Beyblade, known in Japan as Explosive Shoot Beyblade (Japanese: 爆転シュートベイブレード, Hepburn: Bakuten Shūto Beiburēdo), is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Takao Aoki to promote sales of spinning tops called "Beyblades" developed by Takara Tomy. The series focuses on a group of kids who form teams, which battle one another using Beyblades. Originally serialized in Shogakukan's CoroCoro Comic from September 1999 to July 2004, the individual chapters were collected and published in 14 tankōbon volumes and was licensed for English-language release in North America by Viz Media.