[OOC] Essay~
A sort of small essay on Tyson's thing with Kai.
Tyson: When we fight, I completely zone out. I just love that feeling!
Kai: I know. I feel the same way.
Introduction:
So Beyblade is the creation of Aoki Takao, who thought spinning tops were the shit and Japan wanted to capitalize it. It is not a particularly deep show. It's not meant to be a particularly deep show and there are a lot of things that are left unexplained. The dub and the original aren't all that different except for the fact that the dub trolls itself and the original takes things a little more "seriously". For a certain definition of seriousness.
The premise of "Beyblade" is that Tyson and his rag-tag team put together by Mister Dickinson travel the world and win beyblade tournaments. It's worth noting that the sport Beyblade is not a professional sport and it is usually financed mainly by adults who have too much time on their hands. As the show goes on, it builds up the idea of kids vs adults/the world. There's always an adult working behind the scenes with nefarious purposes, while the "kids" are usuallly misguided or just plained fucked in the head. Some take the sport very seriously, other kids are doing it for kicks and so on so forth. There isn't much variation among the adults of the show, but the kids are extremely varied from being sociopathic (Tala)/psychotic (Brooklyn) to dealing with simple things like divorce, ambitions, etc.
Tyson does Beyblade for fun. In the beginning, he was crap at it, but he kept doing it because a) He still enjoyed it and b) Because everyone else did it. While it was never clearly explained in the anime, Tyson has a huge abandonment complex due to his mother's death. Almost immediately after her death, his father left to be an archaeologist and in a short while, his older brother Hiro left as well. Tyson's family only consisted of his grandfather and himself. As a result, he spent a lot of time acting careless and carefree. He took everything and everyone in a light-hearted manner and never took anything seriously, all in an attempt to keep people around him and to ensure that they would stay. If you gave Tyson the slightest bit of attention and praise, this sort of behaviour worsened along with a ego problem. A simple compliment could turn Tyson's head easily and he tends to buy into it.
First Season:
Kai: Always have fun and no one can truly beat you.
Tyson: Oh man. Now you're getting all corny on me. I liked you better when you were a jerk.
Kai: You'll be sorry you said that.
Quite literally, his life changed when he met Kai. Intent on getting revenge for his friend's destroyed beyblade, Tyson took down Carlos and in the process, Kai took Tyson down. This defeat upset him a great deal as it made him feel like he let his friend down and it also showed that for the first time, Tyson was taking something in due consideration. It was in that moment he got Dragoon and faced off Kai once more, to have it end in the draw. Then came your typical plot shounen device: the tournament! Kai and Tyson face off once more and this time, Tyson wins and Kai is the one struggling to deal with it.
With Rei, Max and Kenny, they travel around the world, winning tournaments and fighting different beybladers. Tyson slowly stops with the irresponsible routine and starts to understand why people take the sport so seriously, why people might do it for reasons other than fun and those reasons aren't wrong either. Basically, he realizes that in a team, it was important to do your part and enjoy what you do. It was Kai who impressed this on Tyson with his code of honour and his steadfastness. Tyson starts admiring Kai, seeing him as "strong" and wanting to be just as strong as he was. Because Tyson knew he needs people in order to be happy, but Kai has shown him that it is possible to be strong with people behind him. Tyson realized that he could accomplish things all on his own.
Then Kai betrayed the Bladebreakers and went over to Boris. Kai became obsessed with power and nothing else. This was a huge blow to Tyson because he tends to see betrayal in the same light as abandonment. But Tyson again pulls off another first. Instead of being angry and in denial (which is his typical reaction to being snubbed and critiqued), he was morose. He kept wondering if there was a way to being Kai back. Basically, while Tyson would do anything for his friends, in the light of a bad decision which hurt him, he was more concerned about the friend in question than thinking about "betrayal". This is a pretty huge step for him as he has never done anything like that before, not even (at times) for his family.
When Kai stands on the ice, unsure of what to do, Tyson automatically reaches out for Kai, begging him to take his hand. All of this, big steps for a kid who spent all his time trying to please others in order to please himself.
