The only surprise is that he catches on that ordinary kids, who happen to be experts at the game, will be easy to kidnap. Wily clone goes on about how Beyblades bare people's souls he believes that mastering it will give him the power to conquer the world.
The originality ends with the plot intro, where a fairly stereotypical Dr. Beyblade: Metal Fusion - Battle Fortress for the Wii somehow manages to come across as a soulless, shallow take on an anime series that already isn't very deep or philosophical. Sadly, that minigame is vastly more enjoyable than Hudson's attempts at building a video game version of Beyblade. The game and series were fairly directly parodied in The World Ends With You with the Tin Pin Slammer minigame. The children's game in this series is essentially spinning top battles, right down to the simple, classical rules of knocking your opponent's top off the arena or stopping it to score points. It's well-treaded terrain with a surprising number of variants and easy merchandising potential. Take a children's game, add awesome, and make the plot about a group of kids - or, in later seasons, teenagers -saving the world. Beyblade is a fairly typical shonen anime franchise.
