The Katekyo Hitman Reborn! anime has released the creditless version of its sixteenth and final ending sequence, set to “Canvas” by +Plus. The song was used across Episodes 191 to 203, and the video is being published online as part of the series’ 20th anniversary celebration.
The release follows the previous day’s upload of the fifteenth ending, “Famiglia” by D-51.
What “REBORN! MUSIC MONTH” is doing
Both releases are part of REBORN! MUSIC MONTH, a September-long music project marking the anime’s 20th anniversary. The campaign is publishing creditless versions of the series’ past theme song sequences daily on the official YouTube channel.
That detail is the interesting part for long-time viewers. These creditless sequences were previously only available with physical releases of the anime and had never been officially posted online in an organised way. The campaign opened on September 1 with an official 25-song playlist collecting opening themes, ending themes and other music from the TV anime.
About the series
Katekyo Hitman Reborn! is based on Akira Amano’s manga, which ran in Weekly Shonen Jump from May 2004 to November 2012 and ended with 42 compiled volumes. The anime adaptation ran for 203 episodes, from October 7, 2006 to September 25, 2010, with Studio Artland handling production. The series is available on Crunchyroll, which describes the premise this way:
Tsuna, a timid junior high student, is a failure at school, sports, and social life. But everything around Tsuna has been completely changed when a baby called Reborn, who claims to be an Italian hit man from Vongola family, shows up! Reborn was sent to groom Tsuna for his future life as a mafia boss of the family!
Why it matters
Final theme songs tend to get less attention than openings, but the last ending of a long-running shonen adaptation is a genuine piece of the show’s history, and it had effectively been locked behind DVD and Blu-ray sets for 15 years. Publishing them in order, day by day, is a low-cost anniversary project that gives fans something to actually watch rather than another piece of key art.
It is also a reminder of the scale of the series: 203 episodes and 25 songs collected in the opening playlist is a lot of music to archive, and the campaign has been running for most of September. With the sixteenth ending now online, the sequence is complete.
The timing is deliberate on the anniversary side. The anime ended its broadcast on September 25, 2010, so this month marks exactly 16 years since the finale — and 20 years since the series debuted on October 7, 2006. Running a themed music project through that same September window is a tidy piece of scheduling, even if most of what is being published was recorded two decades ago.
For viewers who never bought the physical releases, this is the first official route to the sequences themselves, and the endings in particular are the part of the show’s music history that streaming services do not carry — you get the episode, but not the clean, credit-free cut.
Franchise anniversaries have been a recurring theme in Japan this year — for a recent example, see our report on October 10 officially becoming ‘Gintama Day’ in Japan.
Source: Anime Corner, citing the Katekyo Hitman Reborn! official X account
Featured image: Still from the Katekyo Hitman Reborn! anime ending “Canvas,” via Anime Corner.
