#[ i couldn't bring myself to play another gatcha game ]

[fuckinorangecat]

part 2

Abysmal. There is a character limit, I can't believe this madness. Anyway.

We walked through a bunch of claw machine/gatcha shops and played a little bit. It was nice and I saw a very dedicated lady trying her absolutely hardest trying to get a golden kamuy figurine. She got it in the end, I was so happy for her. I was gonna attempt myself and if I got it I would've given it to her. She looked so close to giving up. Ahh, human perseverance. After that we got tired and went to a cafe where we waited for another addition to the party. A scottish JET, we outnumbered the American 3:1, fuck yeah. After meeting up with walked around further and went to a retro game store called Super potato or some shit. It was actually really cool lol, they had a claw machine for random ds/psp games and just a bunch of niche but cool japanese titles that we never saw in the west. One day I'll be able to read and play them properly. After that we found a fucking kebab stand, me and the friend I was staying with went ballistic, much to the american's confusion. Also the way americans say kebab is hilarious lol. We instantly buy some wraps and devour them, although it made me sad because it didn't hit the same as home. Guess it'll never be the same. Straight after I bought takoyaki, it was a very fat day but we walked like 30,000 steps by the end of the day so it should be fine - plus im on holiday. I'm not actually the biggest fan of takoyaki btw, too fucking heavy of a food. It's like eating a small rock every ball. After that we decide to find an izakaya and wind down. We find a place with outdoor seating and a perfect 6 seats, we were expecting two more JETs. Two more americans which unfortunately bring the numbers even. When they arrived, it was lovely. We all just spoke about random shit I can't even remember and drank. It was a great night. We bonded and exchanged instagrams, the Osaka JETs loved me and I them. Before going home we went to a conbini and I bought ice cream along with this other JET who LOVES ice cream. She bought one earlier too so I thought I'd join her this time. We ate ice cream and went on our merry way home. Two of the JETs go on the same train as us so we mingled a bit more. The girls all decided to have a twilight binge together, they invited me too but damn I smelled like shit. Ain't no way I'm polluting someone else's house. Especially after she showed me how nice her little place was lol. It'd be like a hotbox but instead of weed it's dutty fuckin' pits and tbh whole body. It was hot ok and I suffer in those conditions. 35 degrees celcius and crazy humid. Also we were exhausted since we've been running on 5 hours sleep. SO WE GO HOME, shower and sleep pretty much straight away.

The next day I woke up, packed up early to meet a former coworker from the UK. He was in Japan for a couple of weeks and I promised I'd meet him, that was actually the whole reason I came to Osaka. I said goodbye to my friend and went straight to the station my friend was arriving to. Travelling around Osaka was easy, it was pretty much identical to the tube. Just with better trains (airconditioned). I reunited with my former coworker and it was great lol. It's felt good speaking to someone I've known for a pretty long time, even though realistically we've only been apartment for like just under two months lol. Not much to actually write about but we did some touristy things! Went to the aquarium, which was actually the biggest aquarium in the world when it was built in 1990. I remember reading it on wikipedia before I was here randomly. I didn't realise it was the same one till I got there and felt a hint of familiarity. After that we met up with the rest of his friends which was amusing, a total of 6 black people and me so everyone was looking at us. I couldn't stay long but I helped them find a restaurant and order, talk a small bit, exchanged instas and left for my dreaded 7 hour journey back home. My friend actually walked with me to the coach station, bless him and i almost missed it too lol. I was very panicked and annoyed, thank you D for putting up with that. I hope the rest your trip to Japan was great.

The coach journey itself was fine, this time I actually slept most of the way unlike last time. I couldn't wait to be home and when I got home I was greeted by my neighbourhood cat Pochi. I was happy.

AWAY THAT CONCLUDES THE OSAKA ARC AND IM LAZY AGAIN

love, J-sensei

[unladylikc]

｢ @tcyvct​ ｣ — writes:

👁‍🗨 + Zhongli

still accepting → first impressions with vivi !!