Second Season:
Is not important because nothing of import happened in it :|
Third Season:
Tyson changes dramatically in G-Rev and it's not just in character design. While he's still easy-going, he's more cynical, more snarky and definitely more self-conscious than he was in Season One. In the very beginning of the season, he shows off his new-found maturity by teaching younger bladers how to use their beyblade and not turning it into a competition. Of course, he still has his moments as can be seen when he falters to Daichi's attacks but when Kai gives his support, he immediately makes a comeback (making Ray and Hilary look like chopped liver for trying). This keeps up when Ray and Max leave the team in order to aim for the World Championships. Tyson takes it extremely badly, becomes highly defensive and starts having nightmares of being left alone and hands pulling him down into the darkness. Then he just stops focusing on them entirely, shifting all of his hopes on Kai to the point that Tyson was utterly dependent on Kai. When Kai doesn't show up for the preliminaries, Tyson goes through a flurry of emotions ranging from anger and rage (yelling at the person in charge of signups) to disappointment ("He's not coming. I can't believe he'd do this to me!"). And when Kai does show up, Tyson forgives him of everything, saying "Give the guy a break, it doesn't matter as long as he's here." Immediately, he is calm, centered and sure of himself. Simply by Kai's presence.
And of course later on, in typical Kai fashion, he leaves the team and doesn't tell Tyson about it. To say Tyson took it badly is... putting it mildly. He was terrible about it.
Tyson: Forget Kai?! FORGET KAI?! It's not that easy!
Hiro: Well he's already forgotten you!
Tyson: ...
Hiro: He walked away. And nothing you say is going to bring him back.
Tyson: Then I quit too!
Hiro: You don't think you're good enough to win without Kai's help.
Tyson: I didn't say that!
Hiro: Yes. You did. Not in so many words. But your actions tell me you've become so dependent on Kai that the thought of beyblading with anyone else at your side scares you.
Hiro hit it on the nail. Though it wasn't just simply dependency on Tyson's part, it was that Tyson has a bit of a hero-worship crush on Kai. He has a huge amount of respect for Kai and in his eyes, Kai can do no wrong, even if Kai can be stand-offish at times. Even as Kai left, Tyson dreams about garnering Kai's respect and support in the form of Kai hugging him and saying, "I couldn't be more proud of you." (It's worth noting in said dream that no one else makes contact with Tyson like Kai does).
Tyson continues to struggle with this dependency as he works with Daichi. He becomes slightly manic depressive as little failures and words tend to send him over the edge a lot quicker than normal. When he meets Kai again, he becomes almost possessed with his anger and loses control in his battles. He shuns his friends, he is on antagonistic terms with his older brother, and he never really understands why Kai leaves until the very end, when they beybattle.
(This battle is so phenominally gay that every time I try to explain it to people, I struggle to put it into heteronomitive terms. After a while, I just sort of give up trying to explain it.)
This battle basically bridged the gap between Tyson and Kai. Tyson finally understood the reason for Kai's departure, understood Kai completely and utterly in that one instant when their minds met. So, in a way, the dependency lessened because Tyson knew that Kai would keep coming back to battle him, to keep those feelings between them. He stopped fretting about beyblading with Kai because he knows he still has Kai's support and he settled for battling against Kai if that means Kai would come back.
Which is why, in the second arc of the season, while Tyson flew into a panic over Kai's betrayal (and subsequently, Hiro's), he dealt with it a lot better than he did in the first arc because (whether consciously or unconsciously, who knows) he knew why Kai joined BEGA while he never understood why Hiro did it. So when Kai returned to the Bladebreakers, Tyson just said, "You're late." and left it at that. When Kai gets injured by Brooklyn, Ray and Max try to step in to save Kai, but Tyson forbade it, blocking their way and crying. Normally, Tyson would never stand by and watch a friend get hurt, but Tyson understood that this is what Kai wanted, what Kai needed and even though he had to force himself to sit there, gripping his jeans tightly so he wouldn't run over, he still let Kai fight. He continues to have doubts about this decision as Kai is hospitalized later, but he continues on with his fight against Brooklyn, saying "I can feel Kai's spirit on my shoulders!" and "Kai fought, risking everything. I'm going to risk everything too". Even if Kai is not there to help with Tyson's doubts, Tyson still puts his mind to the task by thinking of what Kai would do or say. In a way, he is still dependent on Kai, but he has finally started to merge their thinking together to become stronger.
