Katekyo Hitman Reborn

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Fandom
Name: Katekyo Hitman Reborn (家庭教師ヒットマンREBORN! Kateikyōshi Hittoman Ribōn!)
Abbreviation(s): KHR, Reborn
Creator: Akira Amano
Date(s): Manga: 2004-2012 and Anine: 2006-2010
Medium: Manga, Anime, Video game, novels
Country of Origin: Japan
External Links: Shueisha's official site/JP, TV Tokyo's site/JP
Katekyo hitman reborn.png
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Katekyo Hitman Reborn is a completed supernatural shounen manga series by Akira Amano. It has been adapted into an animated TV series as well as into several novels and video games.

Canon

The main protagonist is a teenager, Tsuna Sawada, who one day suddenly finds himself stuck with a pint-sized "tutor" by the name of Reborn. His new teacher is revealed to be a mafia hitman, who tells Tsuna that he is the next heir to the Vongola mafia family, and thus has to be trained. Additionally, Tsuna is supposed to find more people to create his own "family".

The series follows Tsuna as he struggles against his fate, meets and befriends additional Family members, and discovers that the Vongola rings he and his guardians are meant to wear hold their own secrets.

Characters

Fandom

Although less ubiquitously popular than The Big 3 Manga, Katekyo Hitman Reborn began only a few years after those series and ran along with them in Weekly Shonen Jump. Viz Media frequently cross-promoted the aforementioned Big 3 with KHR and other SJ series such as Hikaru no Go and YuYu Hakusho, and as a result fans who started with one series often ended up reading the others.

Fanon

Dying Will Flames

One of the popular elements to play with from this series is the Dying Will Flames. In canon, the mafia has learned how to harness the magic powers that some humans have which come out when they have to face something with their "dying will". This magic comes in seven main types, and each one is associated with a color, personality traits, and specific magic powers. Sky flames in particular have the trait of attracting all the other flames and harmonizing with them, which has been interpreted/reinterpreted by different fans in different ways. Many stories treat it similar to a sort of poly-soulbond, sometimes with flavors of soulmates. Additionally, how flames work, how they interact, and how they affect the people they belong to have a large amount of fan theories and headcanons. Some more popular ones are that for each flame-type there is a "classic" expression and an "inverted" expression (where the person is an atypical example of the type and doesn't have the standard personality traits ascribed to it), that Clouds need to lay claim on a territory, that sealing someone's flames while they are still young and growing leads to trouble thinking and controlling their body (hence Tsuna's status as "dame"), and that there are various negative effects around breaking bonds or disharmony.

Dying Will Flames have also been used as a kind of fusion or AU where they are applied to other canons. This might be explained by the fun fan activity of trying to guess what category bests fits a characters, such as when fans put characters into Hogwarts houses.

Bizarre Namimori

Tsuna's hometown and the primary setting of the story is the small, relatively normal Japanese town of Namimori. Some things (such as the power and reach of Kyouya's Disciplinary Committee at Namimori Middle, or Takeshi's dismissal of Hayato's bombs as fireworks and the dangerous intrusions of the Underworld as just a "mafia game") are a bit bizarre, but likely simply the results of some comedic/dramatic exaggeration by the manga. In a number of fanworks, these aspects are theorized about and played with. Sometimes Namimori is essentially a retirement village for members of the Underworld. Other times, it has an unusually high concentration of flame-active individuals, but is otherwise normal. There are multiple fics where the town is a closed city, sometimes with a supernatural element that won't let residents leave. While the details differ, a large number of KHR fanfics make Namimori abnormal in some way.

Fanworks

Fanfiction
  • Dead-Eyed Tsuna[11] by wyrvel. A finished Tsuna-centric deconstruction fic. Has a now-discontinued sequel.
Fanvids/AMVs

Pairings

Numerical System

It has become common practice in the KHR fandom to replace certain character names with numbers or letters. For example, the members of the Vongola family have these abbrevations:

G Giotto
27 Tsunayoshi Sawada
59 Gokudera Hayato
80 Yamamoto Takeshi
18/H Hibari Kyouya
L Lambo
84 Basil[1]

Pairings are written without signs or spaces between them, resulting in codes such as 5927 or D1827. They are therefore hard to identify for the uninitiated fan. The reason for these numbers lie in the Japanese language and the fact that numbers can have several forms of pronounciation. For a more detailed explanation see Shiroro's "little lesson on the numerology of Reborn".[2]

Resources

Fanworks

Wikis

Fancommunities

Meta

Recs

Zines

Other

References

  1. ^ Reborn Numerical System Accessed May 6th 2011.
  2. ^ Accessed May 6th 2011.