This week, a video of a Beyblade match came across my Twitter timeline that was so sick, it made me think that maybe the anime from the early 2000s that dramatized the spinning tops wasn’t as exaggerated as I once believed. When you think about it, there’s drama to pitting two spinning tops against each other in a small space where they must clash repeatedly until one of them finally gives in to the other’s pressure and stops spinning. Sometimes, one top sends the other hurtling outside of the arena, presumably to its end. Other times, the de-ringed top comes right back.
The clip has gone viral on a few platforms, but the earliest appearance of it I can find is on TikTok, where it was posted in May by user @zerq5825. In it, we see a pair of Beyblades launched into a water-covered arena (again, drama), and for a few seconds, everything seems to be going normally. The tops hit each other, and they move away from each other. It’s a pretty standard Beyblade match. Then, one violently launches the other into the wall, and it ricochets out of the ring. In most matches, this would be the end, but the exiled top bounces right back into the ring in a maneuver that someone compared to a Super Smash Bros. recovery ability, launching oneself back onto the stage just as your opponent thought they’d won the match.
What makes it all the more narratively fulfilling is that the Beyblade that was launched out of the ring handily beats the other top after it repositions itself in the ring. However, the ring out itself would have counted as a win in official Beyblade rules. That needs a revision, in my opinion. How often do you get sick comeback stories like this in competitive Beyblade? What an upset. Catch me playing Beyblade in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, where I can make my own rules.