Ryoko Forever Fan Club
Image Gallery: Playing Cards

Tenchi Muyo! TV Deck

Each card in this deck shows 2 scenes from the Tenchi Muyo TV series (they're video captures - when magnified, the images show the colour smearing characteristic of a video source). 42 of the 54 cards, and 58 of the 108 scenes, show Ryoko in some shape or form. So there's a lot of Ryoko pics in this set; not all of them are shown here. The reverse is a group party shot.

Curiosity: On the reverse of the cards, the Tenchi Muyo! logo at the top and the copyright notice at the bottom are printed using red and silver metal foil, respectively, but scan as black. If you know your optics, that'll tell you something about the construction of my scanner.

OAV Deck

This deck is based on artworks associated with the OAV series and related items (Mihoshi Special, Pretty Sammy OAVs, and drama CDs). Interesting that both Jokers are of Ryoko.

The style and construction of this deck are very similar to the Tenchi TV deck above. However, it only uses a single image per card, the images are from artworks rather than video captures, and the backs lack the metal foil print and Pioneer copyright notice.

Artbook Deck

This deck appears to be from a completely different manufacturer to the previous ones, having a totally different style, quality of construction, and packaging (a soft plastic box instead of the rather fragile hard plastic of the others).

There is one duplicate image (the 3 and 6 of spades) and one pair of cards showing slightly different parts of the same image.

The images are a mix of Tenchi Muyo TV and OAV, and Pretty Samy OAV, the actual images being scanned from artbooks and similar things rather than being from the shows themselves. There's also one Blue Seed card (6 of hearts), although it has the same reverse as all the other cards so it appears to be a production error rather than a stray card.

The images are of variable quality and mostly are rather blurry for my taste. As far as I know they are all old images.

I'm not sure which of these is my favourite, but I quite like the Joker (the other Joker shows Kiyone) and the look on Aeka's face in the 9 of Hearts is wonderful (it's from the first Pretty Sammy OAV).

The Ace of Clubs shows Ryoko playing a mean trick on Aeka. The characters that Ryoko stuck on Aeka's back say "DAI PAN" (literally "Big Bread", slang for "Big Breasts"). But dig that bikini... I have a poster of this scene, mwa-ha-hah!