Category: Trading Cards

New Japanese TCGs (Part 3)

October 28, 2025

It’s time to open some more packs of Japanese TCGs, all purchased during my trip either last year or this recent summer. Most of these are new expansions for old games, but some are brand new games as well.

Shadowverse Evolve is a physical card game based on the digital Shadowverse card game. This expansion – Duet of Light and Shadow – was released in April 2024 and is the 9th of now 18 expansions for the game (they seem to release about every 2 months).

The cards are attractive, which is unsurprisingly considering the games heritage. There were eight cards in the pack, three of which were foil (the three on the left side of the bottom row). The most unusual card was the knight card at lower right, which was made of thicker card stock:

I wonder if this is some sort of avatar card? Surely it doesn’t get shuffled into a deck since it would stand out.

Shadowverse released a switch version which I enjoyed a great deal, and I hope the sequel gets a translation. I’ve never played this physical version but when I was in Japan last year there was an event in Akihabara that drew enormous crowds. It seems to be a successful game in Japan.

Speaking of successful games, Duel Masters continues to be Wizards of The Coast’s most successful game in Japan, outselling Magic The Gathering. These two packs are from recently released expansions.

Duel Masters has been around for 26 years now, and actually began as a manga (which itself was based on Magic The Gathering)! This card game began in 2002 and has to date received nearly 100 expansions. Two attempts to launch the card game in English markets have fizzled, but it remains one of the most successful card games in Japan.

The first photo above shows the cards in the left pack, and the one immediately above shows the right pack. I played the English Duel Masters when it was released and I remember the game world and ‘story’ being fairly insane and this card art seems to suggest that hasn’t changed.

I buy Duel Masters boosters every time I visit Japan since they are cheap (~¥100) and because the special rarity cards are amongst the prettiest in any game. While this example I pulled from the second pack is dazzling, it’s still well below the most incredible cards I’ve pulled from boosters in the past. This seems like a fun game.

Here we have two Kamen Rider Battle Spirits expansions, one very recent and one from a year ago. I’ve opened Battle Spirits before and I knew these cards would impress.

The above are from the left booster pack. Battle Spirits cards are plasticized and feel like thin credit cards. The print quality is exceptionally good, with super detailed artwork created just for the cards. This is clearly a product aimed equally as much at collectors as players.

I’ve read that each expansion introduces at least one new mechanic which is strongly supported by the new cards, so the game evolves with every new set. This is another game with organized play in Japan that must be interesting to watch since nearly every expansion is based on a licensed property.

The high-rarity cards are very pretty. In these two packs I got one textured foil and another with a sort of spiral foil design that rotates as you tile the card. It’s a shame that a much bigger-selling game like Magic can’t implement these types of foils since it makes the cards feel very special.

We’ll end today with the first three expansions from the new Quintessential Quintuplets card game. This game debuted last year, and I believe five expansions are now available.

Each pack has five cards, and three of the cards in my first booster (volume 1) used manga art! I won’t say this looks bad, but it’s an unusual choice given that they do apparently have enough high-resolution colour art to use.

One card was foil, and the effect was a bit lazy since it was simply a background. But looking close I noticed even the manga art seemed unusually high-resolution, as if it had been redrawn.

That’s the second pack, and again the quality of the art jumps out. Games based around anime often suffer from the curse of simply using screen grabs that are not of adequate resolution to look good on a card. That’s certainly not the case here. Look closely and you’ll see the foil also has a flower effect in the background.

This game is based on a manga/anime about a man that tutors five quintuplets and eventually marries one. The catch is the story begins with the wedding, but since the girls are identical we don’t know who he chooses until the very end. It’s wholesome and very well written and was a massive hit a couple of years ago.

I’m a big fan of the story (the manga is one of my favourite completed series ever) and these cards are very attractive. I can see why this has been a success in the relatively short time it’s been out, and I’ll probably purchase one each of the expansions after these as well.

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 🙂

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!

Robot Claw