#ck dissects

[crystalkleure]

You ever think about how Actually Pretty Damn Strong Zac must be? As in, in actual beybattle. The hobby of choice for 99% of the characters in this hobby anime.

We already know he’s hypercompetent at destroying people psychologically and trashing reputations, etc., and the confirmed existence of Casual Bey Magic probably means he can deep-fry you extra crispy with Zeus Lightning, so he’s Actually Hardcore Scary And Threatening, but he’s also apparently really good at just embarrassing you by spinning his spinny top better than yours. I guess it’s just not really emphasized because he very pointedly prioritizes his job as an idol over his spintop hobby – Zac was using beyblading stunts as a means to drum up the attention + enthusiasm of a crowd that he could then direct towards his concerts.

We know he’s one of The Four Spin Emperors in s1, but he never showed back up in the anime in later seasons. Probably busy doing idol stuff. In the manga, however, we continue to see him occasionally even as late as Sparking. And, at one point in Sparking, he’s shown as part of a mix that appears to be the global top 15 beybladers. He’s up there chilling in a WBBA meeting with people like Shu, Lui, Free, and the protags.

[...I can’t read Japanese, but judging by which characters these are and the type of meeting that appears to be going on, I’m PRETTY SURE “these guys are the Global Best 15″ is what’s being indicated here. Correct me if I’m wrong.]

So even in spite of Zac explicitly not focusing on beyblading – it comes firmly second to his career – he apparently has not stagnated. More than that, he’s maintained his ranking as One Of The Best, even as New Challengers Appear over the seasons.

HE’S A BUSY POP STAR/ROCKSTAR GUY, meaning he’s not even putting all [or even most] of his time and effort into this, and yet he evidently STILL makes time in his schedule to go beat ass at plastic toy battling, frequently and savagely enough to still be this relevant, YEARS into the series. This is an adult man at this point, with a VERY DEMANDING JOB, so beyblade is literally just a hobby to him, Just A Fun Thing To Do On The Side, and yet he’s still THIS EXTRA about it. He is One Of The Best, at something that does NOT even have his full attention. No Such Thing As Casual. Rather, this IS Zac’s version of “casual.” No Mercy.

Terrifying!

[crystalkleure]

Neat detail.

Jin’s Jormungand – his bey avatar, A Unique Being Of His Own Creation, involuntarily sprung forth from his own mind/soul/inexplicable magic power and deposited into a plastic spinny top vessel one day, etc. – has no eyes. It has two heads, and zero eyes between them.

And Jin keeps his own eyes obscured [even if not completely]. His hat, his hood, his hair, and the angle at which he usually holds his head [relative to other peoples’ lines of sight] all keep his eyes permanently in a dark shadow.

Jin’s eyes are also yellow. Jormungand’s...glowy patches of flesh [or lack thereof?] that theoretically occupy the spaces where its eyes should be are yellow. You can definitely see that that giant snake beast is very much Made Out Of Jin.

...And something can also probably be said about the possible implication here of Jin, on some level, not considering his eyes to be important parts of his body. Jin can’t trust his own eyes – he hallucinates. And he frequently has to resort to more or less trusting his [self-admittedly unpredictable and not controlled by him] “323 guardian spirits” to “guide” him, to take the reins in battle when his body appears to start failing [narcolepsy attack clearly impending], and presumably also to make sure he doesn’t like wander into traffic and get hit by a car or something. Jin essentially freely admits that he is not in full conscious control of his own body or his own power, and so there are times when he’s completely blind to whatever it is about to do. Hm.

[crystalkleure]

Kyle!

I love Kyle. Kyle makes me so sad. He has So Many Issues.

He is clearly dissatisfied with his appearance/sensitive about how he looks, as evidenced by the drastic tattooing to detract from his natural features, and then he made the apparent decision that even THAT was not satisfactory because he ended up just completely covering up his face with a mask. I know he also doesn't like how his Extremely Expressive Face gives away what he's thinking too easily, he is not capable of maintaining a poker face even a little bit to hide his intentions, which is a strategic handicap, so that's another reason for just covering it all up with the mask, but...the tattoos. He wouldn't have put those crazy distracting tattoos all over his face just for that, they have no effect on his level of expressiveness. The presence of the tattoos gives away that the strategic angle is not the only reason for the mask. People think Kyle is ugly and have probably picked on him about his looks...everyone looked at Gumita like she was crazy when she called him handsome ;-;

It's a shame, too, because tbh Kyle's really not that hideous, at least not by default. He just makes very ridiculous facial expressions.