      “ Ah, yet another handsome one! Only, he’s Chinese... an extreme rarity. Come to think of it, he’s probably the first Asian sharing my ethnicity I actually find appealing... then again, the realm of 3D has  ALWAYS  been rather disappointing compared to my beloved fictional characters; either way, he strikes me as more of a sophisticated tea person. Honestly, I can see him being the marriage candiate mothers from our shared culture would want their daughters to bring home. ”

[lesbianakaashi]

The Forgotten Shounen: Katekyo Hitman Reborn

This is not a “Why you should watch/read khr” or anything like that. This is just me going into the deep dive and throwing my findings at you. I’m making this because khr used to be my favourite series when I was 15 (I had plushees, posters, tradingcards, the art book etc) and now as an adult I constantly find myself baffled at how unknow it seems to be.

1. Okay first what is khr?

Katekyo Hitman Reborn! or just Reborn! is a series by Akira Amano which was published in Weekly Shounen Jump from 2004 to 2012 (with 42 volumes) and got an anime adaption which run from 2006 to 2010 on Tv Tokyo (with 202 episodes and one OVA).

2. What’s it about?

Khr is a parody of the italian mafia and plays in a world where the mafia is heavily influencial. The protagonist is the japanese middle schooler Sawada Tsunayoshi who is known as “No good Tsuna” because of his failing grades, general weak and cowardly personality and weak physics.

He becomes aware of the mafia world when a 2 year old baby called Reborn arrives at his house claiming to be the greatest hitman and declaring himself his home tutor. Reborn was send by the 9th head of the Vongola famiglia who is ready to retire and looking for a new heir. Which of course, is supposed to be Tsuna and now it's Reborns job to shape him into a worthy sucessor.

Tsuna rejects the violence of the mafia world and refuses the position as the 10th. Thanks to Reborn and his general craziness Tsuna meets different people and starts to make real friendships. Reborn wants 6 of those friends to be Tsuna's future guardians, basically a group of people which will be closest to him in the vongola famiglia. Tsuna might have no interest in those positions but the friendships he builds with them become really precious to him.

Reborns arrivial also brings in the enemies of the Vongola family which leads to Tsuna being forced to engage in battles. Generally Tsuna openly avoids fights and prefers to run away but will put himself in danger for his friends' sake or because of something Reborn did.

Through out the series Tsuna matures and gains strenght but he never becomes a power fantasy. He's just a guy with many flaws who grows through the human connections he makes.

Personally I think the relationship between Reborn and Tsuna is one of the best student teacher reltaionships in all of manga only topped by Mob and Reigen from Mob Psycho 100. Especially the last arc really underlines their unique relationship to me.

Furthermore, khr offers a new and unique battle system: The flames. I'm not gonna go into to too much detail but the general idea is that one fights with their dying will flame which basically turns off your the savety switch so you can fight with everything you have. The flames are seperated into different categories such as: sky, storm, mist, rain, sun, lightning and cloud and have different attributes asigned to each one. Tsuna's use of the sky flame and his transformation when using it is still one of my favourite shounen transformations to this day.

3. What happened?

The series did really well and then not so well over the course of its serialisation. After the manga got an anime adaption it increased in populairty and video games, light novels, and other products such as CDs were created based on the series. Reborn is one of the best selling series of Weekly Shōnen Jump and has sold around 30 Million volumes overall. It was and still is very popular in Japan but rather unknown in the west.

According to the article "The Rise and Fall of Weekly Shonen Jump: A Look at the Circulation of Weekly Jump" khr was the 10th bestselling series in Weekly Shōnen Jump, with a total of 7 million copies sold in 2007.

This number increasing to 15 milion in 2008. Which placed khr into the 4th best selling series of 2008 in Japan.

Between 2008 and 2010 those sales declined but still kept strong with khr as the 6th top selling manga in 2009, 8th best selling in 2010 and then 24th best selling in 2012.

In November 2014, readers of the Da Vinci magazine voted khr number 17 on a list of Weekly Shōnen Jump's greatest manga series of all time.

