Where the battles were fought

The seaside dome that hosts Japan's regional qualifier is where the future Bladebreakers are first thrown together. Rather than one regulation dish, the event rotates specialty stadiums: an obstacle course for the block rounds and a bowl with a central tower that a blader must hold for ten seconds. The final between Tyson and Kai is a best-of-three that ends with both blades airborne, and the whole event turns out to be a BBA selection test.

The Asian Tournament begins with street battles in Hong Kong's back alleys before moving to a towering arena in China, where the Bladebreakers and the defending champion White Tigers are placed in opposite blocks. The final's third match takes place in a desert-themed dish laced with quicksand, and when three rounds cannot separate Tyson and Lee, a sudden-death tiebreaker is called in which Ray faces the friends he left behind.

A high-tech research facility run by Max's mother Judy, and the home base of the data-driven All Starz. Visiting bladers are quietly put through test matches so that staff can log weaknesses, and Max is the first to lose to Emily on the lab's instrumented dishes. Eddy and Steve later give the Bladebreakers a demonstration that leaves Ray's Driger badly damaged. The lab's data underpins the All Starz' scouting throughout the American Tournament.

The American Tournament unfolds in Las Vegas with a rotating set of Americana-themed dishes. The semifinal against Spintensity is fought in a stadium modeled on the New Jersey Turnpike, and the deciding match of the final is played out on a baseball-diamond dish that suits former pitcher Michael. Tyson debuts Dragoon F here, and Max's match with Michael settles the title while his mother watches from the All Starz bench.

Two improvised Parisian battlegrounds. On the Eiffel Tower's observation deck the Dark Bladers ambush the team, and the outnumbered Bladebreakers only recover when Kai arrives with the upgraded Dranzer F. The next day Oliver, the French champion, rents out the entire Louvre so that he can battle Tyson among the artworks, treating the museum as his private stadium. Neither site is a sanctioned venue, which is very much the point.

Italian champion Enrique keeps a private stadium styled after the Roman Colosseum and battles in it dressed as a centurion. Tyson has to talk him into a match at all, loses the first meeting to the two-headed Amphilyon, then returns for a rematch in which he learns to play the bit-beast's two heads against each other. The venue's theatrics mirror Enrique's careless attitude toward his own bit-beast.

The ancestral castle of German champion Robert is riddled with secret passages, and it is here that the four European champions finally unite as the Majestics. When Robert refuses a casual match, the Bladebreakers push for a formal contest, and he hosts a three-round showdown at his brand-new Olympia coliseum with the losing side's World Championship berth on the line. Robert also beats Tyson again later at an abandoned palace in Russia.

A grim training abbey on the edge of Moscow, run by Boris Balkov and bankrolled by Kai's grandfather Voltaire through the Biovolt corporation. Behind its monastery facade sit underground laboratories, cells and training dishes where the Demolition Boys were raised and where Kai spent a childhood he can barely remember. Black Dranzer is kept here, and Tala is altered with Biovolt technology before the final. The abbey returns in G-Revolution flashbacks.

The snowbound arena where the first World Championship finals are decided against the Demolition Boys. Its dishes are as extreme as the tournament: Spencer's whale bit-beast turns a water-filled Black Sea stadium into a tidal wave, Bryan's wind attacks tear at the structure and at Ray himself, and Tyson's decider against Tala is swallowed by a frozen otherworld in which every stolen bit-beast is turned against him.

Drugged on the way to a match, the Bladebreakers wake as prisoners on an island run by Team Psykick's Doctor B, fitted with electronic bracelets that keep them from leaving. The whole island is a battleground: Max fights the slippery Chameleon in a jungle clearing, Ray takes on The Bat inside a pitch-black cave, and a lighthouse becomes the escape route. Every battle is another chance for Psykick's cameras to capture bit-beast data.

Gideon's five-story tower stages one sudden-death match per floor, each Bladebreaker facing a cyber bit-beast grown from his own data. The floors are weaponized: one arena rebuilds Cyber Draciel every time Max knocks it down, another is blasted by wind, a third is drowned in fog, and the top-floor stage secretly recharges Kane's blade mid-battle. Cyber Dragoon eventually draws power from the tower itself, and the structure collapses as Tyson wins.

