How Tsukishima and Yamaguchi Ended Up on a Haikyuu Gum Card

Haikyuu!! Clear Card Gum 2 No.85 — Tsukishima and Yamaguchi (Ensky)

What This Card Actually Is

No.85 belongs to “Haikyuu!! Clear Card Gum 2,” a Japanese shokugan — food-toy — series produced by Ensky, a toy and licensed-goods manufacturer within the Bandai Namco group. Each pack contains a single hard-plastic transparent card printed with full-color character art, sold alongside a piece of gum. The clear material is the defining feature of the format: held up to light, the illustration reads differently from anything printed on standard cardboard, giving the card a visual quality that collectors in this category specifically seek out. This second series follows on from an earlier first installment, and the design carries branding for “Haikyuu!! TO THE TOP” at the bottom of the card — placing it firmly within the merchandise wave tied to the anime’s fourth season.

No.85 features Karasuno High School’s Kei Tsukishima and Tadashi Yamaguchi. On the card, Tsukishima is shown in his characteristic pose — pushing up his glasses — while Yamaguchi’s jersey number 12 is visible on his uniform.

The Franchise, the Season, and the Shokugan Tradition

Haikyuu!!, written by Haruichi Furudate, ran in Weekly Shonen Jump from 2012 to 2020, completing 402 chapters across 45 collected volumes. The Production I.G. anime adaptation ran across four seasons; the fourth, subtitled “TO THE TOP,” aired through 2020. A theatrical film, “Haikyuu!! The Dumpster Battle,” followed in 2024, renewing international attention to the franchise.

The shokugan format — the word combines the Japanese for “food” and “toy” — traces its roots to the 1970s and 1980s, with series like Bikkuriman stickers and Dragon Ball Carddass establishing the cultural template. The clear-card variation represents a more premium expression of that tradition: translucent plastic costs more to produce than cardboard, and the visual result is distinctive enough that the format occupies its own space within the collector market. In Japan, these products circulate through convenience stores, candy shops, and anime retail outlets. Outside Japan, official distribution is essentially nonexistent, making direct export and the Japanese secondhand market the main pathways for international buyers.

Tsukishima, Yamaguchi, and What Draws Fans to Them

Kei Tsukishima — blonde, bespectacled, and famously dry in his delivery — is one of Haikyuu!!’s central character studies. He enters the series detached from volleyball, and his development as a middle blocker, along with the shift in attitude that comes with it, runs through multiple seasons as a slow-burn arc. Tadashi Yamaguchi, his childhood friend, follows a parallel trajectory: he works at mastering the technically demanding jump floater serve, and his effort-driven growth makes him one of the series’ more quietly affecting supporting characters. The two are effectively inseparable within the story, and the fan community has long treated them as a unit — the “Tsukiyama” pairing — with sustained interest in art and merchandise featuring both together.

Haikyuu!! ranks consistently among the highest-rated sports anime on aggregate platforms like MyAnimeList, with a broad fanbase across North America, Europe, and Southeast Asia. The Tsukishima-Yamaguchi combination draws particular engagement in international fan communities. The translucent card format also has a practical appeal beyond the object itself: the photogenic quality of clear plastic lends itself to the kind of collection photography that circulates on social media, which is one reason this specific card style tends to attract fans who both collect and display Japanese merchandise.