Beyblade Burst

ベイブレードバースト

6.7(23,991)

MAL Score

Ranked #6410

Popularity #4155

Adventure
Sci-Fi
Sports
School
Team Sports

Episodes: 51
Duration: 24 min per ep
Aired: Apr 4, 2016 to Mar 27, 2017
Status: Finished Airing

Synopsis

Beyblade Burst follows Valt Aoi and Shu Kurenai at Japan’s Beigoma Academy, alongside their teammates Rantaro Kiyama, Daina Kurogami, and Wakiya Komurasaki. Outside the classroom, their days revolve around Beyblade—practicing, tinkering, and meeting up to battle at their Bey Stadium.

As their passion grows, the group forms a school Bey club and pushes one another through constant matches. Friendship and rivalry begin to overlap as they enter competition, aiming to rise through the ranks and earn the title of Japan’s top Blader.

Otaku Consensus

Beyblade Burst earns its place as a cleanly paced, entry-friendly sports revival, with Katsuhito Akiyama’s direction and Hideki Sonoda’s series structure keeping the training-and-rivalry formula brisk across a full 51-episode run. Its most praised elements are the more grounded battle presentation compared with flashier franchise entries and a soundtrack that fans repeatedly single out for giving matches momentum. The main criticism is that viewers raised on the Metal Saga often find Burst lighter, more toy-commercial in feel, and occasionally saddled with stiff or cringy dialogue.

Why You Should Watch

Watch Beyblade Burst if you want a school-club sports anime built around readable tactics, incremental improvement, and rival energy without the heavy melodrama or world-ending stakes of many battle shounen. It scratches a similar itch to early Pokémon or Inazuma Eleven: collectible-object competition treated with the emotional seriousness of a real sport, but paced for quick episodes and constant match feedback. OLM’s production leans into CG-enhanced tops and clear stadium action, so the battles are easier to follow than the more fantastical aura-heavy style fans criticize in later comparisons. The appeal is not narrative surprise; it is watching small adjustments, practice habits, and personality clashes translate directly into competitive results.

Key Characters

V
Valt Aoi
Valt is the classic sports-anime climber, memorable less for innate genius than for the visible loop of losing, tinkering, training, and returning louder.
S
Shu Kurenai
Shu gives the series its sharper rival presence, contrasting Valt’s open enthusiasm with a cooler, more disciplined competitive aura.
R
Rantaro Kiyama
Rantaro functions as the club’s rougher social spark, the kind of teammate who keeps the group dynamic from becoming only hero-versus-rival.
W
Wakiya Komurasaki
Wakiya stands out as the more prideful and image-conscious member of the Beigoma circle, adding ego and social friction to the team-sports setup.

What Makes It Stand Out

1
OLM produced the series as a 51-episode run from April 2016 to March 2017, giving the first Burst season room to behave like a weekly sports anime rather than a compressed toy showcase.
2
The battle presentation is repeatedly praised by fans for feeling more realistic within Beyblade’s own rules, especially when contrasted with later complaints about VR-like or artificial-looking energy effects in Beyblade X discussions.
3
Dai Seo is credited as CG Director, and AniList’s CGI tag sits at 70%, reflecting how central computer-assisted tops and stadium action are to the show’s visual identity.
4
The soundtrack is one of the most cited strengths in fan writeups, with battle themes specifically highlighted as a reason the matches land better than the premise might suggest.
5
Hideki Sonoda’s series composition follows a recognizable sports-anime growth curve: a weak starter improves through repetition and competition, but reviews note that the pacing keeps that familiar structure from dragging.

Fun Facts & Trivia

Fun fact 1: Beyblade Burst’s reception is strikingly consistent across major anime databases: MAL lists it at 6.69 from 22,861 votes, while AniList places it at 66/100 with 307 favourites.
Fun fact 2: The show’s AniList tag profile is unusually clear about its identity: Kids and Proxy Battle both sit at 79%, while CGI is close behind at 70%.
Fun fact 3: The credited visual pipeline separates art direction, art design, color design, photography, editing, and CG direction, with Atsushi Yokoyama, Naomi Ogura, Aya Oouchi, Hiromichi Suzuki, Naoki Watanabe, and Dai Seo all listed in those roles.
Fun fact 4: Fan articles openly acknowledge the franchise’s toy-promotional purpose, but the same discussions still praise Burst for pacing, battle readability, and music rather than treating it as only an advertisement.
Fun fact 5: Katsuhito Akiyama directed the season, with Kentarou Yamaguchi as assistant director and Toshiaki Oohashi handling character design, anchoring the production under OLM’s long-running children’s and hobby-anime expertise.