 From the mid-2000s to the mid-2010s, Manga was by and large dominated by The Big Three. That was Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece. Now, Naruto and Bleach have long ago ended, but One Piece is ongoing, and I think it will continue until the heat death of the universe. There was obviously a lot of stuff in Anime and Manga outside of these, but their influence was everywhere. You know, they were super heavy action focused series. They went on for a really long time. There were speeches about the power of friendship. A lot of stuff that people tend to think of as stereotypically anime, and I don't know, I talked about Naruto a few months ago, which you can check out that video if you're curious, and I've been planning a Bleach vid for a while as well, but that one's just kind of gotten sucked into the ether, and I don't know if I'll ever do anything for One Piece. Maybe when it eventually ends, I'll get caught up and do something with that, but I don't know for now. But basically, my thoughts on the Big Three are that they're generally positive, you know? I think they're overall good series, even if there are many, many criticisms to be leveled at them, but like I said, their influence was felt far and wide. Like, even if you weren't into this, there were a lot of other series that were trying to ape on their success. You know, just like with anything else that gets really popular, other things come along and try to cut themselves a slice of that pie. So there were a bunch of series that were kind of nipping at their buds, and some of these series got moderately popular, and were also pretty big and pretty popular and pretty well-talked about around the same time that the Big Three were at their height. Among all of those that were kind of in this same genre and were around at the same time, there are another couple that I like to call the Not Big Three that never reached the same height as those others, but came kind of close and still did well for themselves. Those are Fairy Tale, Toriko, and Katekyo Hitman Reborn. These are all action-heavy stories, like that is the primary focus, is like the fights and the battles and stuff. They are all fantastical. You know, they take place in crazy worlds with crazy powers and stuff, so it really doesn't feel anything like our world, and then even if they started off relatively normal by the end, you're wondering how you wound up, where you wound up. They're all very long-running. Like, to be frank, a lot of these series outstayed their welcome. I would say the same thing about the Big Three, quite frankly, but the point is they went on a long, long time, and to be honest, they're all stupid just like the Big Three, and I don't mean that in a purely bad way. Sometimes, something being stupid just makes it more fun. Like, some story ideas and such are just dumb, but they're the fun kind of dumb, and you can make it work. And, well, it doesn't always work here, but you know, I just wanted to talk a little bit about the Not Big Three here and just kind of go over them, and there will be spoilers here, so just be aware of that. All these series ended quite a while ago, but you know, just be aware of that. And anyways, I'll start off with Fairy Tail, I guess. So Fairy Tail, that's tail, T-A-I-L, by the way. It's a pun. And this one's kind of weird to talk about, because in terms of quality, it started off as by far the best of these three that I'm talking about today. Like, it is a genuinely really good series for about half the run. A little more than half the run, and around the time I stopped reading is a little after it got just truly terrible, because the second half of this drops like a rock, man. It is horrible. It gets horrendous. Like, as much as I'm going to complain about the others, I don't think they ever hit the same level of bad as Fairy Tail does. Like, it has higher highs than the others, but it also has much, much lower lows. This series is about a guy named Natsu. Now, Natsu is a member of Fairy Tail, which is a mage's guild, and in this world, mage's guilds are just like places where mages all hang out, and then other people, when they need like a job done, they can pay the money, and some of the mages will go off and do it, you know. And Natsu's a member of that, and he's also a dragon slayer. This doesn't mean that he actually killed a dragon, this just means that he learned how to use dragon-style magic, which most humans cannot do. Like, he is a fire dragon slayer, which means fire doesn't burn him, he's immune to it, and he can also eat it in order to replenish his magic power when he needs to, and he can summon dragon flames, which are way hotter than regular fire. It's also kind of about a girl named Lucy, who he meets right at the beginning, and she also joins Fairy Tail. And, I mean, she kind of narrates the story for a while, but she's really not the protagonist, even when it kind of treats her like she is at times. It's really Natsu. So, the first several arcs of the story are just about various jobs that Fairy Tail goes on, or more accurately, various jobs that Natsu and some of his friends who are in Fairy Tail go on, because, I mean, again, that's what guilds are for in this world. Like, people pay them, they go out and do stuff. And each of these arcs introduces and develops, like, more characters that glom on to them. And that is a good thing, because that means all these characters get focus, and they get proper development, and they get proper depth. Except Natsu. Now, it's kind of implied that his arc focusing on him is going to come later, because we find out pretty early on that, like, he was actually raised out in the wilderness by a dragon, and then one day that dragon just disappeared, and he's been looking for him ever since. But we also find out that there are a bunch of other dragon slayers out there, and all their dragons also