Do you still do those beyblade deep dives character study posts? If so then could you so one for Count Night? And if not then just talk about something you super duper like :)
Sure thing, I love writing long analytical posts! I just usually lack the time for it lately, sadly. Hey, I'll even throw in a Ye Olde Style character icon like I used to tack onto these things, for old times' sake!
10/10. I fucking love Count Night. Count Night is so fucking funny.
I can't believe that the anime actually entirely neglected to mention the fact that Count Night is Zac's older brother, because those two actually act so much like eachother. It's fun to compare them and realize what personality traits apparently just run in the family blood.
Zac and Night are both so incredibly fake. They are extremely good at misleading and manipulating people, and they do it in the exact same way: They deliberately give off the impression of being far more benign and stupid than they actually are, so nobody expects them to do anything foul [or, at least they don't expect them to succeed when they try]. Zac has his Sweet Bubbly Dumb Blonde stage persona, but is vicious and outright gleefully sadistic when out of view of fans and cameras, especially if he feels he has been threatened in some way -- Zac will absolutely terrify and destroy anyone who challenges him, particularly if they are encroaching on his turf as an idol, and he's quite clever and subtle about it so as not to tarnish his image. And Count Night is...ridiculous. Look at him. He looks silly. He's dressed as a cartoonish caricature of a phantom thief, he looks like a kid in a Halloween costume. Would you ever expect some absurdly theatrical lunatic who looks like a low-budget LARPer and speaks shitty broken French for The Aesthetic to actually break into your place and steal your shit? Night looks like a fucking joke, so no one takes him seriously, so no one realizes he is actually extremely competent at breaching high levels of high-tech security and committing grand larceny. Count Night WILL steal your shit.
Also, in the manga [which is not translated to the best of my knowledge, and I can't read Japanese, so do note that I always hear Manga Details from other people], I do believe it is either implied or outright stated that Zac does not know that Count Night is a phantom thief? Night does not wear his silly costume around his brother, he wears shit like sweater vests and glasses and khakis during the daytime, he looks like a perfectly harmless little librarian in his plainclothes. I think his cover story is that he's a businessman or entrepreneur or something? However, I'm not sure that Zac really doesn't know, so much as Night THINKS Zac doesn't know, and Zac is possibly playing along with that for shits and giggles. Zac certainly did notice Night's Conspicuously Impressive Rare Bey Collection, and Zac's not stupid. I just feel like he would pick up on any Financial Oddities happening, any curiously-timed crimes being committed and making it to the news, coupled with the fact that his brother tends to Just Fucking Disappear sometimes, etc., that sort of shit, and eventually put the pieces together.
Which would explain why one of Zac's favourite Dumb Things To Do In Public is don that silly mask of his and call himself "Beyblade Mask", acting like people Surely Can't Recognize Him and then pretending to be surprised when they do [after he drops 500 hints at them lol] -- he's probably tickled by the fact that his brother has an actual Secret Double Life with a disguise [many disguises, actually] that is surprisingly actually convincing. I wonder if he's waiting for Night to put two-and-two together upon seeing him in his silly Beyblade Mask "disguise", realize that's a Cutesy Brotherly Mockery of his own nighttime habits, and realize that means Zac has realized what he's been up to. That sounds exactly like the sort of bullshit mind game Zac would play lmfao. I just feel like Zac's whole stupid silly Beyblade Mask fake-disguise thing and the fact that Count Night is an Actually-Disguised Phantom Thief isn't a coincidence, those two things have to be related somehow. Unless the overwhelming desire to cover half of your face up with a silly mask is just something else that runs in the Kurogane blood lol.
Also, it's cute how Zac and Night have the whole sun/moon thematic dichotomy going on. Zac the Sunshine and Count Night. Ha.
And on a completely different note, something curious about Count Night is the fact that his Eclipse has an Avatar inside of it. Right Artemis and Left Apollo did not have Avatars inside them until Count Night stole them and used them, combined into Eclipse. That...actually raises several questions. For one, Gachi explained how Avatars are formed, so now we know that they are some type of Energy Being that is created within the mind of their blader and then channeled into that blader's favourite spintop, so no question about what the Spintop Monsters are anymore. So, we know that the monster does not come from the spintop, the spintop is merely a vessel for it. Does this mean that Count Night created Eclipse's Avatar? It would make sense for those beys he stole to have indeed been empty, because they were created by Dr. Evel, who already has his Egis -- he's already made a bey Avatar, and people can't seem to make more than one of those things, they can only continue to adapt/evolve the one they've got. So, it would make sense for any extra beys created by someone who already has an Avatar-inhabited bey to simply be benign plastic shells, empty vessels with nothing to be put in them yet. So if Night already had Avatar Energy bouncing around in his brain, ready to Coalesce Into A Creacher and just itching for a bey to hop into, it'd make sense that he'd bond that energy to the next bey he grabbed and end up forming an Avatar for it, and in this case that bey would apparently be Eclipse. But Eclipse is also a unique bey. It is a bey made of halves of two other beys, Artemis and Apollo, both now owned by Night, though we never saw him use them not fused into Eclipse. We don't...HAVE any other cases where a fusion bey, made of parts of various beys, is comprised of parts of beys all owned by the same person. Normally, when Bey Fusion happens, the donor beys all have their own Avatars, which then either fuse or simply attack in tandem via the single fusion bey, and thus the donor beys all belong[ed] to different people. And, as stated above, it doesn't appear that one person can make more than one Avatar. Normally, when a fusion bey de-fuses, the borrowed parts go back to their owners, taking their attached Avatars with them. So, what, uh...what happens when Eclipse de-fuses into Artemis and Apollo? If Count Night were to use both of those beys together at the same time, not fused into Eclipse, how would that work? Would each one have its own Avatar, making this the only known case of someone creating more than one bey Avatar? And, if so, was that perhaps only possible because Night created Eclipse's Avatar while Eclipse was Eclipse, meaning that if Eclipse's Avatar splits into two [Artemis and Apollo], that's not so much "making a second Avatar" as it is literally, well, splitting one whole into two halves? So it technically is still one Avatar, just with the capability of dividing itself into two hivemind-type semi-physical forms at once? My brain hurts. Lore's too enigmatic and complicated and Technicalities In The Laws Of The Magical Fictional Universe is not my dissection strong suit, psychoanalysis is.
Anyway Count Night is incredibly interesting and has far more potential than was tapped into in the actual show. I say this about just about every character, but BRING HIM BACK, BEYBURST. DO MORE WITH HIM. He's so fun.
