Memories of: Beyblade

[garfield15]

http://i350.photobucket.com/albums/q422/j_reader/bb2.jpg


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v475/emma-chan/bladebreakers.jpg

http://www.antoniogenna.net/doppiaggio/anim/beyblade2.jpg
Kicking up speed, runnin' out of time
Goin' head to head it's a way of life
Ya gotta fall..down....eat ground, to get back up again
LET'S BEYBLADE
(guitar solo)
Spinin' it out at the speed of sound
Gotta kick it up now the bet is down
We're the team with da' bang...our gang is the one that's gonna win
LET'S BEYBLAAAADE, BEYBLAAAADE
(guitar solo)
Ahhhhhh, yeah, Let's Beyblade, Let's Beyblade! BEYBLADE (Let it rip!)

(Yes I still remember this freakin' addictive song after god knows how many years)


July 6, 2002. A day that will live in many of our memories (well for those of us who watched the show...and remembered what day it came on...and still have memories of the show...and wasn't put off by later character designs...and...wait I'm getting ahead of myself)

Let me start over. On July 6, 2002, a show was launched in America. It was entitled, quite simply, Beyblade. Now I definitely remember when I was a kid and saw ads for this show I was like "What the heck is this? Spinning tops? Is...is that a Dragon? Screw this! I'm too busy watching Yu-Gi-Oh." So, I ditched the first episode. The next day in school like two or three of my friends were yelling at me if I had seen this show over the weekend. As I told them no, they slowly looked like they were about to kill me. But I still ignored them and was too busy caring about my Yu-Gi-Oh cards anyway. (I was reaaaaaaaaaly into Yu-Gi-Oh back then. I still am a little bit)

So another week went by and I was pretty much the outcast of some of my friends since they were obviously sooooo into this newfangled "Beyblade" thing. I was thinking, "So what, Yu-Gi-Oh isn't cool anymore?" So of course I finally gave in and watched an episode, knowing that there was no way that any main character could ever be as interesting as Yami/Yugi (This was before I became a huge anime fan so for me back then it was all about Yugi, Digimon season 3 reruns and that loser named Ash :p. Oh yeah, some other kid named Ikki tried to get in was there too.)

I believe it was the beginning of the first tournament of the series I saw. Anyway, the point is, I WAS HOOKED! I couldn't believe this show was just so...cool! And it was about tops. (Oh, so many years went by before I realized that the show was 100% seriously just about playing a children's top game). The characters, the fighting, RAY! Ray was my all time favorite character in the show since he didn't drive me up the wall with angst. Plus, I like Tigers. So, I told my friends they were right and watched Beyblade. Then V-Force (What the heck happened to the design? I thought it was completely new characters the first time I saw it!) and on-and-off I was able to catch G-Revolution but I never saw much of it because I think it kept changing time slots.

But during the beginning, I really loved Beyblade. I always had to beg my mom to buy me new ones. Beyblade got so big at my school that we ended up creating a Beyblade club! (I kid you not). I remember playing and screaming out "NOW DRIGER! ATTACK!" and "DODGE IT DRIGER! DODGE!" Yeah, I really thought you could control the blades like that (heh heh). Well could you blame me? It looked so easy to do on the show and this was like the new thing back then!

Now, these days being the older and wiser self I am, I reeeeeeaaallly want to hear a Japanese track for this because usually shounen shows like this sound really good in Japanese but I digress anyway.

For those of you who don't remember, Beyblade was about this kid named Tyson and his friends Kenny, Max, Ray, and the bastard offspring of Sasuke and Kaiba otherwise known as Kai (I never liked Kai...AT ALL!) as they go through various trials and tribulations to become world champions. They also meet up with other bladers some good, some bad, and some...androids and make friends. Two important ones later would be Daichi and Hillary though I'm not sure if Hillary was as "important" as she was "fanservice for young boys"