disappeared on the exact same day. So, we're left wondering, well, how did that happen? What's going on there? And it's just implied that, okay, this will probably tie into the bigger story, and so Natsu's development will come later. But the development of all his friends and everybody that comes right at the beginning. And so, the characters make this worth reading for the first little while. Like, they have a surprising depth to them, even the villains in some cases. And it's just nice that they all get focused, and it's not just the Natsu hour with some of his friends kind of hanging out on the sideline. For example, there's a story arc that focuses on Natsu's friend Gray, where they go off to not exactly fight this giant demon thing, but it's been frozen in magical ice, and then the ice is melting, so they're afraid it'll come out and attack people, so they're going to stop the ice from melting. And it turns out that this same demon thing is also what killed Gray's teacher many years ago. And one of Gray's fellow students is actually melting the ice because he wants to be able to kill this thing partially out of revenge, because, again, it killed his teacher, but also partially just to prove to himself that he's strong enough to do it, and it's like, it works pretty well. It's like a weirdly, I don't know, it's like the villain is not the worst person in the world, even though he's doing something kind of terrible, and he's a very minor character, but he still gets this development, and then we get stuff from Gray, obviously. And then there's another arc which focuses on each of his other friends, like we see Lucy's relationship with her father and the rest of her family, and it's like, they all get some focus, and so the first couple arcs really, really work. And as all this is happening, the main story is just kind of simmering in the background. Like, we get little bits of information, we get little hints, and it introduces mysteries about what's going on, what happened to the dragons, that sort of thing. And it works out okay, because again, the characters and the action all kind of carry it. Then we reach Tenro Island, which I believe translates as Heavenly Wolf Island, but oh man, oh man, Tenro Island. So basically the gist of that one is they all go off to this island for like a test to become higher, more good mages, you know, that sort of thing. And while they're there, an evil version of Fairy Tail attacks them, and they use like lost magic, ancient super powerful magic, so they're like crazy strong villains, and the heroes are all fighting them, and it starts off pretty well. But then all the heroes just kind of overcome all of these villains through the power of friendship and other power-ups, and it's, oh god, it's not good. And that's not even starting on the plot holes, okay? Like it's bad enough when characters just defeat someone based on like, oh, I remember my friends, and then suddenly you can hit harder, but like the plot holes make it so much worse. Like for example, there is one of these villains who can use time magic, and basically she can only use it on inanimate objects, but she can send them really far into the forward, so like a rock will crumble to dust, or send it in the past or whatever, but it doesn't work on living creatures. That's the main thing to keep in mind about it. And then someone like destroys a giant tree on the island, which Fairy Tail relies on for their magic, so they will lose their powers, and it's like, oh no, how are we gonna defeat the bad guys if we don't have any magic? And then she just turns back time on the tree, so it's restored, and trees are living things that shouldn't happen, that's stupid, and like the villain, like the main villain of the arc also like invites them on to his airship that he arrived on, and tells them to fight him, and they're fighting him, and it's like, oh he's too strong, and then they destroy the engine of the ship, and that was the source of his power, and it's like, well why the fuck did you invite them on there? If that was the source of your power, I don't understand. Like man, this arc is really where Fairy Tail started to go downhill, and it's also when I started reading it, and I got caught up with it, so at this point I was experiencing everything along with the rest of the community. So while a lot of us were really disappointed with the direction Tenro Island took, we started thinking to ourselves, okay well, the rest of the series can still get better, you know, it had built up a lot of goodwill with us, and it does not get better, it gets so much worse man, like after a certain point, every fight is just resolved through power of friendship, like it doesn't matter the overwhelming odds or how stupidly powerful the villains are or anything, it's just, it's just the power of friendship, that's what solves everything every time, like that is what saves the day every time. The heroes don't have to train to get stronger, they just get power-ups, not even just friendship power-ups, but occasionally permanent ones that the author just deigns to give to them, which is never a satisfying way of making your characters more powerful. And it brings time travel into the main story, which I just, I hate, it never makes sense, it always introduces plot holes, and this is no exception obviously, it's just, it's dumb, and this just continues up until the end. Like there are a few nice moments sprinkled throughout, but it continues all the way up to the end, because I, like I said, there's one arc after the 10 Row Island arc, it's the Grand Magic Games, and I read all the way through that, and then I read like the beginning of the next one, and I was just, I wasn't interested anymore, like Fairy Tail had lost me by that point, but around the time it ended, I did go back because I was still curious about some of the mysteries that had been introduced, and