I’ve been warning everyone for months now – we are going to have to talk about Waifu trading cards at some point. While Naruto cards are certainly what props this hobby up – I even found a shop right near my home that sells them — Waifu cards are where the really rabid fan base is. There are multiple retail stores I could get to within 30 minutes that sell these cards. Walls and wall covered in these cards. Lines of people, let’s be honest 99% male, waiting outside for a spot in the store. This isn’t something I can pretend doesn’t exist.
While the content in this post is largely NSFW, especially the links I’m sending you too – do not click those at work. I’m going to try to be respectful here and only show what would be shown on like a cable drama show or something, not full on porn.
The Box
I don’t own many of these, 3 total boxes. Two of those boxes are mainline Goddess Story (Warning, very NSFW link) releases. I got those early on because I knew I’d need to write about them at some point. But then, in the weeks that followed as I was building up my collection I came across this set – Beast Mother, it’s a cat lady set! I love cats, so if I have to talk about these I might as well use the cat-related one. I ordered that completely on it’s own and the vendor sent it to me packed tight in it’s own little box, wrapped in yellow tape.
Once opened, that actual card box isn’t very big – but it is higher quality then like a 1 or 2-yuan box would be. I bought this for $24.68 from Goddess Story Card store, and AliExpress shop I use for obscure stuff and then of course these things. As you can see there are multiple entire vendors dedicated to waifu cards, just like I’ve got multiple retail stores around me dealing in them. These things are popular, like sell out in a few hours popular.
With the existence of internet pornography it seems weird that products like this exist. In Asia though, and especially in rural, and even suburban China there are few PCs, especially in private homes. So video and print pornography is still sold heavily. These products fit into the sales channel, they are sold to people who can’t get access to or can’t risk using the internet for porn. It helps that these also usually feature the most advanced printing techniques and highest quality stock and artwork, but just understand this is basically the PornHub of trading cards.
The Set
As I said the box is high quality, but it isn’t flashy. The artwork is excellent, and there is a subtle foil texture over the entire surface – but this isn’t a glitter bomb like those 5-yuan SCP boxes. The sides have some excellent foil lettering too, these read “The most Charming” and then “Beast Mother”. I love how the lettering for beast mother has little cat ears and a heart on it.
The back of the box is more interesting, first check out that artwork, it’s subtle and printed over but it looks so cool. I hope I get a card with that one on it. Speaking of labels, we’ve got them in 4 languages here: English, Chinese, Japanese and Korean. That’s quite a mix and shows the intended wider market for this across Asia vs the primarily China only products we usually see.
Note how the Chinese version of the label is licensed differently, this is not a children’s product anymore so it’s licensed differently, we don’t have government approvals on this – lol. That doesn’t mean it’s illegal, vendors are selling it from inside China after all, this is more of the kind of thing you don’t want to be caught with in public. What would actually happen to you is largely up to whoever catches you, but these are gray area products in general. Don’t expect official Disney Princess waifu cards any time soon, although those would sell out very fast.
The Cards
As for the cards, what is a waifu card? A waifu card is just an art trading card that features an image of woman, typically in a sexy outfit or position, or both, or no outfit at all. These are primary suggestive, it’s pretty rare to find total nudity on anything produced in China, so these are more like bathing suits and nightgowns.
In this set you get 10 packs for you 25$, each pack has 3 cards in them, so that’s priced up in the 10-yuan range. This set doesn’t have that many cards so 10 packs is actually pretty good. There are 3 chase SSP cards, and then 6 SPs – these are the only borderline nudity cards from what I’ve seen. 9 ZRs which are like Mech lady cards, then 4 multi-card panels where you put 3 URs side by side to make a big image. The sets rounds out with 18 SSRs, 27 SRs and 48 Rs. So you would need a few boxes to reach complete, but not 100s.
Alright so these aren’t so bad, I was worried I’d need to black a bunch of stuff out but really, I’ve seen children’s anime with more revealing stuff then this lol. I don’t know if the women on these cards are from a specific show, I didn’t recognize any of the 3 I’ve seen so far. The art is nice, and the cards are that same super high quality as the Gundam cards are, so that justifies the price a bit. The R I received is this card #91, there is no character name or blood type or anything else. The back is kind of cool, I do like cats.
Next up is an SR, this card gets a big naughtier but still nothing you wouldn’t see in every single One Piece episode ever. I’m not 100% sure what I’m seeing here, but as I was staring at the blue one’s boobs I noticed she has a faint image of like a second shirt there. Like maybe this had different clothes and it was erased and edited? Or drawn over? I’m really not sure what that is, the green one has it two with a heart up by her neck line. The card back is different, but maybe that’s just for the higher rarity.
My final card was a UR but a bit of a disappointment. This is one of the 3 across puzzle cards, you need all 3 to complete it. There are 4 sets, so the chances of me getting the right 3 to finish this from 1 box are very small. The back then has a more colorful paw and a puzzle motif to it.
Conclusions
Well, there you have it. Our 18th box was indeed an 18+ product, Beast Mother. Not anywhere near as pornographic as we feared/hoped, but still an interesting addition to our collection. The high quality of the printing and the artwork make these worth collecting outside the subject matter. I don’t intend to review a lot of product like this, but I’ve had my eye on that Monster Girl Encyclopedia box for a while now… it’s just that it cost 40$ which I haven’t been able to stomach yet.
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