Bakuten Shoot Beyblade

I'm rewatching the entire series and it definitely has high replay value. The scores are amazing and the opening and ending songs are very memorable.

Still on my first season of 51 episodes. The first season of the series had 4 parts. My favorite part was the third one, where the BBA team competed against the Euro team. My least favorite is part 1 and part 2 - it was quite unnecessarily long and boring.

This series can be categorized as drama, action-adventure, sport, and fantasy. The character designs are cool and the voice casting is amazing. I really love the compelling performances by all the cast ... members.

It's very family-friendly and highly recommended.

If you look at this show as a whole now, it a pretty average show that might seem forgettable to many who watch it now. If I were to give it an objective score then it would be 6/7 across the board since the show is pretty average.

But for me and many other people from my generation, Beyblade will always hold a special place in our hearts. This is one of the best things that I got to see as a child.
It takes me down nostalgia lane and that is part of the reason why I have given it an unreasonable 10/10 when it comes ... to enjoyment.

Story:- (7/10)
The story is plain and simple. A guy likes playing with spinning tops called Beyblades so he goes around the world to become the best there is.

There is no epic backstory or prologue, it's just some spinning tops with superpowers cause why not? Considering that the target audience, this is a perfect power fantasy that kids can buy into since it is not too complicated for them.

Art:- (7/10)
The art is pretty average for the time in which this show was produced but the designs were very over the top and catchy. The characters in the show are not trying to be shown as realistic anyway so the creators went all out to make them all as unique and edgy as possible while maintaining the cool factor.

The Beyblades and the bit-beasts themselves are quite appealing which is apparent from the number of Beyblades that were bought by children around the world after this show aired.

Sound:- (7/10)
The Rock soundtracks are classic and reflect the same approach as most shows around that time had taken but I have to say that the English versions very memorable and I can instantly start vibing to them to this day.

Characters:- (6/10)
The characters don't really have a lot of depth or realism but considering the target audience, I suppose that is justified.

The creator obviously wanted them all to be very different from one another so that the viewers could at least relate to some characters and frankly speaking it totally works as planned. When I think of the word "cool" Tyson is still one of the very first characters that comes to my mind.

Enjoyment:- (10/10)
This show was one of my childhood favourites and I can still appreciate it and enjoy it a lot but realistically speaking, if a new viewer were to watch it then their enjoyment would be around 6 because there are so many options now.

Overall:- (10/10)
It should be 7.5-8/10 realistically but I'm gonna be subjective and give it 10/10 regardless.

P.S: "Never gonna take me down" is still one of my favourite tracks to this day.
LET ITTTT RIPPPPPP!

Money. We want money. Adults have money. Adults have kids. Kids like toys. Kids watch cartoons. We can make toys. We can make a TV show. We can make a TV show about the toys.

Kids. What do kids watch? What do kids like? Kids like friends. Kids like competition. Kids like superpowers. Kids like heroes. Most importantly, kids like toys. So the show can be about this sport where these kids compete with their toys which have superpowers and eventually, they save the world from evil and preach about friendship every single episode.

And then it worked. Those poor little rascals never saw it ... coming. They definitely bought the toys. And I am one of them too.

Looking back at Beyblade it is fairly obvious that this form of binary logic was used. I remember how much I liked the show and how interesting I found the toys. I definitely did not understand why. I was young, naive and impressionable, and Beyblade was an experience I have never had before. And even now, even if after rewatching it I see it as something that was built with the purpose of selling toys, I still remember it fondly and can still enjoy it for what it is. There's two things that I enjoy about it as it is now. How these attempts at being "cool" fail miserably, how the english dub can get quite silly at certain points and seeing how much of the show was built around selling Beyblades to kids.

How much of the show is dedicated to selling the toy? Well, pretty much the entire thing. And the binary logic I used extends further to it but I won't have you suffer through it again. First of all, to ensure that Beyblades will be considered cool by kids, in the show they will be associated with other things they find cool. In most cases, it will be animals, as every Beyblade has a bitbeast, which is this thing that gives them superpowers which is essentially a spirit. The main characters bitbeasts' are designed after the Four Saint Beasts from chinese mythology, with each representing an element. in the mind of me as a child they were essentially: A dragon, a tiger, a phoenix and a turtle. Turtles were cool at the time because ninja turtles were popular. They also get to live 100 years and have solid shells, so shut up. But the beyblades were not only associated with animals, but with other things kids found cool. Like for instance, there are beyblades themed after sports, after historical warriors, and so on. There was even a beyblade that was drawing its power from rap. Yeah, I told you, the show can get quite lame at times and it really just tried to associate things with things kids might find cool and that appeal to them.

Afterwards it tried to overexagerate characteristics associated with these things, like making the beyblades able to use those four elements or giving the beyblades unrealistic abilities or features. Like having beyblades wrapped in wool cloth because they have a sheep bitbeast.

Aside from associating beyblades with "cool" shit to give them more appeal to kids, the series also tries to make beybladed feel like they have a lot more value, by having the characters learn valuable life lessons mostly concerning friendship. They are also added the weight of good vs evil, where the main characters have to defeat the ominous evil. It isn't something with much depth, just the generic importance of friendship plotline.

Another element that beyblade likes to present a lot is the fact that beyblades as toys are customizable, through the guise of needing a strategy to win. So essentially this means that every time you have to optimize your beyblade based on your opponent so that it will perform optimally against them. This in truth is supposed to have the effect of: Having every character change their beyblade from time to time, this creating even more toys to sell in various different other variations and not keeping the kids bored once they have bought it, since if their beyblade doesn't do well or is not that impressive, buying another and combining its parts might fix that.

In truth, Beyblade is an experience you can only enjoy as a child or someone that has watched it when they were a child. Because that is who it is marketed towards. Having these same tactics applied on an adult, would fail miserably because they would not fail to see it through. Its story is nothing you haven't seen before, it's kids playing with their toys to defeat evil and become better at the game they play as well as better friends. The world of beyblade is exaggerated and focuses as beyblade as an international sport and a historical grand reaching activity that has been practiced since ancient times. Every episode the characters learn a lesson about friendship or being sportsmanlike. It is enjoyable to see how it has not aged well since as I have said, it has a lot of lame into it. It is filled with corny lines and things an adult thought might sound cool to a kid at the time s well as a lot of Sum 41 knock off songs that are replayed in almost every battle. It's the "swag yolo" attitude of the 90's that carried in the early 2000's.

I recommend watching Beyblade to people that have watched it as children, since as I have said, that experience was made for you when you were a kid. It is a show of its time, and you might be surprised at how much lamer it was compared to how you might remember it. Don't get me wrong, I am still fond of the series, I still found it entertaining because it is one of the first shows of its type that I have ever watched to completion. And even if I find it lame now, it's entertaining to see what was thought ot be cool at the ime and aimed to get me to be like "WHOA THAT IS AWESOME DAD BUY ME ONE!" In any other context, this is just a lame show about the power of friendship and defeating evil that tries to sell a product to kids. If you haven't seen one by now, you can give it a go to see what tactics are used when trying to do so. Other than that, you're better off watching the show that tried to sell you toys initially to see that it tried the exact same thing on you. Or maybe I am wrong and there are shows that have more to them than that that also sell toys.