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Spoiler for Beyblade Metal Fusion, Metal Masters and Metal Fury
So this is my first post on this blog. I’ve gotta do something big, something that will get people’s attention. Maybe a post about one of the Big Three, though now it’s more like the Big One and all these goddamn upstarts. Yeah, maybe I should do a post about Hero Aca or Black Clover. Something fresh, something mainstream…
The Beautiful Friendship and Ryuga and Kenta From 2010s Beyblade.
Godam it Lorelei we suck at this! Ok, whatever too late I’m already going down this path, can’t go back. I love Trading Card Game Anime and its compatriots. Honestly, I’ve never been able to categorize shows like Beyblade or Bakugan Battle Brawler. I know they’re described as sports anime but that’s not really true. They don’t really follow the same logic or structure as most sports anime. They kind of do but in my opinion, they’re much more similar to TCG anime. So i kind of just lump them together. I really really needed to explain that because I’m going to be calling Beyblade a TCG anime in all my post, including this one. Just thought you should know.
Anyway, I love TCG anime, none of them are particularly good, even the good ones are only decent next to most other shounen anime. And don’t bring up Vanguard because it’s good but is has all the flaws that TCG anime, so live with it. I’ll deal with Vanguard another day. TCG anime basically live and die based on their characters because the premise of them all being Card Game / Child’s Toy runs our world and only it can save humanity is just impossible to take seriously. And that’s where they get me, I’m a sucker for good character writing or just really likable characters. Just find my old Boruto posts, you’ll see.
I have, to date, seen the entire 2010s Beyblade, all three series, all the way through five times. I’m not proud of that, but yeah I kind of am. This series has a weird soft spot in my heart and I genuinely like all the main cast and quite a few side characters. This could have just as easily been about Blader DJ and American DJ or King and Masamune. I can and will dedicate a whole post to Tetsuya Crabby Watarigani who is just king troll. But today, today it’s of the weakest (one of) and the most op characters chance to shine. This relationship is the pinnacle of what Beyblade has to offer as a series, it is, in my humble opinion, a distillation of what makes Beyblade not awful.
Kenta is probably one of the weakest bladers in the whole series. He’s smaller than everyone physically. His Bey is a stamina type meaning that it doesn’t pack a lot of punch. His role as a person who gets beat to show how tough someone is was taken by Hyouma, Tsubasa, Yu and Kyoya halfway through season one and he never got it back. He is right next to Benka in terms of filler comic relief. Ryuga on the other hand, is Beyblade Dio, Over Powered to the point of absurdity. He basically stole the Role of villain in parts of the second Series and was defeated by a virtual GOd in the third. He is always the strongest blader in the show and has lost a total of three or four matches across three series. He is a god amongst men and hates everyone. So what happened? How did they go from, never having spoken to here take all the powers of my Bey (arguably the strongest Bey in the series)? Well, it all started when Kenta got depressingly self-aware. 7 episodes into the 3 series, 109 episode into the entire series Kenta has a sort of revelation. He realizes how goddamn useless he is as a character outside of moral support. He also realizes not only how lame and depressing that is but also how it doesn’t really do much to solve the problem at hand. So he leaves, instead of wasting his time training hoping that a star fragment will just choose him or playing back up to Ginga, he goes to find Ryouga. Deciding that if he can’t be of any use as a blader, the least he can do is be the world’s most persistent messenger boy and convince Ryouga, an actually strong blader who does have a star fragment, to help them. Its like if Trista went to convince Kiba to help them at the beginning of the Orichalcos arc instead of just kinda being they’re being the muscle even though they didn’t need muscle and if they did Joey was there. Anyway, Kenta finds Ryouga only to be turned away and instead of giving up out of fear because Ryouga is known to literally burn his enemies with a figurative dragon, he stays. He pursues Ryouga across deserts, jungles, and oceans until he agrees to help his friends. And because of this, we get to see sides of both of these characters we haven’t before.
Ryouga has been a stone cold bastard the last two seasons. He is a crazy, manipulative fiend who has never shone any mercy. The first time we see him in season three he’s training by fighting a Volcano and he’s winning. So it is genuinely shocking when he offers Kenta food after he passes out the first time. Crazy, cold-blooded Ryouga shows a modicum of respect for Kentas effort to pursue him. He also tells him to leave but not unkindly. He truly believes that this journey would be too much for Kenta and respects his effort enough to feed him and tell him to back down. And when Kenta refuses he lets him stay. Ryouga has been a lone wolf this entire series but decides to let Keenta travel with him because he knows he has the determination to follow up on his words. One of his biggest issues with Gingka and Kyouta earlier in the season was that they weren’t taking this new situation seriously… Neither of them had put the time in to experiment with their new Beys and really push themselves to the limit. They hadn’t put any thought or effort into training with their beys or their fight with him. Kenta, on the other hand, is working with someone who doesn’t see him as the small friend character. While Ginga may not hold back when he battles Kenta, it always feels like a friendly battle that Kenta knows he can’t win. But Ryouga not only demands that Kenta stand on his own two feet but shows respect and pride when he does. We get to see Kenta choosing to work with Ryouga in spite of knowing what he’s done to his friends and what he’s capable of. As viewers who have only seen Kenta as this sweet kid, it’s surprising to see that he would tolerate Ryouga if it meant getting stronger and helping his friends. And as the series continues we get to see a few more of Ryoga’s kinder moments. In the end, when the chips are down ad Ryuga loses against Hades he doesn’t do what he normally would. He would normally vow revenge with his last breath, instead, he passes the torch on. For the first time, he finds in Kenta someone as determined as he is to be the best blader and to stand by their convictions. When he gives the power of El Drago to Kenta we can finally see the stories for these two characters reach a surprisingly full and complex arc. The strongest Ryoga and the weak Kenta become friends not because the plot demands it or because they’re both so nice but because they see in each other what others don’t. Kenta put his faith in Ryouga and Ryoga did the same in kind.
That’s my super long discussion of Ryuga and Kenta from Beyblade. I really like these two and they’re two of my favorites the series. Beyblade really does have some of the most likable characters in anime and I find it genuinely hard to hate the show because of it. If you have the time watch the show. I hope you enjoyed this, thanks!