Beyblade Burst Gachi

Watched the Beyblade Burst ss 1 + 2 long ago and now finally finished this season. I just didn't have the motivation to watch this because there is no old characters, nostalgia can be a scary obstacle! Anw, the series kinda suffers from the new format (12min/ep). The duration is technically 26 episodes - half of the normal BB shows. What suffers from this cut is the pacing, story, and characters.

Not many new rivals are introduced, the villains appear out of nowhere and challenge the good guy's crew with an absurd reason like "darkness will consume all, your Beyblade is over" without any background. ... The story is basically non-existed and just "the protagonist is challenged by random people, process to win different tournaments".

However, there is a really strong cast and strong bond between them (the trio Drum, Delta, Akane), much like the ss 1. Although because of the short duration the staff couldn't do much with them, there are lots of scenes portraying these precious kids support each other. Beyblade Burst is always good at organizing battle to make the protagonist stand out but not OP at the same time, this series is the same. The growth of Drum feels really realistic, emotional when we see how far he has gone in the end.

Although the relationship between Drum and his main rival is average and pretty cliche, they make a great connection with the "real last boss" (not the one I mentioned above). The last boss Gwyn basically is just a kid that never has friend and doesn't realize his wish for making friend with Drum. There is a great irony and contrast in the Drum - Delta - Gwyn: Thanks to Drum, Delta develops to a better person while meeting Drum makes the normal world of Gwyn destroyed and forces him to get out.

The best part of this series would be animation, especially in ep 49 where all the freaking budget just throw in it.

Overall, I enjoy the series for what it is. The characters are cute, battles are good.

Ok, so, this season of Burst just ended and after that epic final episode, I felt the urge to write a quick review, so here we are. I'll only be giving an overall rating, rather than one for each individual thing, keep in mind, since I only really like to give things ratings based on overall enjoyment (though I will go into detail on what I thought about everything).


Story: If you watch Beyblade for the story, who even are you? Not really much to say here tbh, just your typical formula for a Beyblade story; aim to become the strongest and stop the villains that ... come along half way through the show. Some of the battles were really good though imo, which we'll get into more later.


Soundtrack: Not really much of an OST in the Burst series other than the OPs and EDs, honestly (and EDs aren't really a thing in the Japanese ones). Saying that though, Gachi probably has my least favourite opening song in the entire franchise (if we include both Japanese and English). It's not bad, it's just... ok at best? Idk about you, but 98% of the time I ended up just skipping it.


Art: Nothing much to say other than I personally like the art for the Burst franchise. Moving on.


Characters: I personally really liked the characters in this season. Drum is probably my 2nd favourite Burst MC (Aiga being my least favourite, but I still like him), Delta is honestly one of my favourite characters at this point (talking the franchise as a whole), and the villains (though one of the villains does get the short end of the stick pretty much throughout after he gets beaten once) and "weaker" characters are also pretty cool in my book (though I will admit the earlier seasons did do a bit of a better job with the latter (except maybe Amane, freaking love how he gets a win over you know who (won't spoil))). That said though, I am pretty disappointed they replaced characters such as Lui and Free for the respective beys here. I mean, yes, I did come to like them don't get me wrong, they're just not as iconic/fun/memorable, if that makes sense. Thank God they're coming back for season 5! Also, disappointed with no Shu either. Heck, they didn't even bother to introduce a new Spriggan owner here. Whatever, though.


Enjoyment: *SPOILER WARNING* Jump to the end NOW if you don't want to be spoiled.

- So the duration of this episodes in this season of Burst are 10 minutes, rather than a full lengthed 20, right? Initially, I was ok with this, as it wouldn't feel as though episodes were dragging on unnecessarily and I could just get on with my day (and also less filler). Jump to the end of Gachi though... Yeah, I genuinely feel like there's a couple of battles that definitely could've been fleshed out more, which again was held back by the 10 minute or so limit. Examples of this are Amane vs Arthur round 2 and the final battle vs Gwyn. Don't get me wrong, I still really like these battles, but yeah, just a bit disappointed by the fact tbh.
- As I said before, there were some really good battles imo in this season. My favourite episodes personally are 36, 49 (this one especially gave me major orgasms, by far one of my favourite episodes in the Burst series, and maybe the franchise as a whole), 50 and 52. Really nice stuff.
- All this being said, though, I am really disappointed we never got another Drum vs Delta battle after the final Drum vs Gwyn. And I guess disappointed in the fact we never got to see the full three way battle between the MCs at the end, since we got to see the start of that, but whatever at this point. The finale was still decently satisfying imo.


Overall rating: I could just give it a 10 since I'm biased as hell about Beyblade, lol. But eh, 7 it is. Pretty good season imo, but definitely could've been better. Now bring on season 5/Sparking!! SO hyped for it!

It is normal for toy based anime to promote their latest product using anime as medium. Beyblade is about toys and it always be.

But when the proportion itself is larger than the overall story, it will reduce the enjoyment of the anime itself, make it no more than advertising medium with mediocre storyline. That's the current trend of modern Beyblade franchise.

In contrast, the best series so far, Bakuten Shoot G-Revolution, never heavily emphasized on promoting product, but focusing on interesting story and enough character development. Without implicitly stating "Boys only toys" in the story, that proved by the absence of competitive female bladers ... in this recent series, the earlier version of Beyblade was indeed has no gender equality issue. Even if I've watched until final episode, nothing changed at all. Not to mention its several repetitive last episodes that only show nothing except focusing on Gwen's hatred and unstable emotion make it even more boring to watch.

After considering those factors, this is the detail of my assessment;

Story 3
Art 6
Sound 5
Character 3
Enjoyment 3

Overall 4

If Takara is truly targeting larger market that encompass wide range of age and gender, then they have to improve their strategy. Plastic generation, even though never heavily advertised, in fact still popular and give a great remark for Beyblade fans due to its memorable story, this will eventually result in long term selling products that will give better profit for the company itself.

The average score of latest generation was always less than its predecessors, I hope Beyblade will get better in the future in order to break its downgrade tradition.