Jun.M 🔥⛩️🔥

@metawuhuama @ytlee1982 Demon mode 🔥😈🔥

@ytlee1982 @NGLAzuki it should be the final boss of fire domain in the garden manga!⛩congrats the great pick!

Step up. @AzukiTCG presale ends tomorrow. tcg.azuki.com

All print is cool. But TCG print production? Nothing comes close. I’ve been in print since I was 15. I've worked on the shop floor, the 30th floor of a skyscraper, and just about every role in between. I’ve worked on signage, brochures, food and cosmetic packaging, billboards, exhibits, magazine ads, direct mail, POP displays, and printed merch. If it can hold ink, I’ve probably worked on it. Every format has its own challenge and I can geek out over something as simple as a perfectly printed coupon book. But nothing compares to working on the print of an IP like Azuki. Think about it: when was the last time a protein bar wrapper got dragged online for being off-center? Does anyone care if a retail sign is a shade off? If the foil on a wine label isn’t perfect, does it stop anyone from buying it? Most print is functional. Temporary. Meant to be used and discarded. TCGs are different. We’re producing objects with intrinsic value. They're designed to be collected, traded, and preserved indefinitely. Not to mention bad flaws can affect playability and wreck the game itself. That changes everything. For cards, “acceptable” isn’t good enough. Every detail matters. We push vendors and machines beyond their normal tolerances. We redefine what “good” looks like. Because when it’s right, it’s celebrated globally in unboxing videos, posts, placed on the shelf as a prized possession. And when it’s wrong, everyone notices. Right now TCG printing is the most visible, the most high stake form of print in the world. And as a self-proclaimed print nerd, that's exacrly where I want to be, in the center of it.

IKZ. Ikuzo. 行くぞ. Four-plus years in and we still answer the call. It means “let’s go” in Japanese, but here it means more than that. It’s the mantra. It’s in our DNA and has been with us from the start. In fact, I first found it mentioned in company Slack in November 2021, months before Azuki was born. Since then, it’s been there through every event and every big moment. So with the Azuki TCG, of course IKZ became the fuel. Every turn, you ramp one. You tap it to play entities, cast spells, and equip weapons. If you’re low on IKZ, you wait. If you have enough, you make your move. Nothing starts until the first IKZ is tapped. This community has lived in GC, X, meetups and Discord, calling out IKZ to each other through every high and low. Now it lives in the TCG too. And when players say IKZ, we will say it right back.

I asked the love of my life to be my wife. And she said yes. I found you in the most unexpected place. Not in a moment I was searching for. Not in a way I could have planned. Just somewhere along the path. Our lives crossed. And everything quietly changed. You didn’t arrive loudly. You didn’t try to be anything other than who you are. But you became everything to me. Before you I don’t think I truly understood what happiness was. I knew moments. I knew flashes. But not this. Not the kind that fades. Not the kind that comes and goes. The kind that stays. The kind that feels steady and real. The kind that makes your heart feel like it has finally come home. You gave me that. You didn’t just make me happier. You changed me. You made me softer in the ways I needed. Stronger where I was weak. More open. More present. More alive. I am not the man I am today without you. And I don’t say that lightly. Somewhere along the way. You became my peace. My balance. My reason. The center of my life. You became the part of me I didn’t know was missing. Every conversation. Every laugh. Every quiet moment. All the things that slowly became something more. All leading to the moment I realized. I never wanted a life without you in it. @calistawu, You are the love of my life. You are my heart. My soul. My safest place in this world. You are the person who showed me a kind of happiness. I didn’t know existed. And somehow out of everyone in this world. You chose me. That’s something I will never stop being grateful for. If I could live this life a thousand times over. Walk every path. Make every choice again. I would still hope every single time. That somehow it leads me back to you. And in all of this. I got to ask you to be my forever. I love you Cali. I will choose you. Every time. Always. Forever.

