Pro Yakyuu AI Fighters

I made a trade with Dani recently and picked up a couple cards from the "Pro Yakyuu AI Fighters" set that came out in late April.  This set is a little unusual in that all the cards in the set feature photos of the players in street clothes.  Pro Yakyuu AI is a magazine that's pretty much aimed at baseball fangirls - it carried a survey of "loveliest/dreamiest smile" in a recent issue for example.  The set itself has 57 cards in the base set but only 9 players are in it - there's nine cards each for Shoehei Ohtani, Takuya Nakashima, Yuya Taniguchi, and Kenshi Sugiya, six cards each for Haruki Nishikawa and Ryo Ishikawa,  and three each for Kensuke Kondo, Shingo Ishikawa and Hiromi Oka.  There's some insert cards available as well as some "privilege" cards but I don't think there are any autograph or memorabilia cards associated with the set.

Dani had bought a box when it came out and tweeted out a number of pictures of the cards.  She sent me two cards - Yuya Taniguchi (card #26) and Kenshi Sugiya (card #35).  Here's the front and back of each card:

You can see that it looks like some of the backs of the cards form a puzzle.

As always, Jambalaya has images of all the cards (at least the fronts anyway).

I'm kind of amused that this set has apparently inspired BBM to include a 10 card subset in the Fighters team set featuring a number of Fighters players in street clothes.  I think I will stop being amused by it if it actually develops into a serious trend though, as this is not really my cup of tea.

But I do need to thank Dani for making the trade and sending me the cards!