There are others almost as interesting and, yeah, again all of them are babies doing nonsense. The real protagonists are Reborn, the baby-mafia with a lizard gun, and Lambo, the afro cow-uniform baby. The protagonist appears to be Tsuma, but he is just a boring wimp who just has to do stuff for the heck of it. Speaking of teenagers, character appeal in this series is awful. Don’t expect anything multi-layered, or well-thought out, since it is mostly a silly action/comedy focused on random gags, slapstick humour, and occasionally some excuse to have teenagers with superpowers fighting each other. Unfortunately, Hitman Reborn is not Neon Genesis.
Being forced to do something is an interesting twist, since it gives lots of openings for dealing with psychological pressure, in the likes of Shinji Ikari from Neon Genesis. He doesn’t want to be famous and powerful, his father does, so he can succeed him in his mafia family when he retires.
The premise is the typical “insecure boy grows stronger, makes allies and creates his own empire” with the catch being he didn’t chose it. It could be about pirates or ninjas and it wouldn’t make a difference. Not that it’s really about mafia just like it happens with most shonen, the theme is just flavour. Hitman Reborn, aka “The Idiotic Mafia anime”.