Grotesque exaggerated emotive expressions aside, Kyle's actually kind of pretty in a funky way tbh. I like Kyle's weird stretchy taffy face.

And in even more ways than just the mask thing, Kyle just...hides, overall, too. Kyle just generally is not comfortable with being Seen Too Much. He hangs around in dark and empty places, like storage rooms and back alleys. He challenged Aiga in the fucking meat freezer on the cruise ship, and disappeared as soon as someone else came in to investigate. And he was RIGHT At Home on that ghost ship, surrounded by all the mist.

He comes across as ~mysterious~ but honestly I think this behaviour is rooted more in the Obvious Insecurity Issue, and he just encourages people to think he is Shady And Mysterious And Unknowable And Intimidating.

It's not even necessarily a stealth thing either. He's GOOD at Being Stealthy, but it doesn't seem to particularly be his core motivation for this so much as the Excellent Stealth Skills are just a consequence of it. He is doing Shady Shit on that phone, texting Evel etc., but...he's just as willing to do that while there are people watching him. He's pulled that phone out and started tapping Nefarious Bad Guy Stuff out on it in the middle of a tournament battle with zero issue. He apparently literally just Prefers To Be Where Other People Aren't At.

On top of that, he doesn't just physically hide, Kyle also likes to act. Putting On A Fake Face, if you will. He loves putting on overdramatic little shows and doing silly voices, see Every Interaction He Ever Had With Xhan. Yet another way of Distracting People From How He Actually Is, Hiding His True Self. [I love how this is the direction they went with the "multi-faced" gimmick for him btw -- he's a Kerbeus user. Kensuke's "multi-faced" gimmick was the puppet thing, Kyle's is the literal and metaphorical masking.]

Aahhh I've written a whole post about it before [here], but also Kyle and Evel...the fact that Kyle likes Evel's company so much...the reason they get along so well, as comrades/coworkers and I suppose what qualifies as friends...Kyle likes to be ignored, and Evel likes to Not Get Attached. They're Horribly Perfect For Eachother, in a sad way,,, ;-;

Whoops, this turned into a whole entire bigass dissection post, but I LOVE KYLE SO MUCH...hhgh............

[crystalkleure]

As unsatisfying and frustrating as I may find it to have a protagonist character who wins continuously via nothing but sheer dumb blind luck...you’ve gotta admit there is something really fucking funny about how SERIOUSLY everybody takes Valt.

I’m rewatching some s1 episodes, and goddamn. Valt literally wins on accident. His entire strategy is the beyblade version of just beating your face into a solid oak door until you somehow get it open because the hinges just spontaneously fall off because they were loose and rusty and you didn’t even know it or something, instead of just Learning How Doors Work and using the knob. His Valkyrie...behaves the way it does because the driver is fucking progressively degrading lmfao. The tip of that spintop is wearing away, changing how it moves over time, sometimes suddenly and dramatically if a particularly big chunk snaps off. Valt does not even realize this for the longest goddamn time. He is not strategizing around this. He does not even pull a Joe and understand that he is gambling.

I just watched him beat Quon’s ass in ep. 43 and holy fucking shit. He eats shit in the first round because Quon is smart and he is dumb, and then before the next round starts his friends Scream Motivation At Him from the stands and so he steels his resolve to Not Disappoint His Buddies by being an embarrassing loser. He achieves Newfound Will To Fight Even Harder To Not Suck Ass In Front Of Them. Something something honoring the respect they’ve shown to him or whatever.

And then he starts the second round the exact same way he started the first one.

He does the EXACT same thing that just made him lose. Mr. Announcer Guy literally says “It’s like watching a playback!” Valt just put on his Serious Face and then did not do ANYTHING even slightly differently. He is a one-trick dumbass.

And then, right at a crucial moment...another piece of Valkyrie’s Variable driver happens to chip off. Changing the way that it moves just enough to Make Valt Win. Opponent can’t really plan for and counter a totally random change that may or may not happen at a totally random time in the battle, gambling like that is actually a perfectly valid strategy [it’s just NOT an actual strategy in this case because HE DOESN’T KNOW HE’S DOING IT...].

But the fucking hilarious part is how everyone gives Valt so much credit for this! “omg Valt and Valkyrie are so ~united~” “omg this is what happens when Valt Gets Serious” “Do not underestimate the mighty Valt” “Valt has PERFECTED his Ultimate Move” dude he did not do that even a little bit on purpose. He doesn’t even know what’s going on. lmfao. Valt literally does NOT understand his own bey, why is Lui the only person who ever realizes this. Valt is just using Valkyrie like a really really fast-moving Roomba with a knife taped to it.

