Tales of the (not so) Creative: In light if the "Real Mafia" comments that have been going around

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Tales of the (not so) Creative: In light if the "Real Mafia" comments that have been going around

No. Just… no.

You want a story that emphasizes at least some of the real workings of the mafia? With all of it’s gore and backstabbing and death? Go watch the Sopranos. Leave Reborn alone because it is NOT the place to look for that kind of storyline.

No… NO don’t you dare start going on about how I don’t get it or it’d be SO much better if it took itself more serious. Killing someone off to add drama is not making something serious, it’s bad writing. Plain and simple. Even Amano, for all her painfully cliche “threaten the girls to get a reaction from the boys” plots knows better than that. And you should too.

If you can’t make fun of something, it’s not worth taking seriously.

I mean come on, here’s the full list of our villains thus far: an angry teen with a pineapple haircut, a temperamental spoiled brat, a megalomaniac with a marshmallow addiction, and a ghost who can’t get over the fact his girlfriend’s dead.

Now I’d be lying if I said that putting a more serious spin on something isn’t fun. It is. I’ve used quantum mechanics to help me understand this series people, it’d be kinda hypocritical not to admit it. But Reborn is a Shonen Jump series that started as a gag manga, it’s fundamentally not designed to be taken that seriously. It’s gonna lose a lot of it’s spark if that comedy goes away.

And in all honesty? I read this series to relax. And killing people for “teh dramaz!”is not relaxing.

Remember: We’re talking about a manga with magical babies and a teenage mafia boss who fights with a pair of flaming wooly mittens here people.

I have no issue with people applying more serious ideas to the analysis of the content in terms of fandom (i.e. your quantum physics example), because we’re here to play, but I wish people would keep more of a perspective about what to expect in the series itself. I’m not sure how to put it, but I think there’s a fine line between the two. I keep hearing all these comments about how this arc is tonally bullshit (false advertising based on previous material?), and it sticks in my grill, because the manga’s HITMAN BABY AND THE COWBOY WHO TRIES TO KILL HIM from day one should’ve given you a pretty good idea of what you were in for with this manga. I do think Amano has problems with vacillating her tone (early Future Arc was quite dark, and what do we make of a story like Lancia’s if KHR violence is all very lulzy? these are kind of tricky points!), but I think it feels like half the fandom leapt to the early Future Arc and said this, THIS is the “real” tone of the manga and those first fifty chapters putting forth talking babies and snowball fights were just fake-ass shit — then, when the manga swings back around to incorporating lulz again (current arc is technically mostly a mix), it’s OH NOES, WE WERE SO MISLED. MISLED I SAY. But — how? Only if you decided to disregard the immediate things you were shown from day one.