I like looked into them and went, oh okay, that was interesting, it was nice to get answers to some of my questions at least. But the characters that were the foundation of this series' success for a long time start to stagnate, and they start to regress, and like you realize like, okay, didn't we already deal with this painful inner trauma that you have? Like why are we going back to that? Could we at least explore it in a different way, or something? And then like other characters who have been introduced, and like they deserve their moment to shine, like they just don't get it, and it's just, it's dumb, and the story, while again it has a few standout moments, really is not enough to carry it. A positive about this though, is that the magic is really cool and creative, and I liked it, you know? I mentioned Natsu's Fire Dragon Slayer magic, but there are Dragon Slayers of other elements too, like iron and lightning and poison and stuff like that, so they all have very unique abilities and stuff, and I just, I liked that. And then there's stuff like, again, the time manipulation magic, which you can't use on living things, except when it's convenient for the story, and that's pretty good. And just, you know, there's a lot of like, really creative abilities in here. I did like seeing that, other than that, I don't have much else to say about Fairy Tale. It's like, it's not worth your time, okay? There's some good stuff in there, but not nearly enough to make reading like, more than 500 chapters of this shit worthwhile. Like, trust me, man. If you really want to read the first couple of arcs, go ahead. And if it, if it drags you in, I can't stop you from reading the whole thing, but oof, it gets bad. Next up, we have Toriko. And this one is the only one of the Not Big Three that I actually enjoyed all the way through. Like, you know, it has its problems, but just from beginning to end, I generally was, was into it, and I don't regret spending all my time reading it. Like, part of it is that it doesn't go on as long as the others. It's still a long series, but it doesn't go on as long. And it also probably helps that the series, the series is split into a lot of smaller story arcs, which all have their own like, beginning, middle end. So there is some sense of progression as we're going on. Like, the problem with having a lot of story arcs like that is that the whole thing basically devolves into a series of MacGuffin Hunts. So what does Toriko about? Basically it's about food. Like, I don't, I don't know how else to put it. Like, there are these crazy powerful beasts and animals and weird plants and stuff out there that people need to get partially just because like, oh, they want tasty food, but also partially because if you eat some of this, it makes you super powerful and you can like take over the world and stuff, which is kind of dumb, yeah. But I mean, that's, that's what the series is about. You know, people are often fighting over like, eggs and plants and stuff. It's, it is kind of dumb, but like, that's the whole thing about MacGuffins is like, it doesn't matter actually what they are. It just matters that the characters want it and they're fighting over it. And then there is the main character who is named Toriko. And he is what's known as a Gourmet Hunter. And basically there are people that go off and fight these crazy animals to, you know, to hunt them, but they also track down like rare plants and everything, you know, they hunt down Gourmet ingredients. And they use the word Gourmet to describe too many things in this series. Like we have Gourmet Hunters and how are they so powerful? It's because they got infusions of Gourmet cells in their body and just it's dumb. They use it too much. We'll just move that out of the way. But at the beginning of the series, Toriko teams up with a really gifted chef by the name of Komatsu and they become friends pretty quick. And then the rest of the series is about their adventures. And then they also run into like bad guys who are trying to use the power of the crazy powerful foods to take over the world and enslave the world and yada yada. Now I tell you that Toriko is like the fighter and Komatsu is just a chef who like prepares the food. And you might think that, okay, Komatsu is useless and he doesn't really do anything. And you'd be wrong because yes, he doesn't really become a fighter. He doesn't fight alongside Toriko really that throughout the whole series. But he is still an integral part of their plans. Like they do still need him to handle ingredients and stuff in certain ways which Toriko can't. So again, neither of them is useless and it is nice to watch their friendship develop and bloom. So I liked that. And brief aside, I also like how Toriko is an adult in this series. You know, he's like 25 when it starts which makes him maybe 10 years older than most stoning protagonists. It's beautiful. We never see that anymore. Similar to the beginning of Fairy Tale, the characters and the action are what make this series work. You know, like I said, story, it's a bunch of MacGuffin hunts. It's fine. What matters is that we like the people doing this and we like watching them do it because it's just cool to witness. You know, and we have a fair amount of variety in characters. Like, you know, there's the crazy old men who are just super stupid powerful because they've been practicing kung fu forever. There's the muscle bound meat heads like Toriko. There are people with effeminate colorful hair but, you know, there's still really powerful gourmet hunters. There's a dude with ripped cheeks in here so it shows off his teeth all the time. Like, you know, it's... They're different not just in terms of like their designs but also their personalities and everything. And I don't have a whole lot specifically to say about that but, you know, it is nice to watch them bounce off