[crystalkleure]

I still think it’s a bit bizarre how, in late Gachi, Delta never ended up joining HELL.

For one, his bey is Diabolos. Lucifer, the Morning Star. Fallen angel. Satan. That Guy Who Lives In Hell.

Second, Arthur destroyed Delta. He completely trashed his mental state. He broke him, and that would have been the perfect opportunity for some Bad Decision-Making on Delta’s part. I can see how he very easily could have followed a line of logic like “This guy is overwhelmingly strong. I need to get closer to him to Learn More About Him to figure out how to beat him. As is, I clearly have no hope.” It would also be incredibly easy to appeal to Arthur’s Big Grandiose Narcissistic Streak, by groveling at his feet and begging to be accepted as a lackey, in order to dupe him/spy on him. That huge ego is a very exploitable weakness of his.

And then there’s also the low-key Greek alphabet theme going on with the HELL bigwigs’ beys. Arthur’s Apocalypse’s name is actually stylized as αpocalypse. Gwyn’s Genesis is γenesis. Blind joined HELL temporarily, SPECIFICALLY as a way to confront Delta, and his bey is Bahamut. However, Bahamut’s name is not stylized as βahamut. If Delta had joined HELL, and the bey naming theme had been kept up, his Diabolos could have been δiabolos. Spelled with...a delta. “Delta” is literally Delta’s NAME. But there is no delta letter in his bey’s name.

If Arthur, Blind, Gwyn, and Delta had all been on the same team together, with beys called αpocalypse, βahamut, γenesis, and δiabolos, that would have neatly utilized the first four letters of the Greek alphabet: alpha, beta, gamma, delta.

It just seems monumentally odd that this incredibly obvious plot direction was not followed. An incredibly blatant theme was just wasted. In fact, it almost seems like the writing staff were intending to do something like this at first, and then changed it for some reason? Gachi was the first season with half-length episodes, maybe the writing team misjudged how much they’d be able to fit into it and there turned out to simply be no time for that arc?

[crystalkleure]

I’ve figured out what’s so eerie about Zac’s [super fake] facial expressions.

The upper and lower halves of his face don’t match.

The smile is fake and habitually forced, but his eyes tell the truth. Don’t look at his mouth. Look at his eyes. You’ll get a much better grasp on how he’s feeling at any given moment immediately.

He even subtly admits that the smile is fake, as a way to low-key brag to an opponent [Katana] that he successfully caught off-guard with it:

Katana: “Hey did that fucking smile actually signify Malicious Intent”

Zac, smugly giving a non-answer: “Oh? Didn’t I just indicate to you that I simply smile -- quite intentionally -- to look pretty for my fans?”

[crystalkleure]

To that person who asked about which bey avatars can do the unaliving, thank you, now I have the balls to send an ask even if I'm anonymous.

Now let's get down to business (to defeat the Huns!) How much damage and how intense can spriggan, Valkyrie or hades can murder a person? Spriggan has the Big Axe™️, Valkyrie has the pointy, stabby sword and a big ass horse, and Hades, c'mon *gestures to the thing* It's hades.

Hades has been done {here}! As for the other two...

There are multiple different versions of both Spriggan and Valkyrie, some of which have significantly different anatomy than the original iterations, and thus different levels of unaliving potential, however, for post brevity I'm only going to speculate on the brutal mauling capabilities of their s1 versions here. [Feel free to ask for other seasons' variants in another ask though!]

Storm Spriggan

AXE

GIANT AXE

That giant axe can both cleave you in half AND impale you because the ends are Stabby Pointy

Storm Spriggan is a being of both efficiency and mercy. You will be cleaved in half.

However, pretending for a moment that Storm Spriggan has somehow implausibly NOT elected to cleave you in half with that giant axe immediately...

Storm Spriggan has claws. Storm Spriggan can tear you open with its hands or kick you open with its feet.

Storm Spriggan has a mace on the end of its tail. Storm Spriggan can whip its tail into your skull and embed that mace in your brain.

Storm Spriggan can probably strangle you with that tail. It looks long and strong and flexible enough to be prehensile.

Storm Spriggan is incredibly buff. Storm Spriggan can simply grab your head in one hand and pop your skull like a crunchy grape. Storm Spriggan can rip you in half. Storm Spriggan can twist your entire body like a Twizzler.

