you ever think about those first few years after being Cursed, watching the innocent child of your dead sky grow up with the same shackles around her neck as you?
Let 2026 be the year we appreciate the khr girls (a lot) more.
LAL is the one who was chosen to be part of the seven strongest, and is also comsubin (italian navy's special forces) 's ace and colonnello's superior and instructor. So like, post-fated day and the whole time after that too, she's still stronger than colonnello without a doubt, let's be real
LUCE and ARIA and UNI are the sky arcobaleno and the literal donne of their family, which is said to be on par with vongola in terms of standing (but i personally like to think in terms of influence and authority too, if not power too). And then they can also see the future
BIANCHI's a good enough hitman she literally worked alongside reborn for a while. And she's just 17. And she's also a good enough hitman she's otherwise a freelance one working on her own
I-PIN's third out of fifty hitmen showing the most promise and potential (or whatever fuuta's ranking was exactly, i don't remember lol). She's also being trained and presumably has been noticed for her skills to begin with by fon
CHROME's out there doing all that without her organs out of sheer resolve. She's the one mukuro trusted was strong enough and suitable enough for him to take over her own body and use his skills through her. And by the end of the manga, she also grows into her own skills in her own right to the point mukuro's impressed by them. She also goes through mammon's training during the future arc, who also compliment her illusion of yamamoto during the shimon arc
HARU goes to a super hard, elite all-girls school and then has tutoring after. She does gymnastics and she's good enough to participate in competition. There's nothing she wouldn't do in the name of her convictions and principles and the people she loves, and violence is at the top of the list. She will hit you and challenge you to a duel and starve you and test you and capture you in the name of justice and doing the right thing and because she cares. She'll also become vongola decimo's wife as long as he's kind and cares and has his heart in the right place
KYOKO's her brother's strength and tsuna's bravery. She's ever-enduring support and ever-enduring comfort and ever-enduring trust. She's patience and understanding too, but more than that, she's ever-enduring faith. She will not doubt your love for her. You will come back to her and allow her to walk by your side down your path as long as she waits for you right where you felt safe leaving her behind. But she won't allow you to walk too far away from her either. She'll be the first to make her way to you if she must
HANA's the friend who'll be by your side through thick and thin and won't ask questions about it. She's the friend who'll remain by your side through thick and thin even if you never tell her what you're involved in and what she's getting herself involved in on your own either. She's the friend that'll always welcome you warmly and will always offer you a helping hand even if you're suddenly 10 years younger or a 100 years old granny or a little baby. She's the friend whose love for you will never so much as falter for as long as she breathes
M.M. literally landed herself in vindice. Which is crazy if what mukuro did to land himself there is any basis for the kind of things that land you in vindice. And then she also broke out of it alongside mukuro and the kokuyo gang. And she's also a good enough hitman to be a freelance one who works solo (before the kokuyo gang) as far as we can tell
NANA's the one who raised tsuna to be the kind of person he is. And no, i'm not giving her all the credit for it, and yes, for sure we can criticize her parenting, but listen. Who else was even there to raise him if not her?? She also looks at all those kids she could have been scared of and turned away and judging and hostile towards, but she welcomes them into her home instead and makes it feel like it's their own too
I have Luce Thoughts, and thoughts about the Sky arco in general, and the general unfortunate pattern in the fandom on how it treats imperfect female characters compared to male, but this post is going to focus on the first two as a vehicle for the last because I can’t be here all day.
People are harsher on Luce than they are Kawahira, despite Kawahira being much more culpable in the propagation of the arcobaleno curse, because the other arcobaleno have much more presence in the text than she does and we don’t get to see who she is or what she was like. She’s like
Nega-rose quartz
instead of idolized and grieved, her actions are put under a magnifying glass of scrutiny via the other characters’ feelings over their fates. And if I’m honest, a lot of people are harder on her because they like reborn and they’re angry over what happened to him because he cared about her. Which is valid! I understand being harsher to a character because they fucked over your fave.
But I, personally, admire Luce quite a bit for a few reasons and think that the hate she receives is almost this… Meta commentary in and of itself.
We know based on Kawahira’s own words that the arcobaleno HAD to be the seven individuals he chose. We know that she willingly offered to throw herself on the pyre (we also know that he admitted to never viewing humans as worth his time, that he never tried to find an alternative, and that he and sepira went their separate ways over his scifi racism. Like some of the stuff he says as Checkerface is wiiiiild)
When presented with the choice to save the world or save herself, she chose the world
And it’s an immense tragedy while also being extremely admirable. The path she chose might be one to criticize (I have thoughts on how this isn’t fair as well, too) but it doesn’t change that she chose everyone else in the world, even knowing she would die
Even knowing she wouldn’t live as long as the others. I think that, with the information she had access to, she made the best choice she possibly could and prayed someone, somewhere, could eventually do what she in her weakness and strength could not. Clairvoyance is useless if you’re dead.