each other and watch them just be different, you know? So we're not watching a bunch of clones of each other go through all these various adventures. A lot of the beasts they come up against are really crazy creative and cool as well. Like, there's a giant horse that eats air and, you know, every time it sucks in a breath it sucks in, like, enough air to fill the Atlantic ocean. They describe it as. Like, it's a stupid amount of it. Or a shark that is also a train that the characters, like, get in and ride around in which is dumb but it's like, it's creative and I liked watching it or there's a whale with a black hole in its stomach. Just shit like that. It's crazy and out there and I really love reading about that kind of stuff. I, again, I don't have a whole lot to say about it. It's just, oh, it's cool. It's creative. And I did, like, exploring this world over the course of the series because it's enormous. I mean, they mention that only around 30% of their planet is the human world as they call it and that's like, you know, where humans live and where civilization prospers and then outside of that is the gourmet world which covers the majority of their planet and their planet, I think at one point we learned it's like about the surface area of Saturn so it's, it's huge. And even just in the human world but especially in the gourmet world which they don't go into until much later in the series they have, like, these massive forests and oceans and mountains and glaciers and, like, all these kinds of crazy locales to explore and then there's like the ruins of old civilizations and stuff like this, this world is nuts and it's huge and I love exploring it. So yes, that's how I would describe Toriko even though it is the best of these I just don't have all that much to go into about it. Like it, it has wild creativity. It has fun fights. It has fun characters. The story's kind of weak and I can see why it's not talked about all that much these days because it did end years ago and at the end of it I don't think it's, like, worthy of being one of the greatest of all time but it is a fun read and I would recommend checking it out, why not? And finally, we reach the worst that just the worst of the not big three like to the point where I don't know why or how this became popular if you have any theories let me know but where do I start? Where do I start with Kotecio hitman reborn otherwise abbreviated to just hitman reborn or just reborn? I guess I should start by being fair and saying that it's not 100% awful there are some good things in here like I read the entire series for reasons I'm still not sure of but like there are some good things in here but overall it's a mess so this series is about a loser Japanese teenager whose name is Suna and one day he learns that he is descended from an Italian mafia boss and he gets superpowers from a talking baby shooting him in the head if that sounds stupid that's because it really really is to give you a little bit more detail Suna the main character is descended from the head of the Vongola crime family or one of the previous heads of the Vongola crime family who after he retired he just moved to Japan and then generations later Suna was born and the current head of the Vongola crime family does not have anyone to take over for him so Suna is next in line and so he sends a talking baby who is also a hitman whose name is Reborn and he's supposed to groom Suna into the position so that he'll be ready to take over the family years down the line and that doesn't sound too strange but it goes full on anime when you start seeing Reborn using this thing called the dying will bullet and basically he shoots Suna in the head with that and then it for a couple of minutes it makes him act as though he's about to die so like whatever he's trying to do he's like I'm going to do this like it's the last thing I'll ever do on earth so like removes your body's limiters and stuff and just makes you 100% determined to go do that and it just it temporarily gives him superpowers that's the all I can say really about it and from that point it just gets even weirder so the first 50 ish chapters of this story is there's not really a story there it's just a series of zany antics and wacky hijinks like it's it's trying to be a comedy series but the main problem is that it's not very funny like at all it's just it's just not it's it's it's just it's bad okay I don't have a whole lot else to add there like it's just bad and remember that about 50 chapters keep in mind that it's released one chapter per week and then you remember that the author is going to take a couple of weeks off here in there and there will be holidays where they don't publish anything so this was over a year before any actual story starts here like the the one good thing I can say about how this whole introduction arc is that it does introduce us to the world and it does introduce us to most of the relevant characters like Suna and then all of his friends who later join up and help him fight the bad guys throughout the rest of the series like we get introduced to them before the actual story starts up so then when the story starts up it just it just goes you know we are we already know all of this so it just kicks right in so I guess that's a positive however despite being introduced to these characters pretty early on and getting to know them they're all awful like just they're so bad I don't like any of them like Suna is just stupid and annoying like and I don't mean stupid as in like I just don't like the direction his character goes in or I don't like his personality or anything I mean he's literally a very stupid person like it doesn't matter how obvious the solution is to something he does not figure it out until someone tells him and you can get away with having a character be stupid if they are one endearingly stupid so it's you know stupid