After the anime came to an apprupt stop in 2010 for unknown reasons the manga sells took a visible hit. (Apparently the studio wanted to put the anime on halt because they were busy with other projects and give Akira Amano time to develop her story but I couldn't find any source for this claim) Furthermore, the rushed last chapters of the manga in 2012 declined the popularity of the series even more. There's no offical statement as to why the manga was ended in such a way but it's reasonable to assume that Jump either cut it considering the decreasing sales or Akira Amano choose to end it for personal reasons.

Nontheless, Tsuna not being included in Jump Force (a fighting game where you can play as different characters from Jump) in 2019 even tho he made it in earlier Jump Stars games also underlines the decreased interest in the series.

Rumors on a reboot or anime adaption of the last two arcs surface from time to time but are genereally unlikely. Artland the studio which made khr has gone bankrupt around 2015-2016. It might be taken on by another studio but rather uncommen especially with such an old series.

4. Art style

The khr anime ended over 10 years ago and the old art style might not be appealing to newer audiences.

Especailly because the anime adaption follows Akira Amanos old art style which heavily developed within the years. Here a picture comparing characters in the new art style:

A modern anime adaption in the new art style would be aesthetically pleasing. It would probably look similiar to Psycho Pass since Akira Amano did the concept art for this series.

(My personal art student hot take is that both art styles are unique and fun. Up to this day Akira Amano still has my favourite art style and even if the amount folds in the characters clothing is a little extreme I love it dearly.)

5. Criticism

The show is not without flaws and even if I greatly enjoy it it wouldn't be right not to adress them.

Daily Life Arc:

A lot of people view the first 20 to 25 episodes as fillers and quickly lose intererst in the series. This is due to the fact that Akira Amano inteded the series to be a gag manga and focuses the first chapters on world building, character introduction and comical narratives. It's rumored that the decision to develop the story into a battle shounen was made because the sales weren't doing well enough at first. So the first chapters/episodes may seem titidious but are necessary for the story and the development of the characters. The tonal shift from a more gintama like gag manga to a darker battle focused story can also be offputting to some viewers.

Either way a lot of people blame this arc when discussing why khr never got an english dub or didn't end up on Toonami. I've also read that the manga never finished serializing in the north america. However, it finished in other western languages like german and spanish.

Censoring:

The anime censors A LOT. From Gokudera's smoking habit, Yamamoto's whole character arc which deals with heavy themes such as depression and suicidal thoughts. The general bloodiness of the manga was censored and sometimes whole chapters and characters were left out even if those were important to the devolopment of others.

Filler episodes:

Out of the 202 episodes the anime has around 29 filler episodes which makes roughly 14 %.

Sexism:

Even if Reborn was written by a woman most female characters are rather flat and their storylines often tied to a male character in one way or another.

Genereal things:

Khr, like many other long running series, is sometimes criticised for a lack of world building or unpopular narrative choices.

6. Hope?

Khr isn't exactly dead. As stated before the series is still very popular in Japan and still gets new merch pretty regulary. There are also petitions floating around for a reboot or a new anime season but those never get a lot of traction. Furthermore #Reborn2期アニメ化 (#Reborn2ndAnimation) used to get some traction on twitter not too long ago. Last year the Anime News Network did a poll on which anime the readers would like to see a rebooot of and khr placed second.

Either way here's a collection of recent khr things I could find.

- In 2018 a new bluray set was released in north america

- The khr stage play reached yet another new season

- A mobile game was released last year

- Currently ongoing anime cafe event called "Concerto di Vongola"

- Last month there was an event with the former VAs and stage play actors where they discussed their favourite khr episodes.

- There has been an increase in blind reacts to the openings on youtube which might bring in a new fan base. The biggest one I could find had around 90k views and was made in 2019. On this note check out the soundtrack. The first openeing Drawing Days by SPLAY still makes me go insane (but I'm biased of course)

There also renewed hope for a new season/reboot because Shaman King, Inuyasha and Bleach got anounced for new seasons after a long hiatus. It's important to keep in mind that the circumstances for those series are differnt tho. For example bleachs new anime is often tied to the immense success of the gatcha game.

7. Conclusion

Khr is a series which used to be a flagship for Weekly Shounen Jump and is deeply beloved by it's fans, especially in Japan. It influenced other shounen series like bnha. It would be nice to see it gaining a bigger fanbase in the west :)