#but Luis is still looking at him like damn bitch might need therapy

[courtofparrots]

Has anybody else noticed this look Luis gives Leon after hearing his self-sacrificial attitude, I just noticed and it's killing me

Like I feel like I can see his brain go "yikes"

[crystalkleure]

What do you think of Valt? He's become one of my new favorites after the Burst God season finale.

Valt

Well…sorry for this in advance, but I’m gonna stick to my word and be completely honest, Anon. I can’t stand Valt. Long post warning, it’s going under a cut.

I think he’s two-dimensional and terribly written, primarily. And if he were a side/background character, that might not bother me as much. But Valt as the MAIN CHARACTER drives me insane. That’s bad characterization right up in your face as the main focus of every episode. And it’s worse because so many of the side characters, and even background characters, are so, SO well-written? Even some of of the incredibly minor ones are fleshed-out and nicely detailed. They feel like people. Valt feels like a prop. He is unrealistic.

For one, how is it he only wins in battle when he absolutely NEEDS to? He generally gets his ass kicked often in practice, and occasionally in tournaments [when he’ll for sure have another chance to come back later and whoop whoever beat him in the first match]. It just makes it look like Valt really still sucks at beyblading, but he has plot armour. Other characters even ACKNOWLEDGE that “he doesn’t know how to control Valkyrie, he just fucked up his launch, he basically has NO IDEA WHAT HE’S DOING OH MY GOD” etc. And yet when he NEEDS to win to advance the plot, he does. So what, am I supposed to believe he just has INCREDIBLY implausibly good luck here or something? And another thing, whenever Valt creates a new technique…it’s an accident? Sometimes he doesn’t even REMEMBER DOING IT the first time he pulls off a new thing. People keep chalking it up to ‘instincts’ or whatever but, dudes, this is a highly mathematical game that requires incredible precision, and thus incredible practice, to succeed at. You can’t 'instinctively’ be good at beyblade. This game is too specialized. 'Instincts’ exist in the first place as a basic means to ensure survival. They don’t work like this. Instincts don’t teach you fucking math [unfortunately], that’s why everyone hates school.

One thing…I’ll throw ONE THING out there that could completely annul all of that massive bullshittery, though. And it’s not a nice thing: Possession. People in Beyblade series often get possessed by their beyblades [hasn’t been explicitly stated to have happened in Burst yet, though…or at least, not in the anime. Shuu was literally possessed by Spriggan in the manga, apparently]. And so if Valkyrie gets sick of losing all the time, she might jump into Valt just long enough to puppeteer him into doing what she needs him to do to secure a win when it matters the most. That would explain why Valt often doesn’t remember what just happened when he sometimes, by some miracle, ACTUALLY manages to do something right. Hell, early on in the first season, we got this shot here: [X]. It could be interpreted as Valkyrie literally just…doing that. Adjusting Valt’s launcher position for him.

So, possession would unfortunately explain a lot here. Because the beyblades themselves would of course know exactly how to win in a beybattle. And you know, I may adore Vampire Theory because of the sheer ridiculousness of it, but most of the people I jokingly say must be vampires could also just as easily be interpreted as being possessed. Glowing eyes, unnatural strength, scaring animals away, acting sort of feral in general? Could be a vampire, could be a kid possessed by the warrior spirit living inside of their plastic top. Might make more sense, considering these “vampires” don’t exactly spontaneously combust in the daylight…and that’s kind of a defining “vampire” characteristic, ahem.

And also, I’ll say that if I’m correct about the possession thing, all that does is make me like VALKYRIE more for sort of mothering her stupid hopeless blader child. It doesn’t really raise my opinion of Valt much. In fact, it kind of makes me agree with Lui back when he said “You’re a horrible blader. I feel sorry for that bey.”, because Valt’s too damn stupid to actually figure out how to play the game and Valkyrie is having to do all of the work for him. But I do like that if she’s possessing the idiot kid, she’s only doing it when she feels like it’s absolutely necessary, and not just all the time like a controlling bitch [I’m looking at you, Lightning L-Drago from MFB].

But aside from what may be terrible lazy writing in regards to Valt’s inconsistent beyblading “skills”, there’s another reason I don’t like him that might be worse.

Valt isn’t a very good friend. And yet he’s supposed to be like “the power of friendship” incarnate here. But Valt’s friends have all sorts of problems they often need help with, they melt down and self-destruct around him all the time, and…he usually doesn’t even notice**. And when he does, it’s because somebody else noticed first and made a fuss about it to everyone else. Valt does not actually help his friends with their serious issues. He’s only really good for providing stale, generic, constant-yet-impersonal cheer. “HERE, LET ME THROW SOME OF MY HAPPINESS AT YOU. BETTER NOW, RIGHT??” No. In fact, that can actually make it worse. If they are sad about something, let them be sad about it instead of basically guilt-tripping them, whether intentionally or not, for not being happy with you and thus making them feel bad for bringing down your good mood [I’m thinking specifically about Shuu grieving over his broken Storm Spriggan here. Let him mourn, Valt. He’s not going to get over that immediately.].