Kai: Just keep your spirit strong.
Tyson: Kai...Yeah, my spirit! Thanks pal. You don't know how much that really means coming from you.
And the show ends with them having the beybattle they promised each other. It is a nice sort of closure since they began by enemies and fighting each other out of necessity and in the end, they've moved to the complete happiness they get from battling each other.
Sexualiiiiiiiity:
The ration for women in Beyblade is terrible (like 5:1), but that doesn't make them any less awesome. They're all take-charge characters with different personalities and individual strengths.
Tyson, however, is not extremely mature when it comes to lady-folk. He oftens insults them and treats them differently. Tyson doesn't know a lot about girls and on principle, they terrify him. Even Hilary (who is an anime-only character and introduced as a pairing for Tyson) scares him and though they are friends, he is less likely to confide in her than he would with any of his team-mates. There are moments in the first season where he gets a lot of attention from girls and enjoys it, but Tyson is an attention whore. He would enjoy attention from squirrels so long as he was number one. Out of all the characters I play, Tyson is the one who pays the least attention to women and the one who will most likely ignore them out of habituation. He is not interested and he isn't likely to change that interest any time soon when there are other, shinier things garnering his attention.
Conclusion:
Tyson hinges a lot on his friends, but not as much as he hinges on Kai. Kai is his hero, the ultimate personification of strength and determination. Despite the fact that Tyson is strong in his own right, he doesn't believe in it as fervently as he believes in Kai's strength. He even says so at the end of Brookyn's battle with Kai. "I always knew Kai would win. But after today, I know he's a hundred times better than I thought he was. There's no way anyone could make a comback like that, not even me! He really is the greatest" and adds later on, "Kai, your victory inspired me." Tyson is not blind to Kai's faults, but he is more likely to ignore them in Kai's favour, while everyone else gets the short end of the stick. In camp, Tyson is still somewhat struggling between being totally paranoid and being all right on his own. He fully believes that he is carrying the strength of his friends and that's how he gets by. But mostly he believes no matter what, he has Kai on his side. And that's really what gets him through the day.
Tyson: When we fight, I completely zone out. I just love that feeling!
Kai: I know. I feel the same way.
Introduction:
So Beyblade is the creation of Aoki Takao, who thought spinning tops were the shit and Japan wanted to capitalize it. It is not a particularly deep show. It's not meant to be a particularly deep show and there are a lot of things that are left unexplained. The dub and the original aren't all that different except for the fact that the dub trolls itself and the original takes things a little more "seriously". For a certain definition of seriousness.
The premise of "Beyblade" is that Tyson and his rag-tag team put together by Mister Dickinson travel the world and win beyblade tournaments. It's worth noting that the sport Beyblade is not a professional sport and it is usually financed mainly by adults who have too much time on their hands. As the show goes on, it builds up the idea of kids vs adults/the world. There's always an adult working behind the scenes with nefarious purposes, while the "kids" are usuallly misguided or just plained fucked in the head. Some take the sport very seriously, other kids are doing it for kicks and so on so forth. There isn't much variation among the adults of the show, but the kids are extremely varied from being sociopathic (Tala)/psychotic (Brooklyn) to dealing with simple things like divorce, ambitions, etc.
Tyson does Beyblade for fun. In the beginning, he was crap at it, but he kept doing it because a) He still enjoyed it and b) Because everyone else did it. While it was never clearly explained in the anime, Tyson has a huge abandonment complex due to his mother's death. Almost immediately after her death, his father left to be an archaeologist and in a short while, his older brother Hiro left as well. Tyson's family only consisted of his grandfather and himself. As a result, he spent a lot of time acting careless and carefree. He took everything and everyone in a light-hearted manner and never took anything seriously, all in an attempt to keep people around him and to ensure that they would stay. If you gave Tyson the slightest bit of attention and praise, this sort of behaviour worsened along with a ego problem. A simple compliment could turn Tyson's head easily and he tends to buy into it.
First Season:
Kai: Always have fun and no one can truly beat you.
Tyson: Oh man. Now you're getting all corny on me. I liked you better when you were a jerk.
Kai: You'll be sorry you said that.
