all means you'll really enjoy the show however like most people who watch this show do not think your alone if you begin skipping chunks of pointless episodes.
overall i have given this a 4/5, chuck on an extra point if you like the comedy and your onto a winner.