Seeing a few takes about the Azuki TCG and NFT holders not getting any "perks" for the presale tomorrow. I respect everyone's opinion on this and I get the thinking tbh, so I'll just share my personal perspective and leave it at that. Azuki wants to be a worldwide anime IP. The TCG is their first real wide-scale product pushing towards that goal. The very first and most rare sets that will ever exist, the alpha sets released last year, were allocated to holders based solely on each person's Collector Score. That's meaningful. It's the definition of rewarding your top collectors... But does that mean every single set and every single product going forward needs to prioritize NFT holders? In my opinion, no. That doesn't mean never do it, but it also doesn't mean every single thing needs to be a perk. We should WANT these products in the hands of real TCG players and people outside the core community. That's how the IP grows. That's the whole point. And the idea that NFT holders are being forgotten is one of the dumbest narratives I've seen lately. Holders are literally in the game itself as characters on the cards. Several are already in and a lot more are coming. I was lucky enough to have Ace selected for a future set. That's not being forgotten. That's your NFT becoming part of the canon story. I'm all for people speaking their minds and wanting certain things. That's fair. What I'm not for is people treating the team like shit and treating community members who are genuinely excited about the direction like blind bagholders. Maybe we're just actually excited? We bought these things as collectibles and have gotten SO much value out of them. And I'm not just talking about money. The best thing that can happen for holders long term is the IP succeeding at a global scale. Everything else is noise.

People always asked who my favorite Overwatch hero was. I'd say "I love playing Pharah" or "I like drawing Genji." The truth is, it's always been Tracer - one of the earliest characters I designed, and the foundation for everything that followed. I see Shao the same way. Tracer embodies the spirit of Overwatch: bright, hopeful, heroic. She became the visual DNA of the world: electric orange, sleek white, futuristic grey. Shao embodies the spirit of Azuki: bold, sharp, elegant. She defines its visual identity: punchy red, striking black and white. But Shao is more than just aesthetics - there's a whole story we haven't explored yet. One I've been working hard on and am eager to share soon. I still remember designing Shao in our PFP editor over 4 years ago and bringing her to life in our first announcement trailer. It felt right for her to be the first Portrait Rare in the Azuki TCG. When @_Tomugi first came to me about creating the most sought-after card in Azuki TCG, it felt daunting. We wanted something unmistakably ours - the kind of card where, like the manga rare in One Piece TCG, you instantly know what it is. We set out to hit 3 things: Stand out among the best TCG rares Feel unmistakably Azuki Look awesome Early concepts didn't quite land, especially on the second point. How can we make it uniquely Azuki? So we worked with @Zagabond to find an idea that brought us back to our roots: the PFP. Azuki was born from a collection of PFPs, and what better to represent our identity than the thing that gave us our identity in the first place? But this wasn't about dropping an OG PFP onto a card. It had to feel intentional and crafted. The OG collection used bold lines and simple colors to pop at a small PFP scale. With TCG, we're still working small, but we have more to play with in terms of materials and finish. We set out to create a holofoil treatment that feels uniquely ours - something you don't typically see in other TCGs. If you've seen the digital version of the Shao Portrait Rare on tcg.azuki.com, you'll notice a holographic pattern layered across the entire card. We call this the "Red Bean Soup" pattern. It represents the in-between void that characters pass through when traveling between gates in the Garden - something we'll explore further in the Azuki manga. It was important to us that this wasn't just visual, but rooted in the story itself. I'm excited to share this new expression of Shao with the world. She's such an important character to me and to Azuki. More of her story is coming soon.

👀 🪣

Something is Awakening... ⬩tcg.azuki.com⬩

Sitting here spamming 2 as my agent team works on a massive feature, so thought i'd give a quick update on our anime[.]com progress so far. Just putting this together on the fly so unlikely to be comprehensive of everything being done Show pages (@heyskylark) - our vision is for /shows/ip-name to be the best place on the internet for fans of that ip. we got a lot of work to do on that front but have taken some meaningful steps - small redesign recently - working on improving the quality of the informational data - [testing] added a gallery to highlight to visuals of anime, check out the frieren page. have high hopes for this one and how it connects to the rest of the app Feed / Personalization (me) - aiming for this to be an experience that supports endless scrolling and constant dopamine. we're still far from this but working on it - feed personalization now factors in your watchlist. if you dropped an anime we derank any content related to it Discussions (@2pmflow) - a big part of anime social is talking about the latest shows after watching them and seeing fan reactions - episode discussions show up in the feed - /discussions where we're experimenting with all sorts of different ways we can add value to this experience Search & Social & Growth (dho) - laying the groundwork for better discovery of content and people - expanded the search functionality - enabled following of other fans on the app, with their content prioritized in the feed personalization - working on features to promote the sharing of content from the app Bug fixes (@elaineazuki14) - using claude to help maintain quality of the app as we move fast and ship Animee & Profile (@jojochuu) - animee is our digital avatar system for the app, and we think there's a lot of design space around making the UX more fun and playful - reacts to post show every fan's animee emoting - can drop personalized stickers in comments - [redacted] with the profile - hopefully more animated stuff with the animees soon to really take advantage of the fact that they're fully rigged UGC (@mattlam_) - we're pushing into enabling fans to create in novel ways and better express themselves - users can create polls - users can create 3x3s - will begin pushing into even more ambitious ways to make it as easy as possible for fans to express themselves and their anime journey

