Gingka Hagane

Okay, it's finally time to start character analysing, I'll apologise in advance if it starts off a bit shaky, this is my first time, and I feel that I will have to get used to it.

oh, and also, just to put this in:
Season 1 = Beyblade Metal Fusion (Metal Fight Beyblade)
Season 2= Beyblade Metal Masters (Metal Fight Beyblade Explosion)
Season 3= Beyblade Metal Fury (Metal Fight Beyblade 4D)
Season 4= Beyblade Shogun Steel (Metal Fight Beyblade Zero-G)

But enough about that, time to start the analysis!!
We're going to start with the main character of Metal Fight Beyblade: Gingka Hagane (Ginga Hagane, *I go by dub names so I'll put any differences in brackets...but that'll only be for names, cause there isn't really anything that changes other than the occasional names, even if, like regular, they're only one letter changes, I'll list even the slightest change*)

Okay, enough talking, let's start this!:













Season 1: Spoilers ahead
First of all, I'd like to just note a bit about the design of the characters, I like Gingka's in particular because it seems fairly different compared to a lot of other protagonists I've seen, it's bright, but bold, and I like the scarf, for something that has to be animated to flow a lot, it's pretty cool to put it on a character who appears in every episode, it already shows effort, early on, and I like it when shows do that, especially in animation.

Okay, onto the season reviews now:
Gingka gets introduced in the first episode (well, he IS the main character), as we see, his travels take him to the city where we spend a lot of season 1, the hometown of a majority of the main cast for this season.
He gets introduced as a very laid back, relaxed character at first, but as soon as he sees trouble, we start to see his serious side, we first see in true action saving Kenta, another main character of the series, from a beyblade gang called The Face Hunters, and these two become close friends quickly.
During the time they bond, Gingka talks about how he's been travelling, searching for stronger opponents with his Storm Pegasus (Storm Pegasis) bey, and then explaining the blader spirit, it makes a nice start to the series to see how these characters interact so well.

So just like any show, this calming atmosphere can't last forever, and Gingka soons meets his first rival, the leader of the Face Hunters: Kyoya (Kyouya)

Before their first battle, Gingka meets another new friend, Madoka, who is a bey mechanic, she doesn't like to battle often, but she becomes a good help to Gingka in the series, starting by helping to repair Pegasus after damage due to all of Gingka's travels up until now, but before the repair is completed, Kenta gets into trouble.
Gingka immediately prepares to help Kenta, which already shows how willing he is to go to any lengths to help his friends, despite the fact that they've only met recently.
With this, Gingka manages to defeat Kyoya, which leaves Kyoya to deal with his own problems, which leave him out of the scene for a little while.

In this time, Kyoya's most loyal friend, Benkei spends some time challenging Gingka to battles with various people, and during this time, Benkei ends up joining Gingka's group, which leads him to have some trouble when Kyoya does return, leaving Gingka to rematch the newly skilled Kyoya, he still manages to power through and win, with the support of his friends.

After this battle, Gingka meets the person who had forced Kyoya into all this anger, Doji (Daidouji) and Gingka immediately changes his attitude completely, and goes missing overnight in search for this familiar person.
When he finally returns, he opens up to the others about this organisation, and the fact that they have a forbidden bey, this starts the search, with all of Gingka's friends helping.
With some help from Kyoya, who seems to finally be over his outburst, they manage the find the Dark Nebula organisation castle, where they all rush to reach the top, and Gingka meets an enemy from his past: Ryuga (Ryuuga)
Gingka and Ryuga battle, but during the battle Ryuga starts to insult Gingka's father, which angers Gingka to the point that he's ignoring all the advice he's given to this point, and is just set on destroying him completely, his rage ends up making him lose the battle, which completely devastates Gingka.

The next episode shows Gingka is still depressed about his loss, which concerns all his friends a lot, so after some persuasion from Kenta, Gingka goes into his backstory, which reveals that he lost his father, Ryo (Ryuusei) to the Dark Nebula organisation, specifically Doji and Ryuga, after this flashback, Gingka decides to leave, heading back to his hometown, Koma Village, without telling anyone, which leads his friends to all go to search for him.
During this time, Gingka looks for a scroll to find out how to become powerful enough to defeat Ryuga, but instead, finds a note from his father, which regains his confidence.

With him returning to his friends, a survival battle of 1000 bladers opens up and the winner recieves a wish, Gingka's comes 2nd to the newly introduced character, Yu (Yuu), who wishes to open a national tournement called Battle Bladers, which will be held by the Dark Nebula organisation.