I also think many people focus on the part where she passed the curse to her children (which is fucked! It is very fucked!!) without thinking about the broader implications of that. Because it’s a feature of the sky arcobaleno. To die early. She made precautions against that. And her personality that we see, whether through body language, filler, or can infer based on the words and actions of other characters, is not one where that would have been an easy choice for her.
She’s not… Cruel, or callous, or cold enough to feel nothing over bearing a child for the purpose of harmony. Like can you even imagine that kind of grief? Having a child and knowing they’re going to die before their time before you ever even see their face. The situation she was in was just so… immensely, indescribably terrible. But this is the future she saw that had the best hope, which just adds ANOTHER layer to it because this! This is the best one! What we see happen to the arco in canon is the best possible future she foresaw!! Do you understand how awful that must’ve been? That there was absolutely no hope for her, for them, for her child, for her Famiglia?? And who is she going to tell it to! Who!
There’s no one who can understand. No one but the baby in her belly, who doesn’t even get to make a choice the way she does.
And then like. Kawahira is still around to redeem his decisions. To explain them.
Luce does not get that opportunity
It’s easy to hate a woman who can’t speak for herself. Just like it’s easy to love a woman who can’t make any mistakes any longer. Functionally, she and Aria are opposites in that way. Aria is easy to love because she’s purely a martyr. She’s born into this position and has no choice about it. She’s a story of tragic love unfulfilled. There’s nothing complicated about her choices.
Uni on the other hand is in the same position as Kawahira where even if her decisions at times are questionable, she lives to justify them.
There’s also something
Clenches fist
About how fandom reacts to uni vs luce
Uni is precious and beloved because she dies to save the world in a way that allows other, more beloved characters to return and set things right. Luce is hated and scorned bc she dies in a way that dooms these beloved characters.
It doesn’t matter that they both did it to save the world
It doesn’t matter that uni ultimately does not possess the same strength of heart as luce to walk to her own funeral with her head held high, to accept the weight of hatred.
Because Uni is a weak, precious flower, she’s fawned over as a victim of evil.
I love the Giglio Nero women so, so much.
And I also think that fandom does a disservice not just to these complicated female characters, but to itself, when it doesn’t examine its thoughts and feelings about why it’s eager to forgive some characters, but condemn others.
You ever think about how the Arcobaleno all have intense cryptic energy?
Like Skull literally can't die. And because he's so loser core (affectionate) he's died in front of people so many times only to get back up like nothing happened.
Reborn....*points the guy with a chameleon that changes into different weapons*. Tbh if you told me he was an alien, I'd believe you.
The Vindice are basically the men in black.
Verde... no one knows if he's an alien, a guy from the future hell bent on giving us better technology to prevent a future catastrophe, or a tired government agent who doesn't get paid enough to babysit his cryptids and therefore doesn't.
Lal, however, is the too tired government agent who does babysit her crypids. Help jer she's suffering and in need of coffee and a break.
Fon *points to Hibari and Alaude* he's clearly a clone. Those are clones! People are being cloned-
Mammon is that shadowy cryptid you can only ever capture blurry pictures for. And then you receive a bill in the mail charging you for said picture. Basically urban legend status. There's a rumor going around if you take a picture of this strange cloaked person you will in fact go bankrupt.
Colonello is that strange inhuman creature that fell in love with the government agent lady who watches him. People assume he's from a super soldier program. Like some kind Marvel bs with Winter Soilder or Captain America or the DC version of that, Deathstroke. He's clearly human but also not.
Luce, Aria, and Yuni are 110% the most normal out of all of them, tho. Definitely not decents of a secret race of non humans that existed pre-humans. Nope, those girls are humans 💚
sketching the arcobalenos and trying to come up with my own interpretation of their designs and characters and like, what the timeline looks like gave me just. a huge appreciation for Luce
what an amazing character
what if you're the head of a mafia family that's always been led by women, even though it's world that is so very macho
what if you can see the future (and given she inherited her gift from Sepira and we also know Yuni's foresight especially focuses in on the tre-ni-sette it's very likely) and you know you will be cursed and you know your friends and equals will be cursed and you know the daughter you bear will be cursed, and yet you also know that acting against that fate would only make things worse
what if you call the priest on your deathbed to confess all of your sins, but you still refuse his absolution to the end because you know there is no absolution possible for what you did (what you didn't do)
i like to think she secretely encouraged Colonello to follow Lal Mirch and the rest of them, as the one kindness she could afford them
anyway uh. Giglio Nero and Luce/Aria/Yuni timeline thoughts under the readmore for anyone interested
(content warning for like pregnancy and stuff, which you should be expecting given i'm talking about Luce)
i feel like the Giglio Nero might have been an important family before Luce's death, one because it has survived for like 200 years and that's not easy for these kinds of organizations, and two because its leaders literally see the future
and of course Sepira's descendants, much like Giotto's, would probably see a form of security in making the Giglio Nero powerful
so Luce is the boss of a strongly established family, and while she is gentle and kind and ladylike, she is also. you know. a mafia boss. she protects her own, even if it means crushing others
