Category: Cards

Ultraman Cards (Series Three)

  • October 7, 2025

This is the third series of Ultraman cards from RRParks, which once again I got via Kickstarter. This set covers the third Ultraman series, ‘The Return Of Ultraman’ which these days is called Ultraman Jack. The box has been aging in a closet for over a year now, and it was finally time to open it!

The Kickstarter sold out instantly (almost literally: it reached its funding budget in under a half hour) and I’m still amazed that the best Ultraman card sets ever come from a small independent American company (which may even be a single man)!

As with previous sets about a half of the 300-odd cards in the set are story cards, kaiju (monster) cards and reproductions of the original art cards. These are all done well, and once again I’m impressed by the quality of the summaries on the backs of the story cards (one for each episode).

There are four subsets of art cards by the same artists. Included in each box are full sets of most of the cards, but the special chase cards (like the pearlescent art cards in the lower left) are not guaranteed.

The kaiju cards have puzzles on the back, and there’s six different puzzles in total. There’s also a subset of 3D puzzles which I didn’t complete in my box:

Speaking of 3D, once again the box came with a set of glasses to view the 18 different 3D cards:

These are well done and the 3D effect is very good. This technology may be old these days, but it’s still effective and I think more card sets should use it.

As far as chase cards go, I hit the lottery with this box, getting far more limited cards than in my boxes for series one or two (which I didn’t blog). My metal card is shown above, and shows a nice render of Jack flying in the sky.

I got half of the 12 lenticular cards (compared to only one in my previous box), and one ‘Jumbo lenticular’ was included as a box topper:

I also got two printing plates, which are the actual metal plates used to print the cards. In each case I got black ink plates, one for card 124 of the story set and one for the back of one of the 3D cards. Here they are shown alongside the cards they were used to print:

I find these fascinating, since I assume the cards are printed in large sheets and therefore the printing plates must be cut before being included in packs. Each plate is of course unique, but I wonder how many exist in total?

I was very lucky to get three original art cards. These are blank cards on which artists have drawn or painted an ultra character, and the three I got are shown above.

The one in bottom right is most impressive and seems to have been painted with some sort of textured paint. These are of course all unique, and since none of my three are included in the reduction art cards, I’m sure there’s a lot of them. I wonder how many?

The rarest type of card is the autograph, and once again I’m amazed a tiny independent American card manufacturer was able to get stars from this 60-year-old series to sign cards. They are extremely rare though – I read some are limited to fewer than 5 cards – and I believe they’re only included in cases of multiple boxes, which makes sense.

This is a great card set and I had a lot of fun opening it. As it turns out the impetus to do so was the arrival of my series four box, which will now sit waiting in a closet until next years (presumed) series five 🙂

  • Posted in Cards
  • Robert

New Japanese TCGs (Part 2)

  • September 13, 2025

It’s time for four new Japanese TCG packs I obtained on my summer trip to Japan. None of these are particularly new games, but as far as I can tell they are all the latest expansion for their respective games.

Kaiun Collosseum is a kid-friendly TCG with cute art and games that use only 10 card decks. This is the latest expansion (called ‘Great Poop Battle’?) and is one of the very inexpensive (<¥200) types of booster packs.

The cards feature colorful and cute art, but they’re somewhat flimsy and slightly curved right out of the pack. I got a single foil – the card at lower right – but the foiling effect is unremarkable. I’ve actually got a few promo cards for this game in Japanese magazines over the years and they have much prettier foiling and effects.

The cardback is ok, but overall this product betrays its (probably) budget origin and I expect this will be another game that will have a lifespan measured in a handful of years.

Staying with Bandai, here’s the latest expansion in the official Dragonball card game. This game has been going for almost a decade and while it isn’t amongst the most popular in Japan it must still have a devoted fanbase to have survived so long.

The six cards in my pack are above, and while the rare card (middle bottom) is foil the effect is subtle and unimpressive. As is typical of Bandai card games, this one has some incredibly rare and amazingly fancy cards covered in textures and multiple metallic foil effects that go for thousands of dollars on the secondary market. If you’re buying these cards just to collect them, it must be a frustrating prospect.

Here’s the cardback and a bonus card included in the pack. Feel free to use the code 🙂

While this isn’t for me – I’m not anywhere near enough of a fan of the series – this is probably fun for the diehard fans even if just to collect.

Osica is a TCG based around licensed products, and therefore would appeal to the same market as games such as Weiss and Union Divide. This was the latest expansion when I was in Japan, based on the game Atelier Ryza.

The cards are nice enough for fans, and the quality seems higher than both Bandai games. While I’ve played many Atelier games I still haven’t got to the Ryza series so I don’t know who any of these characters are. The foil card is at the lowest right, and the foil effect is so subtle it’s easy to miss.

The cardback is pretty! Probably the best yet in this series. But this is clearly a game marketed at collectors and therefore dependent on the card front design. Is it better than Weiss? I think not.

Lastly we end this post with Divine Cross, (yet) another game with cards based on licensed products. In this case the series seem to be fanservice heavy games and/or anime, and the dozens of expansions have been frequent and fairly small, with only a few dozen cards in each.

I don’t know what this expansion is based on since info is difficult to find online and my translator has trouble with the text on the front of the pack, but it looks to be a Five Nights At Freddy-like horror game (anime?) based around girls hiding from monsters. The cards are dark and frankly boring, and the foil kuchisake-onna (slit-mouth woman) card is repulsive.

If I were to base my evaluation of the game entirely on this pack it would be a strong thumbs-down, but from what I can tell cards in other expansions look wildly different and in some cases are very pretty. An unusual game, this one.

  • Posted in Cards
  • Robert

New Japanese TCGs (Part 1)

  • September 2, 2025

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!