Quite literally, his life changed when he met Kai. Intent on getting revenge for his friend's destroyed beyblade, Tyson took down Carlos and in the process, Kai took Tyson down. This defeat upset him a great deal as it made him feel like he let his friend down and it also showed that for the first time, Tyson was taking something in due consideration. It was in that moment he got Dragoon and faced off Kai once more, to have it end in the draw. Then came your typical plot shounen device: the tournament! Kai and Tyson face off once more and this time, Tyson wins and Kai is the one struggling to deal with it.
With Rei, Max and Kenny, they travel around the world, winning tournaments and fighting different beybladers. Tyson slowly stops with the irresponsible routine and starts to understand why people take the sport so seriously, why people might do it for reasons other than fun and those reasons aren't wrong either. Basically, he realizes that in a team, it was important to do your part and enjoy what you do. It was Kai who impressed this on Tyson with his code of honour and his steadfastness. Tyson starts admiring Kai, seeing him as "strong" and wanting to be just as strong as he was. Because Tyson knew he needs people in order to be happy, but Kai has shown him that it is possible to be strong with people behind him. Tyson realized that he could accomplish things all on his own.
Click to viewThen Kai betrayed the Bladebreakers and went over to Boris. Kai became obsessed with power and nothing else. This was a huge blow to Tyson because he tends to see betrayal in the same light as abandonment. But Tyson again pulls off another first. Instead of being angry and in denial (which is his typical reaction to being snubbed and critiqued), he was morose. He kept wondering if there was a way to being Kai back. Basically, while Tyson would do anything for his friends, in the light of a bad decision which hurt him, he was more concerned about the friend in question than thinking about "betrayal". This is a pretty huge step for him as he has never done anything like that before, not even (at times) for his family.
When Kai stands on the ice, unsure of what to do, Tyson automatically reaches out for Kai, begging him to take his hand. All of this, big steps for a kid who spent all his time trying to please others in order to please himself.
Second Season:
Is not important because nothing of import happened in it :|
Third Season:
Tyson changes dramatically in G-Rev and it's not just in character design. While he's still easy-going, he's more cynical, more snarky and definitely more self-conscious than he was in Season One. In the very beginning of the season, he shows off his new-found maturity by teaching younger bladers how to use their beyblade and not turning it into a competition. Of course, he still has his moments as can be seen when he falters to Daichi's attacks but when Kai gives his support, he immediately makes a comeback (making Ray and Hilary look like chopped liver for trying). This keeps up when Ray and Max leave the team in order to aim for the World Championships. Tyson takes it extremely badly, becomes highly defensive and starts having nightmares of being left alone and hands pulling him down into the darkness. Then he just stops focusing on them entirely, shifting all of his hopes on Kai to the point that Tyson was utterly dependent on Kai. When Kai doesn't show up for the preliminaries, Tyson goes through a flurry of emotions ranging from anger and rage (yelling at the person in charge of signups) to disappointment ("He's not coming. I can't believe he'd do this to me!"). And when Kai does show up, Tyson forgives him of everything, saying "Give the guy a break, it doesn't matter as long as he's here." Immediately, he is calm, centered and sure of himself. Simply by Kai's presence.
And of course later on, in typical Kai fashion, he leaves the team and doesn't tell Tyson about it. To say Tyson took it badly is... putting it mildly. He was terrible about it.
Tyson: Forget Kai?! FORGET KAI?! It's not that easy!
Hiro: Well he's already forgotten you!
Tyson: ...
Hiro: He walked away. And nothing you say is going to bring him back.
Tyson: Then I quit too!
Hiro: You don't think you're good enough to win without Kai's help.
Tyson: I didn't say that!
Hiro: Yes. You did. Not in so many words. But your actions tell me you've become so dependent on Kai that the thought of beyblading with anyone else at your side scares you.
Hiro hit it on the nail. Though it wasn't just simply dependency on Tyson's part, it was that Tyson has a bit of a hero-worship crush on Kai. He has a huge amount of respect for Kai and in his eyes, Kai can do no wrong, even if Kai can be stand-offish at times. Even as Kai left, Tyson dreams about garnering Kai's respect and support in the form of Kai hugging him and saying, "I couldn't be more proud of you." (It's worth noting in said dream that no one else makes contact with Tyson like Kai does).
