Edit:Trouble (Part 1)

[warmskies]

listened to Trouble by Valerie Broussard, and it just gave me so much K-gang vibes that I had to do something with it. I initially tried to use actual text, typed out by me, but typography is still something I'm new to, and I ended up not liking the final result. So for now, you have this!

Comments

[slippy]

That last panel is A+ striking! It brings back how unsettling the Kokuyo gang were, being harbingers of the genre-shift.

[warmskies]

Thank you! I immediately new I wanted to bring about that stark contrast between the two different repetitions of the chorus, showing the K-Gang both as the "group of thugs" Reborn teasingly refers to them as in the Varia Arc, but also, like...

I know some corners of fandom like to have "dark AUs" for this series, but KHR always felt to me that it dipped its toes enough into darker subjects to hint its darkness existing well enough without having to make it necessarily an AU. Kokuyo's introductory arc, spinning us in that 180 of a genre shift, is definitely the best example of this, imo. Like, I might be biased, but I do think they were the darkest arc and group upon their introduction, and it's incredibly fitting that they were the ones to effectively introduce Tsuna to the more dark and serious aspects of the mafia.

So I really wanted to find the right panels to bring that to mind, that memory of when we opened up the latest chapter of Katekyo Hitman Reborn and there were suddenly these teenagers using pliers on someone's teeth. Chikusa was the hardest to find the proper image for, which feels fitting too lmao. In the end, I went with something that focused on his eyes (or lack of) as well, to mirror Mukuro's own close up and Ken's eerie stare out from the shadows.

[slippy]

Yeah, it's easy to lean into the existing dark elements. It's part of what I enjoy most about KHR, that it has goofy + disturbing running all through it, though the balance shifts. But now I'm wondering which I find darker between the Kokuyo and Millefiore intros ... Kokuyo wins for being visceral, I think, while the Millefiore arc intro is more conceptually dark.

I think the choice for Chikusa works well! Ties in with the other two, and makes it feel like there's a progression in the trouble approaching and then BAM. It is HERE.

[warmskies]

Yeah, I think that Millefiore is very... large? So that can make it a little more difficult for people to really take it all in. We hear about things a lot more than we see about them by the time 14 year old Tsuna enters that timeline- Tsuyoshi being dead, Colonello trying to buy time for Mamon. Which I can understand the reasoning for, but it still takes a lot more reading into things.

In contrast, Kokuyo is right there, in our face, from the get-go. We don't explicitly see them yank people's out teeth, but we definitely get so close that there's never any doubt, and we see the immediate aftermath. The threat they pose to Tsuna's loved ones- Chikusa taking out Gokudera with a surprise attack, Fuuta being kidnapped, the girls being used as hostages- are all way more in our face. There's never any doubt or anything that needs to be spelled out about the dark elements Kokuyo brings with it. It draws our focus in to a very specific group of people at a very specific point in time.

...I'm laughing, because I just realized this is exactly the same kind of thing Reborn talked to Tsuna about in the Millefiore arc, where he was worrying about how enormous and vague a concept "saving the world" was and had to be reminded that it wouldn't work for him, so he needed to focus more on the immediate people around him.

[slippy]

I was mostly thinking about the very beginning that he me absolutely losing my mind about Tsuna sitting up in a coffin, and then TYL Gokudera wandering over to sob at him, vs Ken and Chikusa coming out of the mists with pliers. But even that is still more about "conceptual" on one side and "visceral" on the other, and those same strands mostly running through the respective arcs.

Reborn's advice is a good way to sum it up! Kokuyo hit so hard not just because it was sudden and violent, but because they were also kids, threatening other kids, and who Tsuna could relate to as almost-peers.

[warmskies]

That's actually a really good and interesting point, how even the introductory scenes of each arc kind of set the tone.

Mhm, yeah! I've written Tsuna before (both in RP and in fic), and I think the K-gang were probably the most formative mafia experience for him. Not only were they the first really "serious" chain of events for him, but, yeah, they were also kids the same age as him but already so different because of their fucked up mafia circumstances. I think his experiences with them really helped set up his whole Vongola trial deal, because he was already leaning that way, I think. Any system that ends up grooming a child to tear out a man's throat with his teeth isn't a good one.