in a way that's entertaining which he is not it's not funny or anything it's just he's just dumb or if they're really stupid in some ways but really really competent in others like I don't know I don't particularly like Dragon Ball but Goku from Dragon Ball is really dumb in general but he's also an amazing fighter so he can still help out his friends and still be useful in the story and things like that whereas Suna like he does become a good fighter as the series goes on like he starts out as a normal person then gets better but he he never like figures out how to do anything on his own he never realizes oh what if I try this and then does some weird strategy in the middle of a fight to defeat the bad guy or anything like that he just has to be told everything by other people usually by reborn which is fine to an extent because that's supposed to be his teacher but it's still like he never figures out anything on his own and we never see him train all that hard really so like there's nothing there about him that is really admirable or that we think is cool and on top of that he has no real goals or anything that he's working towards at all throughout the whole series like he just gets swept up in events and goes along with them like he has a crush on a girl that he goes to school with and that never really goes anywhere he doesn't really act on it and beyond that there's nothing like he's forced into his role as the head of the Vongola family which he never actually becomes it but you know he's supposed to he's like the heir apparent or whatever you want to call it which could maybe work out if he started off that way and then he later on decided you know what I'm going to do this I'm going to work at it and I'm going to try and be the best at it that I can be but no that never happens like he has no goals like if we go back to the big three people like Luffy a lot more than they like Ichigo because Luffy has a goal like he wants to be the king of the pirates and so all of this that he goes through all this pain all these adventures and everything are in service of that goal whereas Ichigo just kind of runs into trouble and protects his friends while he's there so he's just a much less interesting character and Suna runs into the same problem and then on top of that he needs reborn for everything like I said he needs reborn to tell him how to win a lot of the big fights like by giving him advice which again they'll be fine once or twice but he needs to be able to do it on his own eventually but he also needs him just for regular life like without reborn Suna would not have friends and he would be failing school and all that and it's just I don't know man like he has no charisma there's nothing about him that's likable that's why I call him stupid and annoying like there's nothing to him he's just kind of the main character because he was born to be the main character the other characters are they're just dumb like I mean there are two separate friends that Suna makes and like become part of like the hero squad or whatever you want to call it you know the guys that go with him and help fight the bad guys throughout the series and there are two of them who don't know about the mafia stuff like there's a character who just thinks it's a game and goes along with it he's like oh this is a fun mafia game we're like even in these life or death situations which might have been funny for a little while because then eventually he could figure it out and his reaction to finding it out would be a lot funnier like it could be crazy and over the top but they never really do that and then there's a separate character who just doesn't understand what's going on either and he understands it's dangerous at least but he just kind of rolls with it and the second guy who is just kind of dumb and rolls with it his name is Ryohei and he is actually endearingly stupid you know like so clearly this author can do endearingly stupid she just didn't do it with Suna or with anybody else really like Ryohei is just I don't know he just is a boxer who lives life to the extreme as he puts it like the dying will bullet has no effect on him because he already always lives life as if he's about to die basically and so he does a lot of stupid shit and rushes headlong into situations and stuff but it's just it kind of works it's more endearing than it is annoying like the only really good character here that I liked at all was a guy named Hayato and there's not much to say about him he's just he meets Suna early on they become friends and he's just is devoted to him you know he's completely devoted to helping him become the best boss of the Vongola family that he can and he's willing to do anything to protect himself and his friends and all that like not not a lot to him but he's again he's not annoying or anything so it's it's an improvement now the power system in this series which is built around dying will you know like the dying will bullet when you're shot with it it makes a flame up here over your head and that's referred to as the dying will flame and that's basically where all of the powers in this series are derived from and it's bad okay like you need a good power system when a series is one this focused on action and two this long like it needs to be good otherwise the fights aren't going to be very good and if the fights aren't very good you have nothing like you just you don't have anything in this type of series like for example there's Nen in Hunter Hunter which is a very good system like it's deep and complicated and not perfect I wish they would do one or two other things with it but whatever that's because Hunter Hunter is overrated don't at me or there's like from something like Ruroni Kenshin there is just martial arts you know they don't have energy blasts or Ki or anything like that they just can somehow become way stronger and faster than a