Tyson continues to struggle with this dependency as he works with Daichi. He becomes slightly manic depressive as little failures and words tend to send him over the edge a lot quicker than normal. When he meets Kai again, he becomes almost possessed with his anger and loses control in his battles. He shuns his friends, he is on antagonistic terms with his older brother, and he never really understands why Kai leaves until the very end, when they beybattle.
(This battle is so phenominally gay that every time I try to explain it to people, I struggle to put it into heteronomitive terms. After a while, I just sort of give up trying to explain it.)
This battle basically bridged the gap between Tyson and Kai. Tyson finally understood the reason for Kai's departure, understood Kai completely and utterly in that one instant when their minds met. So, in a way, the dependency lessened because Tyson knew that Kai would keep coming back to battle him, to keep those feelings between them. He stopped fretting about beyblading with Kai because he knows he still has Kai's support and he settled for battling against Kai if that means Kai would come back.
Which is why, in the second arc of the season, while Tyson flew into a panic over Kai's betrayal (and subsequently, Hiro's), he dealt with it a lot better than he did in the first arc because (whether consciously or unconsciously, who knows) he knew why Kai joined BEGA while he never understood why Hiro did it. So when Kai returned to the Bladebreakers, Tyson just said, "You're late." and left it at that. When Kai gets injured by Brooklyn, Ray and Max try to step in to save Kai, but Tyson forbade it, blocking their way and crying. Normally, Tyson would never stand by and watch a friend get hurt, but Tyson understood that this is what Kai wanted, what Kai needed and even though he had to force himself to sit there, gripping his jeans tightly so he wouldn't run over, he still let Kai fight. He continues to have doubts about this decision as Kai is hospitalized later, but he continues on with his fight against Brooklyn, saying "I can feel Kai's spirit on my shoulders!" and "Kai fought, risking everything. I'm going to risk everything too". Even if Kai is not there to help with Tyson's doubts, Tyson still puts his mind to the task by thinking of what Kai would do or say. In a way, he is still dependent on Kai, but he has finally started to merge their thinking together to become stronger.
Kai: Just keep your spirit strong.
Tyson: Kai...Yeah, my spirit! Thanks pal. You don't know how much that really means coming from you.
And the show ends with them having the beybattle they promised each other. It is a nice sort of closure since they began by enemies and fighting each other out of necessity and in the end, they've moved to the complete happiness they get from battling each other.
Sexualiiiiiiiity:
The ration for women in Beyblade is terrible (like 5:1), but that doesn't make them any less awesome. They're all take-charge characters with different personalities and individual strengths.
Tyson, however, is not extremely mature when it comes to lady-folk. He oftens insults them and treats them differently. Tyson doesn't know a lot about girls and on principle, they terrify him. Even Hilary (who is an anime-only character and introduced as a pairing for Tyson) scares him and though they are friends, he is less likely to confide in her than he would with any of his team-mates. There are moments in the first season where he gets a lot of attention from girls and enjoys it, but Tyson is an attention whore. He would enjoy attention from squirrels so long as he was number one. Out of all the characters I play, Tyson is the one who pays the least attention to women and the one who will most likely ignore them out of habituation. He is not interested and he isn't likely to change that interest any time soon when there are other, shinier things garnering his attention.
Conclusion:
Tyson hinges a lot on his friends, but not as much as he hinges on Kai. Kai is his hero, the ultimate personification of strength and determination. Despite the fact that Tyson is strong in his own right, he doesn't believe in it as fervently as he believes in Kai's strength. He even says so at the end of Brookyn's battle with Kai. "I always knew Kai would win. But after today, I know he's a hundred times better than I thought he was. There's no way anyone could make a comback like that, not even me! He really is the greatest" and adds later on, "Kai, your victory inspired me." Tyson is not blind to Kai's faults, but he is more likely to ignore them in Kai's favour, while everyone else gets the short end of the stick. In camp, Tyson is still somewhat struggling between being totally paranoid and being all right on his own. He fully believes that he is carrying the strength of his friends and that's how he gets by. But mostly he believes no matter what, he has Kai on his side. And that's really what gets him through the day.