and like, i know khr doesn't generally vibe with the real world, but by the late 70s-early 80s they were assassinating judges and prosecutors. Luce would have been boss in this era, and much like the rest of the underworld would have gladly partaken in securing their own status and legal safety
(i generally see the arcobaleno curse taking place in the early 1980s, with the canon era being in late 2000s-early 2010s, aka publication zone)
(incidentally that means whatever the equivalent of the 1992 assassination of judge Falcone (rest in peace king, it's fucked up what they did to you) was in the khr universe, the Giglio Nero had nothing to do with it. more on this later)
so we've got Luce being boss of a big family at a kind of sketchy time for the mafia world, and because she has this really unique position as a woman from a dynasty of women (unlike Daniela, who would have probably (?) been near the end of her reign at that time) and a seer, there would probably be some mystique around her. i can see her white dress inviting comparisons to white ladies legends (although never openly, because like. mafia)
anyway the curse happens while Luce is heavily pregnant, in my mind she's around her late 30s-early 40s, which is. quite late for the 1980s. i personally think the sky arcobaleno doesn't change form, and "only" gets their life shortened (which probably felt like a form of betrayal from the others by the way, imagine you turned into a toddler and your friend who most likely knew this would happen and Did Not Tell You still looks perfectly normal, i would go mad with rage) - normally that means they probably have, what, a good 10-15 years left ? Aria likely made it to her 30s, but i don't know if there would be a difference between arcobalenos that were made and arcobalenos that were born if that makes sense
anyway Luce's body is already feeding one very hungry being, and the addition of the pacifier on top of the pregnancy deals her a fatal blow. she walks down the mountain without a word to the others, something that won't ever be forgiven by some of the team (Viper and Lal, especially) but that Reborn recognizes as the way a mafioso dies if not in a fit of glory, hidden away so no one ever sees him weak
when she makes it home she calls a doctor and a priest, and everyone present understands what it means. she requests to have her labor induced, and keeps the newborn Aria on her breast while confessing the sins of murder, or betrayal, of lying
she had prepared a safe house for her husband for when she would die, because the man she married was not mafia and was never suited for this kind of world, and she wanted to keep him safe even after death. given the complicated times the mafia world is in, Giaccomo doesn't get a choice in going there, the Giglio Nero will respect the boss' will no matter what
(Luce's funeral is the last time the arcobalenos will be together in one room for a very long time)
Aria spends her childhood away from her father, raised by the Giglio Nero, with Luce's right hand man's wife as her wet nurse. she develops a sort of codependent relationship with the family as a result, especially considering this would be the period of time the Estraneo rise in power with some awfully convenient deaths
and then it's war. the Estraneo reveal their hand a little too much, the Vongola and other families step in to crush them and forbid the use of the possession bullet, unwittingly leading to cruel research that will only come back to bite them some 15+ years down the line, Aria is sent to her father until the situation settles down. the Giglio Nero lose a lot of influence around that time, both because of the general climate and because they don't really have a leader anymore currently
until that point, Aria only had stories from her men and the memories stored in the pacifier to construct a mental image of her mother, but spending time with Giaccomo lets her hear about a side of Luce she couldn't have known of, a woman with a gentle smile who could heal any wounds with her kindness, who refused to show her tears in front of her men because she only wanted to make them feel better
of course, this is an idealized image constructed by a grieving man who is talking to his daughter for the first time and would give anything to tell her good things about her mom. Luce refused to cry in public because she was raised to be a mafia boss in a macho world, and she couldn't afford to be seen as weak. and perhaps it was kindness on her part too, but really she was never as soft with her men as she was with Giaccomo, because he was a civilian and entirely unsuited to the mafia and her oasis of peace, and he couldn't hurt her
Aria doesn't know this. Aria is a child learning about her mom, a girl raised not just to be a mafia boss, but to be the heart of the Giglio Nero in a way, a child who is so terribly aware of all the ways in which her mom's presence would make everything better for everyone. and so she internalizes it. smile, and hide your tears, for the family
while she later comes to recognize some of the ways in which her codependency with the Giglio Nero at large may have been. not the best for her growing up, this she never forgets. she takes off the edge and the fear of loss in one-night stands with men she will never see again, who are not mafia, to whom it doesn't matter if she cries or screams or swears in anger or hits the wall in grief
she accidentally gets pregnant in her early 20s, in a sort of mirror image of her mom's late but desired pregnancy. she doesn't tell anyone. goes to switzerland for business for a little while and no one questions her, and while her men's wives look at each other knowingly when they hear, they keep her secret
while she survives the birth, the whole ordeal weakens Aria a lot, for much the same reasons it did Luce. she never recovers completely from the chronic exhaustion the pacifier forced onto her
Aria asks her father to raise Yuni in her stead, because she wants her daughter to have a chance at experiencing the real world before the mafia world swallows her up too, and Giaccomo's garden is perhaps the only place Aria knows that could grant this wish