regular person ever could and so they fight with swords and shit and it it works it's pretty simple but there's a lot of flexibility to it and again that I mentioned this earlier the magic and fairy tale like there's a lot of variety to it and that's what you need like the power system has to be flexible and broad and it also has to be semi hard as in like you know the way people talk about hard and soft magic systems it's the same way here it has to be at least somewhat hard the reason it has to be flexible or broad is that these are long long series and if everyone was using the same basic abilities it would probably get old after a little while like if everybody was using water magic and there wasn't much variation on it then it just becomes okay who's better at using water magic you know what I mean so like you have to have people who can use water magic and fire magic and time magic and ice magic and you know just as an example all that sort of stuff and I mean a series that does not have a whole lot of variety that later branched out into that would be Avatar the Last Airbender because you know there's only four elements that they can bend but they have over time introduced stuff like metal bending and lava bending and stuff like that which does help broaden it and it helps make the fights not be the same thing every time and the system has to be at least somewhat hard because if it's going on this long then there will likely be power scaling up more and more over time especially in something like Hitman Reborn because the main character Suna is just a regular person at the beginning of the series and he just becomes one of the greatest fighters in the world by the end so we need to actually watch him train and learn to control his powers and get better over time and the only way you can do that is if it's a hard system where there are some rules and limitations that we understand and we see Suna work within those rules and limitations and just become better over time like and we don't really get that you know there's not a lot of training here he mostly just gets power ups at several points and it's not a very satisfying way of progression the dying will flame stuff starts off simple enough because like I said it just okay you will fight as if it's the last thing you'll do or whatever it is as if it's the last thing you'll do and then it chills out a little bit later because Suna gets like these gloves which allow him to control it so he no longer freaks out and goes Hulk mode when he is infected with the dying will bullet I don't know if that's the best way of putting it but instead he stays really calm and is just super strong and can fight which like okay that's fine but then it just goes completely apeshit like like the things people do with this gets stupid like we get people controlling gravity or healing super fast or shooting out fire or you creating illusions and teleporting and time traveling and just what it just feels weird you know it doesn't really fit with that foundation you said at the beginning of the series and I get the feeling that this author did not originally intend for this series to go in the direction it went nor did she intend for it to go on as long as it did so I understand why this happened but oof man like the power system being bad leads to a lot of the fights also not being very good and like I guess if I had to point to one thing other than the characters that makes this series as bad as it is it would be that the fights aren't very good and they can't be very good most of the time because of the power system now the story itself like the actual events and the pacing and the structure of the arcs and everything is not as bad as you might think like um that they're not perfect but I like looking at the again the events themselves like they're they're fine you know I mentioned the opening arc is bad like okay we there's no story to it we we just move on that's fine but the first serious arc that occurs after all that is about a bunch of prisoners that are escaping and decide to go after Suna and some of his friends because again they're working for the Vongola crime family and it's pretty good like yeah like that's it it's it's pretty good like it's well structured and by that I mean it starts off with kind of a bang and you're like oh okay what's going on are the heroes in danger and then like it escalates and escalates and then we get to a climax where there's a big battle and things are resolved and yeah it works pretty well like the first fight in this arc is the first really serious fight in the whole series and it's with Hayato who's the one character I liked and it's him fighting an escaped prisoner and it kind of feels like something that could actually happen in a Mafia story they just go full anime with it because Hayato is fighting by throwing sticks of dynamite and the other guy is fighting with yo-yos and it I mean it sounds kind of stupid but hey it works it's genuinely a good fight because I this one character who I liked I wanted to see him get out okay and then after this the story arcs just get progressively more and more ridiculous like at one point they go to the future like they they go 10 years in the future and like the world's destroyed and they're trying to like save it from getting taken over by a villain and his the villain's power is that he can see into different timelines and like figure out how history would have turned out if people made different decisions and you can use that knowledge to take over and it was around halfway through all this I realized like this was a story about the Mafia right? how did when did this what? now the arcs do vary in terms of quality like some are better than others but I don't think any of them do anything phenomenally bad you know the events themselves are fine and they're spread out fine it's just that the characters and the