Max's mother relocates her research to New York, where her team is studying an ancient rock believed to hold sealed bit-beasts. A demonstration battle exposes the lab's anonymous test blader as Alan, Max's old schoolmate, and that same night thieves break in for the rock. The lab is the launching point for the Zagart storyline, and Max's follow-up challenge to Alan is fought in a New York tournament.

The Saint Shields choose a derelict amusement park for their final reckoning over the four sacred bit-beasts. Max and Mariam duel in the park's Wild West zone, Kai is dragged onto the rails of a dead roller coaster by Dunga, and the ride collapses in sparks and fire while Ray launches a bit-beast-less blade to even the odds. Ozuma and Tyson close the series with a battle that ends in a tie.

The second World Championship is a tag-team affair with eight pairs in the finals, including Zeo and Gordo, King and Queen, and the Saint Shields' Ozuma and Dunga. Dishes vary by round, notably a magnetic stadium used for Mariam's match with Queen, and Dr. K arms Queen with a razor-edged Shredder attack ring. The final pits Tyson and Max against Zeo and Gordo, with Dranzer and Draciel already captured by Cerberus.

The tag-team era begins with a Japanese qualifier split into two blocks, the winners of each to be paired as the national team. Kenny surprises everyone by winning match after match in Block A before Tyson takes the block, while the Block B final drops Kai and Daichi into a rotating jungle-themed stadium whose shifting terrain suits the wild newcomer. Kai has to read the moving ground quickly to hold him off.

The third World Championship opens in New York with six teams introduced: BBA Revolution, PPB All Starz, White Tiger X, Barthez Battalion, F-Dynasty and the Blitzkrieg Boys with Kai in their ranks. Before the arena battles even start, Tyson and Daichi have their blades lifted by a pickpocket and end up in a street fight with Rick. The round-one loss to Ray and Lee triggers Tyson's blame-shifting and a temporary walkout.

The Italian leg is where coach Barthez's abuse of his own team first slips into view, with a TV crew filming his supposedly nurturing methods. Miguel edges Ray in the Barthez Battalion decider against White Tiger X. Kenny then steps into the dish for BBA Revolution against Tala and has his blade shattered by Wolborg's Novae Rog, but the data he gathers lets him rebuild Daichi's Strata Dragoon for the tiebreaker.

In Spain the circus-trained siblings Julia and Raul of F-Dynasty reveal themselves as street jugglers before taking on Ray and Lee. Max meets Kai as the PPB All Starz face the Blitzkrieg Boys, and evidence that Barthez Battalion cheated its way through the European qualifier surfaces too late to matter. Mathilda's rigged Pierce Hedgehog shatters under Daichi's assault, injuring him with fragments, before Tyson battles Miguel.

The Egyptian leg opens with Barthez benching Miguel and sending Aaron and Claude out with blades fitted with web-like traps against the Blitzkrieg Boys, a plan Tala patiently waits out. A Max-and-Rick tag match against Ray and Lee dissolves into a free-for-all, and the round closes with Tyson asking for a two-on-two against F-Dynasty, only for his partnership with Daichi to falter on match day.

With the Blitzkrieg Boys already through and five teams deadlocked, the Australian round becomes a knockout. Raul insists on a singles match against Mathilda, Kai and Ray trade special attacks at a pace that drains them both, and Daichi's power duel with Rick fills the arena with the smell of scorched metal. Tyson finally beats Max in a clash of relentless offence against immovable defence to book a place in the finals.

The finals return home with three teams left. BBA Revolution beats F-Dynasty in a two-on-two semifinal, and the final against the Blitzkrieg Boys is nearly derailed when a faulty gear assembly is found inside Dragoon at inspection. Daichi and Tala leave the dish simultaneously, so the title comes down to Tyson against Kai, a battle so even that both blades exit at the same instant and Kai insists it be allowed to finish.

The glossy home of Boris Balkov's BEGA League after it buys out the BBA. It first shows its teeth when barriers rise from the floor to trap Tala in the dish during his punishing match with Garland. The five-on-five Justice 5 series against the G Revolutions is fought here, ending with Kai's rematch against Brooklyn and a tiebreaker in which Brooklyn's Zeus opens a vortex that begins tearing the surrounding city apart.