2026 for Azuki is about clarity and execution. Confidence in who we are today. At peace with who we’re not. Clear on where we are now, excited about where we’re going next. It’s going to be a very fun year.

I hear you and I want to respond thoughtfully because I respect your passion and all that we've been through together First, I want to clarify something important. I never said we were absolutely done with fashion or web3 or that Azuki wouldn’t do things like being part of Paris FW. What I said, and what I still believe, is that Azuki has to operate first and foremost as a real IP business, and the TCG is the core product that has to work financially. If we don’t nail that, we don’t have a sustainable business, and without a sustainable business, Azuki as we know it won't exist. We're being intentional about building for the long term. I talked about this in my last discord message and garden gathering, and in the last spaces with you as well. I really do understand why this direction may feel like a shift away from the version of Azuki you originally fell in love with. In the early days, Azuki leaned more heavily into community participation and co-creation. And like I've mentioned, if trading volumes and royalties on NFTs remained the same as it did 4 yrs ago, I'd be fucking ecstatic to go back to that exact playbook. But let's be real... times have changed. At this stage of building a breakout IP, co-creation at the core simply does not work from a commercial standpoint. That doesn’t mean I don’t admire or support the community artists and builders. I stand by the team's track record of supporting the community. we've sacrificed a lot and poured our heart and soul into the community. But the only way we can support that ecosystem long term is if the core Azuki IP is strong, focused, and profitable. That requires saying no to a lot of things we used to do. "But you can surely do all the above, why do you have to choose a focus?!"... I'm not saying you've said this but I've heard this plenty of times from others. My answer is, If it's that easy you go do it then! And to their credit, some ppl actually have, and they've all failed. I usually get a dm afterwards like "man you were right, this shit is so hard..." And when I look at their strategy, it's always been unfocused. There are so many distractions in this space and it's easy to fall into the trap of trying to do everything. Sorry, tangent... back to your note I know you’ve said before that you don’t think the TCG is cool. That's fine I know it's not for everyone, but I strongly disagree. I think it’s really fucking cool... but I'm just a nerd who's AIM handle back in the day was literally "magiccards515" (real) so what do I know. It's all subjective but I think we’ve been doing cool shit this whole time. it just might not be your flavor and that’s okay. But minimizing the work because it doesn’t personally resonate misses the fact that a lot of people do resonate with it (see the response from the TCG invitational), and most importantly it’s building something durable that proliferates the IP that all the holders own a piece of with our PFPs. You can choose not to celebrate a moment like what we just had in Paris. But I'm fucking celebrating lmao. AZUKI WAS ON THE RUNWAY IN PARIS!!! We turned steamboy's art, our PFPs, into a medium during fashion's biggest cultural moment. Idc what anyone thinks. No one can take that away from us. Anyways, it's all love brother. You don’t have to change your mind. Just wanted you and everyone else reading this to know that what we're after now is giving Azuki the best chance to be a massive IP that we all know it has the potential of becoming. And with the focus we have right now, I know we'll succeed. AZUKI ON TOP

@Zagabond Oui baguette 🥖

Azuki in Paris

One small step for Bucket Man, one giant leap for _________ 🪣

Happy Holidays ⛩️

My favorite month and my birthday month—a year older (hopefully wiser) and so grateful for my life, the ups and downs. Every turn of events becomes a lesson, shaping my journey for a better me 🎂

2025: NFTs are a scam 2026: Actually digital art is fine, just not NFTs 2027: Okay identity NFTs kind of make sense 2028: Alright, a few pfp collections slap. 1D = 1B 2029: Fine, I’ll check the metadata before I judge 2030: Oh… NFTs were the base layer of digital property rights the whole time