ROBOT×LASERBEAM and the Hanafuda Cards of Weekly Jump

ROBOT×LASERBEAM Jump Hanafuda 2018 Magazine Bonus Card

The Manga Behind the Card

ROBOT×LASERBEAM is a golf manga by Miura Takahiro, serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump from 2017 to 2018 and collected into nine volumes. Golf is an uncommon subject for Jump — a magazine built on martial arts, pirates, and ninja — which made the series immediately distinctive. Miura Takahiro was already well-known to Japanese readers through ROOKIES, his baseball manga that ran in Jump from 1998 to 2003 and was later adapted into both a live-action drama series and a theatrical film. ROBOT×LASERBEAM marked his return to the magazine, bringing that same sports-manga intensity to the fairway.

The hanafuda card depicts a male golfer mid-swing, dressed in a white polo shirt, black trousers, and a black cap bearing the logo of SRIXON — the real Japanese golf equipment brand produced by Sumitomo Rubber Industries. His appearance, with tanned skin, black hair, and light-blue eyes, is consistent with descriptions of Ichinose Reo, the story’s protagonist, though this identification is based on visual analysis rather than confirmed documentation. Behind the figure, the card background shows dark green foliage and purple flowers — motifs that echo the plant-and-season imagery central to traditional hanafuda design.

Hanafuda, Jump Style

Hanafuda — literally “flower cards” — is a Japanese card game with origins in the Edo period. A standard deck contains 48 cards divided into twelve suits, each representing a month of the year through a specific plant or flower. The game is deeply embedded in Japanese culture; Nintendo, now globally famous for video games, actually began as a hanafuda manufacturer in 1889. In recent years, publishers and licensors have adapted the format to popular IP: manga and anime characters replace the traditional illustrations while botanical motifs are woven into the background artwork. The result is something that can be played as a card game but is equally suited to a display case.

This card belongs to Weekly Shonen Jump’s own take on that format. Jump Hanafuda sets typically feature characters from multiple ongoing or recent series, distributed as a bonus insert or reader incentive rather than a stand-alone retail product. The perforation marks visible on cards from this run suggest they were originally part of a larger printed sheet enclosed with the magazine or tied to a related purchase campaign. The exact number of cards in the full set and which other series appeared alongside ROBOT×LASERBEAM would require examining the original printed materials to confirm.

What Draws Collectors to This Card

Several things give this item a distinct place in any Jump or manga collection. Its distribution channel is part of the story: issued as a magazine bonus rather than a retail product, it never moved through ordinary retail networks, which limits how often it surfaces outside Japan. The hanafuda format itself also sets it apart from trading cards or bromides — for buyers outside Japan, it sits at a genuine crossroads between a centuries-old Japanese game and global manga culture. The SRIXON branding on the character’s cap introduces a sports-merchandise dimension that extends the card’s appeal beyond manga fandom alone. And because Miura Takahiro is the creator of ROOKIES — a series that reached Japanese television and cinemas — even a modest magazine bonus from ROBOT×LASERBEAM carries a clear creative lineage that many collectors find worth documenting.