**Shuu with…well, everything. Dyna with the cheating guilt issue. Wakiya with his massive perfectionism pressure. Kensuke when he realized he was going to have to move again but hadn’t told anyone yet. Boss with his constant feelings of inferiority. Yet Valt was not a main player in helping any of them get through any of these issues. Dyna had to help Shuu with the shoulder thing and moral support in general. Shuu had to help Dyna with the cheating guilt. Hoji and Shuu had to help Wakiya with the perfectionism meltdown. Dyna was the first to notice something was off about Kensuke [I think. Might be remembering wrong. But I know it wasn’t Valt who picked up on it first.]. Kensuke tried to give Boss some advice on how to improve his beyblading technique [GOOD advice. “Don’t be a one-trick pony.” A shame that Boss DIDN’T LISTEN TO IT…]. Even when some of them just randomly start bickering with eachother, Valt is never the one to jump in to split it up [it’s USUALLY Dyna, but not always]. Valt is more like the hyper team pet than an actual good friend, it seems. He’s not good at being useful.

Though, ONE thing I can say Valt did that was a mark of good friendship was helping Wakiya off the bridge. I’ll give him that one. Granted, literally any of the others could have done exactly what Valt did in that situation, he was just the quickest to run onto the bridge with the rope, but still. That was good. He actually managed to do a good thing there.

Also, since you brought up the God finale, I’m gonna say again what I’ve said before; Valt screaming at Shuu for a little while just doesn’t seem like it should have undone all of Shuu’s built-up trauma just…like that. [Disclaimer though, I don’t know what Valt said, but just judging from Valt in all instances prior to this it probably wasn’t anything too thought-provoking] The finale really felt like a super rushed asspull to me. Shuu didn’t need screaming, and then generic happiness from someone who doesn’t even know what happened to him. Shuu honestly needs literal therapy after that. And time. Just like at the end of s1 with the broken bey issue, he can’t be expected to just get over this and be truly happy again at the drop of a hat.

And another thing, while I’m on the subject of s2 Shuu; Yeah, Valt did reach out to Boa to ask about what happened to Shuu down in the Snake Pit. He gets points for that. But this scene is one of the reasons I love Boa so much. Boa basically told Valt off for preaching about friendship all the time, and yet not actually being a particularly good friend. “Red Eye” really did NOT feel the same way about Valt at the time. So Boa’s reaction to Valt here seemed to basically be like “Even if I tell you, what good would it do anyone? What are YOU gonna DO about it now? You’ve already burned this bridge, your 'friend’ doesn’t even like you anymore. Give it up, you’re too late to help now even if you think you finally know how.”And that thought isn’t 100% accurate because Shuu didn’t actually HATE Valt even then, and I think Boa probably should have given Valt the details of the situation just to encourage him actually TRYING to help, but. He did have a point. Valt’s “power of friendship” really can’t make this right. And even after the finale, I don’t quite think it did. Shuu isn’t brainwashed anymore, but he’s still messed up. So yeah, Valt ASKED about the Pit, but what would he have really DONE with that information? Definitely nothing constructive. Unless maybe he relayed it on to Wakiya, Dyna, etc., because THEY could have actually had a shot at effectively talking to Shuu about it, maybe. Literally everyone else is better at actually helping with problems than Valt is, and even BOA could see it.

Scoring at 3/10, and I’m trying to be generous. I could cut him SOME slack and say his, well, frustrating immaturity is because he’s only 11, but that really loses impact when you take into consideration that all of the other main characters [Shuu, Boss, Dyna, Wakiya, Kensuke] are all 11 too, and they all do better than Valt.

And Valt’s not the main character anymore. I might start to like him better as s3 goes on, as the non-main characters do tend to be just…written better in general in BeyBurst. And I think that’s probably a marketing tactic, actually: Keep your main character mascot kid as generic as possible, in order to [in theory] appeal to as many different people as possible. Actually giving your mc a real PERSONALITY [that isn’t just bland, 2-d enthusiasm and cheerful happiness] might hurt your plastic toy sales because some people would stop watching the show because they disagree with your mc in too many ways [like, if the personality you give your mc clashes with theirs, which would be inevitable with ANY sort of personality type, really. EVERY personality type has another type that just really, really hates it.]. So maybe Valt will finally start to feel like a person now that he’s not allergic to having, you know, a personality. In s1 and s2 he was really only good at screaming and crying. That’s not a personality.