Storm Spriggan can just step on you and crush you to death.

Storm Spriggan can break your bones over those plates of armor it has on its legs.

Storm Spriggan has that shield-gauntlet thing on one arm. Storm Spriggan can brain you with that thing by slamming the flat part into your head, OR it could eviscerate you with it by slicing the spiked edges across your gut.

That gauntlet thing also has those white spikes sticking out over Storm Spriggan's knuckles. If Storm Spriggan punches you with that hand, those mockup Wolverine claws will gouge into your flesh.

Storm Spriggan's horns and tusks seem very functional. You do not want to be bitten or headbutted by Storm Spriggan.

It sure is a good thing you have already been cleaved in half by the giant axe because all of these other Life Removing options sure do seem far more painful by virtue of being far less instantaneous than the axe.

Conclusion: You have been cleaved in half by a giant axe. Your corpse is split neatly down the middle into two pieces. You can even get an open casket funeral if the split was horizontal instead of vertical, even though that would have sucked way more because your brain didn't get turbofucked immediately! However, if the mercy of the axe has been wholly denied, what is left of you likely now resembles a large, smeared mass of abnormally runny strawberry jam. At least some of your teeth are probably still intact in there somewhere.

Death Brutality Scale: 9/10 because even if you've only been Quickly And Cleanly Bisected there are going to be SO many entrails everywhere.

Victory Valkyrie

Sword.

You have been impaled by the stabby sword.

There are...a couple of different ways that stabby sword can be used to open your flesh, actually.

One edge appears to be somewhat serrated. The stabby sword will not leave a clean, smooth stab hole in your body. It will TEAR through your flesh. You can also theoretically be sawn open instead of sliced open by the stabby sword.

The other edge of the stabby sword has a bottle-opener-like hook on it. The bottle opener hook can be rammed into your eyesocket in order to crack open your skull like a nice Coors Light.

Even the bladed golden decorative piece on the hilt of the stabby sword can be brought down forcefully on the top of your head, killing you instantly.

However, assuming for a moment that the perfectly serviceable stabby sword has been eschewed in favour of more creative but less efficient methods of informing people that they may now refer to you in the past tense...

Victory Valkyrie can strangle or smother you with her cape.

Valkyrie can impale your entire body on the giant V emblem on her chest and wear your corpse as a fashionable accessory.

Victory Valkyrie is clad entirely in armor. Some of it is very pointy. Her striking you with any part of her body is going to break your bones at best and rip your flesh open at worst.

That horse of hers is also heavily armored. Particularly along its back. If the beast were to roll over on you, you would not simply suffer very many badly broken bones so much as you would be crushed into meat paste.

The horse has both very sturdy-looking horns and an armored head. You do not want to be headbutted by the horse. The horse can explode your sternum with its face.

The horse is a horse. The horse can simply kick every bone in your body into dust.

Conclusion: You are most definitely dead, but all is not lost! You have fallen in combat, and thus your soul has been honorably carted off to Valhalla by none other than the terrifying murderlady who removed it from your mortal body herself.

Death Honorability Scale: 10/10, you have been judged as worthy of being escorted out of the mortal realm by The Main Character's Spintop-Bound Brain Creature[s?]. You only get to die once, and you got to go out like this! Bravo!

[crystalkleure]

You ever think about how Gwyn was so desperate to prove that He Didn’t Need No Stinkin’ Friendship because

1. He’d been alone his whole life because he’s autistic and quiet and awkward and had a hard time connecting with other people, so he convinced himself Being Alone Is Fine, Then. Just had utterly no hope left of ever being NOT Alone.

And then 2. after meeting Drum [another super autistic-coded character, surprise surprise] and establishing a Genuine Emotional Connection With Another Human Being for the first time, he promptly became incredibly jealous of Delta upon realizing that Drum clearly had a Much Stronger Bond with Delta. Not understanding what Human Feelings And Emotions Are, so being unable to realize that That Icky Feeling was jealousy, and not being able to fathom that a person can possibly have More Than One Friend, because the idea of just having even ONE was so foreign and decidedly unattainable to him, Gwyn thus decided that Trying To Make Friends has once again ended in failure except it is 500x worse this time because he actually cares about this person he now mistakenly believes to be rejecting him. So he started Aggressively Trying To Push Drum Away because all of the confusion caused by Liking Drum was Distressing and Overwhelming and Causing Him Immense Pain that he did not know how to express.

Because I sure am thinking about that right now.