action are not very good and that's what drags pretty much everything else down until of course the end the final arc that is where everything just goes down the fucking toilet see I mentioned that reborn is like a talking baby who is also a hit man and it's implied from pretty early on that he was actually an adult who somehow got cursed to be in this baby form and then we also meet several other people who are in his position like they're also babies who used to be adults and while they're babies they're still pretty powerful but you know that in their adult forms they would be crazy strong you know and they call themselves the arcobeleno which is the italian word for rainbow I believe and in the final arc all of the arcobeleno get together and the the actual reasons aren't important but like there's a big tournament and they all have their champions so like reborn has sooner and his friends and then there's the other arcobeleno and they're they're all like fighting each other and it's it's actually a lot of fun because we do get to see people like reborn at their full power because they can temporarily go back into their adult forms and relieve the curse and to give you an idea of how stupid sooner is now like I know this is a an aside but to give you an idea of it reborn like turns into his normal adult form where he looks pretty much the same like he looks like you know a mafia dude with a hat and a suit and a handgun and seeing him fight is pretty cool but sooner doesn't realize it's reborn he just thinks it's one of reborn's friends and he's like wow I wonder where reborn went this guy that looks exactly like him and fights exactly like him is pretty cool though like kid you're stupid and then the villain of this arc like the final villain of the series is also a dude who was cursed to be a baby his name is Bermuda and he looks kind of cool in his baby form I won't lie like he has bandages wrapped around his whole face he has like a little hat and everything and like he becomes the villain without going to too much detail like he becomes the villain and then sooner realizes okay we can't defeat him on our own so he goes around to like all the other teams and all the other people and he manages to get them together like this is the first thing he does in the series like of his own volition like he comes up with a plan on his own and he manages to somehow convince people to go along with it and so I was like okay soon is actually being useful outside of doing some good fights now and again and I'll admit like when you get to the final battle there's this moment where you see like eight dudes all lined up ready to fight Bermuda and it's a pretty cool image and then okay like I said all of the talking babies can like relieve their curse temporarily so Bermuda turns into his final form like his ultimate form which you're supposed to look at and wonder how can the heroes ever defeat him and he looks like this I don't look I don't know if I've ever laughed quite so hard at something that was not intended to be funny at that moment this supposed final battle which I was supposed to be super hyped for I just lost all interest in and I was like okay whatever let's see how this ends and then they defeat him through again the power of friendship and the power of power ups and it's not very good but like okay the day is saved and then at the very end Suna makes it clear to Reborn he tells him like look I'm not going to be the head of the Mongola crime family like he's been saying that this whole series but he makes it clear I'm just not doing it and Reborn is like okay well if that's the case then I'm leaving goodbye and he leaves Japan he goes back to Italy and then Suna is apparently right back where he started because he's back to failing school and feeling like a loser and everything and he realizes oh I'm nothing without Reborn and then Reborn just comes back and he's like hey you're still being the head of the family right and Suna's like oh you and then that that's the end like it's basically just Suna's in the exact same spot he was before except now he has friends and like he didn't get a whole lot of character development but man all of that stuff that we got at least in the final arc where again he was able to bring all these people together we lose that so we're back in the same spot and it's just like man what was what was the point of that man like Suna the main character is just useless without help and I don't know I don't have anything else to add like the the series didn't have like an overarching story outside of you know Suna supposed to eventually become the head of the Vangola family later but he never does like it is really just a bunch of very self-contained arcs that follow the same characters and so there aren't aren't any like big mysteries or anything that get revealed at the end other than you know the why the babies are cursed to be babies yeah um don't have much to say about that Hitman Reborn is a terrible series and I kind of made this video just so I could complain about it I'm not gonna lie but it's terrible and you should never read it and that's all goodbye Johnny St. Clair Carcat Kitsune Liza Ruta Coba Lord Tiebreaker Microphone Peep the Toad Roby Reviews Sad Martigan Celia the Vixen Stone Stairs Tesla Shark Vaivictus and Wesley and of course all the other names you see here these people they're all great and if you watch this far maybe consider becoming a patron so you can get your name on the list here and also get early access to videos and other stuff if you don't feel like doing that you can also become a youtube channel member which is like the same thing except worse and also rate the video and comment on it and subscribe to help share it around if you don't feel like doing any of that or if you're unable to like you know that's cool too I guess you're all cool people I'll see you later goodbye