Trading card games (TCGs) are a big deal in Japan and while in the west new games seem few and far between, almost every time I visit Japan I see recently released games. Furthermore they’re very inexpensive in Japan – booster packs are usually under $2 – so I usually buy one booster of each game to check them out.

Today I’m going to open five packs and evaluate the cards. Obviously I’m not going to play the game, but often TCGs in Japan are collected more than played so here I’ll restrict myself to the quality of the cards as collectibles.

This game, based on the Detective Conan series, was released late last year and apparently has an upcoming western release. The back of the pack contained no information on card types or rarity.

There were six cards inside, and in my opinion they’re all unattractive. They seem to feature manga (as opposed to anime) art, in some cases colorized. One card is foil, but the effect is so subtle it’s almost unnoticeable:

Interestingly while they are all game cards, there are three different – and extremely basic – cardbacks. Perhaps each player has more than one deck?

The cards have the feel of a Magic or Pokémon card, which is to say they don’t feel as premium as other Japanese sets (like Battle Spirits). As a collectible product this gets a thumbs down from me, but perhaps if you are a fan of the series you may think differently?

Jellyfish Eyes is a TCG partly created by a renowned Japanese artist. Again it was released late last year, and apparently has a game system different from most other TCGs. This isn’t obvious by the cards themselves:

It looks like a cross between Pokémon and Duel Masters, and the story apparently invoices children having monster ‘friends’ they use to battle. Reading up about the artist I see he’s been heavily involved with NFTs in the past so this TCG may be a bit of a cash-in.

The pack identified six rarities including ‘secret’ and ‘parallel’. If foiling exists, none of the cards in my pack had it.

The cardback is boring, and the cards have a somewhat flimsy feel. The art did nothing for me, although I’ll concede it is at least better than most Pokémon clones. But I don’t think I’m being controversial by predicting this game wont last long.

I can’t imagine Animal Cardgame: Species War will get a western release, but these days with the rise in TCG speculation who knows? This seems to be exactly as it sounds: a game in which you use animals to battle against each other. How do they balance it so lions and orcas always win? Who knows?!?

The art is ok, but the cards are extremely wordy and the game appears to be quite complicated. Maybe this isn’t the kids product I initially assumed?

Amazingly, I got a secret rare card! There are only three in the set (of 83 cards), and as you can see the art covers the entire card. In MTG parlance, this card lets you mill 15 cards to play any creature in your hand without paying the casting cost. Other rarities include common, uncommon, rare and ‘legend’.

The cardback is boring (is that a cage?!) but I thought the art was decent and the premise seems bonkers enough that this may be fun. Also, it reminds me of this.

This is a weird one. About two decades ago a TCG called Lycee was released. It was based on various Japanese visual novels and features mostly fanart. It eventually ended but was rebooted in 2017 as Lycee Overture although new expansions have been infrequent since. This expansion – based on a bishoujo game brand I’d never heard of called ‘Navel’ – was released while I was in Japan so naturally I purchased a booster.

While I don’t play Japanese visual novels I feel I could write an entire blog post on their art styles (don’t worry, I never will) which in most cases are an acquired taste. To say the least I don’t like the art on these cards 🙂

The above is my rare card (other rarities include ‘gold signature stamped’ which is obviously stolen from Weiss) which I’ve translated. The card has six stat types (top and bottom left) and seems to have a half dozen different effects based on various conditions. Many Japanese-developed TCGs have reputations for complexity and this game seems to fit that mold!

Of all the sets I’m showing in this post this one has the best cardback, but once again the cards are a little flimsy and none of mine are foil. I assume this game knows it audience and that doesn’t include me!

Lastly today here is Force Of The Horse. This one also released while I was in Japan and I saw impressive point-of-sale displays at various stores but the packs were always sold out. Based on this I assumed the game to be something special and was happy to finally find it for sale. Costing about $5, it was by far the most expensive booster of these five.

I imagine the hurdle to attracting players to a horse-racing TCG is high and therefore I expected the cards to dazzle me. But as you can see they don’t at all! Not only is the art uninspired (look that that rain card!) but the cards themselves seem to be printed on the thinnest card stock possible and are very flimsy as a result. Plus there’s only five in the pack, which means these cost me about a dollar apiece!

This is such a weird product. Who will buy enough of this even to make a deck and what’s the chance they’ll find anyone else playing? Surely this has no future.

So there you have it. Of these five I’d say none of these have cards pretty enough to actually collect, so we can only hope the gameplay is good enough. But history suggests it won’t be, and in a few years these will be just as forgotten as the hundreds of other Japanese TCGs no-one ever plays or talks about today!