So with that, Gingka begins saving points together to enter Battle Bladers, since Ryuga will be entering, and this will be his chance to finally settle the score, and in the middle of this time, a mysterious person called Phoenix turns up, and completely destroys Gingka's pointer when he loses against him, starting him from step one, to teach him a lesson for making a careless mistake, still determined as ever, Gingka continues, and on the last stretch, makes what seems to be a sacrifice to the final points to protect his friends from Tsubasa, a character who Gingka met during the process, which leads to Phoenix reappearing and Gingka rematching him and finally beating him, in addition to this, Tsubasa joins the team.

Straight after this, Battle Bladers begins, and Gingka manages to defeat Yu in the first round, which makes Ryuga the only oppenent still left unbeaten to Gingka, during this time Yu joins the teams, and through a series of events, they all end up in the Dark Nebula hq, where Phoenix has had a tough battle with Doji, with the result shattering his mask, only to reveal Ryo, who reveals he did survive all that time ago, leading to a very heatwarming reunion.

From here, Gingka is finally ready to battle Ryuga again, he learns during the battle that instead of trying to finish the fight, he should be saving Ryuga instead, and after a tough battle, Gingka manages to defeat Ryuga, but he loses Pegasus who disappears to rest after the exhausting battle.

This ends season 1 and overall for Gingka in this season, he had a very interesting backstory, and it was interesting to see this laid back character go so serious whenever this was brought up, it showed his drive for battling, and he really deserved his good ending.
Score: 9/10

Season 2

(I'm pretty sure the rest of the season reviews will be super tiny compared to season 1, but let's see,)
In this season, Gingka mellows out a lot, I assume this is due to his problems in season 1 being resolved, that, or due to his new friend, Masamune, but either way, Gingka really lightens up this season, and it's definately a nice thing to see him more chill now.
In this season, he is the leader of their world championship team, Gangan Galaxy, alongside Masamune, Tsubasa, Yu and Madoka.
It gives Gingka a chance to experience teamwork more instead of being individual as usual, and as someone who cares a lot about his friends, it's really nice to see his relationships grow
with his new teammates, especially how his friendship with Masamune grows as the series continues, I'll look more into their friendship on Masamune's analysis, but it's nice to see how it's just constant fighting and rivalry at first, and it grows into something similar of two best friends.
He still shows to be incredibly thoughtful of his friends, always caring about them when something's wrong, despite whatever disagreements they've had recently, and always showing concern over them in any situation.

The things that I always like best about Gingka, he will never give up, he's such a determined character, while still keeping so friendly, and this season he has nothing holding him back from his full potential.


This ends season 2 (I said it'd be short compared to the other, but there's more room to talk about just personality from here onwards) and overall, he became a lot more fun this season, still showing determination and spirit when he had to, but he's become a lot more happier, and it's really nice to see it that way, but the serious nature does get a little bit missed at times, other than that though, I like everything.
Score 8.5/10

Season 3

First thing to say: slight change in design on his headband!!
despite being such a small change, I really like it: It's new, but it's not too different overall, to his design.
Also I like the idea of giving his headband an extra wing, it looks more similar to Ryo's headband, almost like it's trying to show how much he's matured, and I really like that, because even so, it's still very subtle.

So, in this season, Gingka discovers he is one of among ten legendary bladers, who are scattered around the world in various locations, meeting these legendary bladers gave a lot of time for more interactions and developement, since the majority of these legendary bladers were completely new characters.

My favourite of these new friendships was probably the one of Gingka and Yuki (Yuuki), mainly though, because I feel without it, Yuki would of been quite a forgettable character, which is a shame, so it's good that the friendship gives him something.
There's also a lot more interaction between Gingka and Madoka, and that's always sweet to see, I see how much the bond has grown between them, watching it back.

Also what I like with Gingka, this season, is he makes a good balance between his serious

nature from season 1, and his more carefree nature from season 2, his seriousness comes from different reasons this time though, and he still keeps his fun self with it, and I think it's a really good balance between each, it's getting the best parts of him from each season, and I really like that.

This ends season 3, and overall, season 3 Gingka is my favourite, I can't think of anything I don't like about him, he's still fun and happy, while keeping with the serious nature more often, it was a good mix of his best traits from each season.

Score: 10/10

 

Season 4

I wont be scoring on Zero-G, as I said, but I just want to make a note of characters who did appear.                                                     Gingka appeared very late in the season to help Zyro (Zero) overcome his rage, I really liked the idea there, since he's tackled similar problems in his past, so it was good to see him in that kind of role.

 

Overall:

I think Gingka is a great character, especially for the main protagonist, I usually never find myself liking the main protagonist, but Gingka is a major exception, he has a wonderful personality, excellent interactions with other characters, a great attitude, and he's always fun to watch.

Overall Score: 9.1/10

 

Okay, this ends the first of my character analyses, one thing I want to say, looking back, I think I was struggling a bit at first, and I noticed I didn't really talk enough about his personality, and more about the story, I'll definately try not to repeat this in later analyses.

So I hope you enjoyed the first one, and the next one will be started soon.

 

-Surii