Reborn is a fine addition to Shonen Jump’s Advanced line up of weird and wacky manga. Reborn has a fun balance of humour, story, odd characters and quirky art. The “goings on” of this manga can be anywhere from “completely off the wall weird” to “very believable, and yet funny.” The world these characters live in is not much unlike our own, but the ways that they interact and all the wackiness that’s thrown in to the mix makes it a very humorous and entertaining romp.

As the story of Reborn goes, junior high student Tsuna is a failure at school, sports and socializing. He doesn’t have too many friends, nor is he popular – really his life is going no where. But when toddler assassin Reborn arrives to groom Tsuna for his future as a Mafia boss, Tsuna may have found the “magic bullet” he needs to turn his life around. In this amusing third volume, Tsuna is chosen to lead his team in the main event of the school festival, the infamous Bodaoshi. This event is an anything-goes competition where three teams try to knock down their opponents’ “general” from a tall pole inserted in the ground. Things get complicated when Tsuna’s team is accused of cheating and the other two teams form an alliance. The only questions now are can they win, and can Tsuna assure this with his efforts? Perhaps a win would make him more popular with his classmates and he wouldn’t have to feel like such a failure. With a little help from Reborn, something sure to be entertaining will certainly manifest itself.

The art style is very “Shonen Jump,” so if you’ve liked any other titles released under the same label, it’s likely you’ll find something you like about Reborn. It’s very detailed, but doesn’t fail to get weird and super deformed when it is required to. There’s certainly a lot going on with each turn of the pages – you’ll want to scan back after reading each page just to catch all the little details you may have missed the first time through. The story is both funny and involving – it really captures the confusion and difficulty of being young and in school, but with so much more that is out of the ordinary (making it all the more readable!). You can’t help but feel sorry for Tsuna as he is thrown into many a conflict that he’d surely rather avoid. But that’s all part of the fun of this book, and the many strange characters that inhabit it.

IN SUMMARY:
Reborn is some eyebrow raising entertainment not to be missed by the Shonen Jump loving crowd - and maybe even a couple others!