At the end of the 90s, Beyblade was all the rage, but I didn’t realize until recently just how massive this spinning top juggernaut really is.
About a week ago I was invited to a Beyblade tournament at Tobu Zoo, which is a fair way North of Tokyo. Titled as the Tobu Zoo Cup, it was a unique opportunity to see the size and variety of Beyblade’s Japanese fandom up close.
Like many long running Japanese series, Beyblade’s audience now crosses multiple generations. That meant you had elementary kids competing with adults in the tournament. There was real skill involved as well, but the regulations on what you were allowed to use in each match were pretty intense.
Watching the staff at Takara Tomy examining each piece like some kind of forensic scientist was fascinating. Especially as certain parts aren’t outright banned, but will incur point penalties if you use them.
That meant the strategies used for each match were surprisingly varied, with a few players going for parts with penalties and starting with a point handicap only to crush someone else using more regulation parts.
It was still a very risky strategy though and one that didn’t always pay off, as skill also played a major part in each match.
In general, the kids were very well mannered, but you did get a few hilarious situations where a kid obliterated an adult player in a match. Only to act all cocky and swagger off leaving a rather dejected adult in their wake.
By the time the tournament came to a close, all the kids had been beaten by a few adults. This makes sense, as these adults have been playing Beyblade for something like 25 years by this point.
The final four contestants were Y, Kaze, Kabashira Hightouch and Honmatsu Flame, with Y winning the final match with a pretty epic Xtreme Finish.
All of this was done under the auspices of the new Beyblade X setup. With the manga and anime for Beyblade X released last year in Japan and are still ongoing. This is also the latest iteration of the Beyblade franchise since its creation back in 1999.
The last major Beyblade series was Beyblade Burst back in 2016, so this newer Beyblade X is meant to reach a newer and younger generation of players. Something the tournament I attended showed very clearly.
To give an idea of scale when it comes to Beyblade’s popularity, back in 2003 it was estimated that more than 5 billion Beyblade spinning tops had been sold in the US alone. Yes, that’s billion with a “b”. Not to mention that the current Beyblade X anime is being handled by OLM, the same studio behind Pokémon.
In any case, Beyblade X is already doing very well in Japan, so it will be interesting to see what happens when the new anime series comes Westward later this year.
Naturally, if you want to pick up the latest Beyblade X merchandise, you can head on over to the official Amazon store.
Thanks to both Hasbro and Takara Tomy for inviting me to the Tobu Zoo Cup.
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