Beyblade: Metal Masters S2 E14

## Plot

I should really just do a giant *Beyblade* retrospective instead of doing it episode by episode. I should probably do the same thing with Angel's Friends too, because my descriptions and "reviews" of the individual episodes are way too short. It's not that I don't have anything interesting to say about the series, I do, but it's more of an overall thing that would only make sense by understanding all of the characters and their actions and growth in every season, so it makes the most sense to talk about it at the end, not the beginning or the middle. Although recapping two or three episodes at a time is hard, because I still have to watch and summarize them. Anyways, two episodes ago, Benkei decided to leave Kenta and his hometown, due to Ginga and the others battling reigniting his own bey spirit. Team Gan Gan Galaxy left China, and before they did, Dashan told them not to lose, and that their teams would battle each other again one day. They traveled to the Sahara desert and met Team Desert Blaze, who battled a rich, strong blader named Julian Konzern, a representative of the European Union team, Excalibur, for the first round. I forgot to mention it, but some parts of the world are actually divided by region instead of country. Anyways, Julian's Bey is called Gravity Destroyer, alluding to the hero Perseus who killed Medusa and used her head to turn his enemies into stone. That doesn't sound like a very heroic thing to do. Also, now I want to see a battle between Julian and Reiji, since their bey spirit-avatar things are the same. Destroyer has a unique energy ring on top of an unusually thick fusion wheel, like it's wearing a helmet, so it's not affected by normal attacks. Its mode changed, and it seemed to freeze the other bey in place, and knocked it out of the stadium in a single blow. Julian easily defeated the other two members of Desert Blaze at the same time, and he did it while making his bey spin to the left, which shocked everyone, especially Ginga, because they all thought that only L-Drago could do that. Gravity Destroyer is the only bey that can spin both ways. Julian and his team will move onto the second round. In the previous episode, Team Gan Gan Galazy traveled by train to Russia for their next match and met and battled the Russian team, not knowing who they were. Madoka immediately developed a crush on one of them, Alexei, and even lent him her laptop, but he secretly hacked into it and stole her data. He and his teammates took it to someone named Anton, who looked for strengths and weaknesses in Japan's team. He left a trail of hamburgers on the platform to lure Ginga into a trap, but Masamune also loves food and sleepwalked there. He ended up on another train, which Ginga and Madoka saw. When they got to the station, they met Anton, the head of the Russian team, who was surprised to see Ginga there. He introduced them to the Russian team, and they were surprised to see that they were the same kids they met on the train. Meanwhile, Masamune wound up on a beach. In this episode, Madoka still has no word on his whereabouts. They have Yu with them if he doesn't make it back in time for the battle. He's lost, but he sees a building in the distance. Alexei shows everyone else a space shuttle. It's his team's dream to become astronauts and go into space. They've been training nonstop for five years. However, because of the bad economy, the budget for the space program has been cut, and they don't want to see all of their effort go to waste. They want to win the tournament in order to gain recognition and try and get a new sponsor to support them. Masamune still hasn't returned, and the WBBA hasn't heard from him either, so Ginga decides to go first to try and get an early win, and they can schedule who fights in the second match later. They're being spied on by Anton and the Russian team through a stuffed deer's eyes. Creepy. Sashi should cut them out. Alexei wants to fight Ginga because he's their team's best, but Anton tells him that Nowaguma will battle Ginga. Masamune enters a building, but it turns out that it's a bar full of scary looking guys, who recognize him from the news about him being missing. They're pilots, and they're actually really nice. They've enjoyed watching the championship so far, and decide to get him to the arena in a fighter jet. Meanwhile, Ginga is able to defeat Nowaguma, despite the fact that the cage-like stage they created for the match was unfair. Since the pilot isn't allowed to take Masamune the whole way, he literally drops him off at a train station.