Basically the concept was about these spinning tops with monsters inside them called Bit Beasts and nearly every character had one. The battles were usually very intense because of huge monsters coming out and wrecking stuff and the beyblades could usually do crazy things like defy gravity, hit an exact point in the tournament bowl and generally wreck stuff. There were actual villains too. (Yes, villains...adult villains...who want to collect tops...to destroy the world...by collecting children's tops and the monsters within. It seemed plausible at the time) But I look back now and I realize that I liked Beyblade for the character development and the actual storyline that sometimes got very dark and violent, especially in G-Revolution/Season 3. Something that other shows of that time (coughcoughPokemoncoughcough) needed to know how to do. I really enjoyed watching the show and had fun doing so. Even sometimes now, I'll check out a quick clip or two. (The dub track got WAAAYYY less campy in later seasons) I guess theoretically, Beyblade was the "Bakugan" of that time just like "Battle B-daman" came before it (Neither of them measure up though IMO) but was a lot more interesting and had serious development

So do you have great memories of this show? (I have a feeling me and Light Lucario are gonna have a disagreement about something in this :p)

EDIT: Wow that was a long speech
EDIT 2: That song really is addicting. To help me cure it, here's the Japanese opening of G-Revolution. I actually like it a lot G-Revolution OP: Go Ahead! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPXC8fUYGtA)

[A.Magik]

Kai and his Dark Dranzer losing to the Beyblade team. Standing on a breaking floor of ice, the demoralized Kai is astonished to see the gang he's betrayed and looked down upon are willing to rescue and accept him back. Very hesitant at first ("I don't know...I don't know if I can change."), he relents.

Sasuke, take note!

[Antiyonder]

The show was fun, but one question I need to stress:

Why do the contestants take the game so seriously? I mean in other combating shows it's possible for some opponents to have a friendly rivalry (Like Ash and Ritchie on Pokemon).

This show on the other hand, the character's attitude, "That no good rotten scum! How dare he/she compete's against me?".

[Rud]

Why do the contestants take the game so seriously? I mean in other combating shows it's possible for some opponents to have a friendly rivalry (Like Ash and Ritchie on Pokemon)

The stakes are usually higher in Beyblade compared to Pokemon, so its not surprising, especially since lots of times their opponents are control by some super corporation bent on world domination or that's trying to steal their Bit Beasts (which they use to take over the world) or something like that.

[jph139]

I never really watched Beyblade - but a friend of mine did, and, when we were tired of Yu-Gi-Oh! Cards and Bionicles and Rumble Robots and those cool Rock'em Sock'em Robot things that you could build and stuff and... what were we talking about?

Oh, yeah, Beyblades. I never had any, but some friends did, and I would happily oblidge when they bust out the Beyblades, because, let's be honest here, there's NOTHING cooler than watching fast-moving bits of sharp metal smashing into eachother. It's just... inherantly cool.

Never really watched the show, though. I saw a few episodes here and there, and could probably name some characters (that Chinese-looking guy who was aloof and stuff and I think he had a tiger thing in his Beyblade), but the show never really hooked me.

...

He also had a game for the PS2 that was FREAKIN' SWEET. I could play that for HOURS. I don't think I ever actually learned how to play it, but it was so cool I could just randomly spin tops in it for hours.

[Baby Naruto]

There's gonna be a Season 4 ya know ^_^.

[Bloody Marquis]

I watched the first 2 seasons. Would've watched the 3rd, but by then I was beginning to prefer sleeping in over watching stuff on Saturday morning. When I was a kid, I liked it. But even then, I was thinking "Why are they taking spinning tops so seriously?" There were scientists trying to find out how to build the perfect beyblade. There were ancient Chinese traditions that involved them. There were kids getting genetically altered just to become better beyblade players. I even recall a minor character dying because of the stress from using a beyblade. I know that this was supposed to be a kids show made to sell toys, but I just thought was too over-the-top about it.

[Light Lucario]

I remember watching season one the most on ABC Family when they had Jetix. Even though I thought that it was weird that a spinning top game was so dramatized, I thought that it was interesting. This was also about the time I got into Yu-Gi-Oh! so I was kind of used to dramatized toy/card battles. Anyway, one reason why I thought season one was pretty good was that every member of the main cast got their own arc for their development. I thought that it overall worked. I didn't like V-Force as much since the character designs were so different that it came as a shock to me. I never could get into G-Revolution, despite how most people thought that it was really good. It did have the best designs of all three seasons, but I think that they kept on changing the time slots for it in my area as well. It didn't help that they never showed the final battle either.

Overall, Beyblade was a pretty fun show to watch for the heck of it for me. Its hard to believe that it started back in 2002 since it feels a bit longer to me than that.