Kamakiri’s 2003 One Piece Carddass and the Skypiea Arc

Kamakiri One Piece Carddass EX Hyper Battle Card, CS-C25 (2003)

A Trading Card From Bandai’s Carddass EX Hyper Battle Series

This is a Bandai trading card from the Carddass EX Hyper Battle series, issued with a 2003 copyright date. The card code is CS-C25, and it carries a Normal rarity — meaning it was part of the standard distribution rather than a chase variant. Printed on the card face are game statistics: POWER 500 and DAMAGE 1, along with an ability named “Master of Sword and Spear.” The design follows the conventions of Japanese cards from this era: a character illustration framed by a weathered brown border, small icons and a gold emblem across the top, and a Japanese text box along the bottom.

Kamakiri and the World of Skypiea

Kamakiri is a warrior of the Shandia people, the tribe at the center of One Piece’s Skypiea arc — the storyline spanning roughly volumes 24 through 32 of Eiichiro Oda’s manga, with its anime adaptation running across 2003 and into 2004 on Fuji TV. The Shandia carry a history stretching back 400 years: generation after generation, they have fought to reclaim their sacred homeland in the sky. Kamakiri is one of the warriors at the heart of that fight.

Visually, he is immediately recognizable: muscular build, reddish goggles, a pink feathered ruff around his neck, and a mohawk. His fighting style combines spears with bladed weapons — the dual-weapon approach that gives his card ability its name. In the story, he begins as an adversary to Luffy’s crew before the two sides eventually find themselves fighting alongside each other. He is a supporting character rather than a series regular, which means merchandise centered on him is less common than cards featuring Luffy, Zoro, or other mainstay characters. The Skypiea arc itself stands apart from much of the series in tone: a civilization floating in the clouds, shaped by centuries of conflict and mythology, with an atmosphere that is distinctly fantastical even by One Piece standards.

Carddass, Vending Machines, and 2000s Anime Culture

Carddass is a trading card brand Bandai has operated since 1988. Its original model was the vending machine: cards were sold one at a time through dedicated machines placed in toy shops, convenience stores, and game centers, typically at 20 to 50 yen per pull. This gave the format a casual, everyday quality distinct from boxed trading card games. Collecting meant feeding coins into a machine and seeing what came out.

The Carddass EX Hyper Battle line was a variant that layered structured game statistics onto the usual character-illustration format, allowing cards to be used in head-to-head play. Bandai had been producing One Piece Carddass titles since shortly after the anime launched in 1999, and by the time the Skypiea arc was airing in 2003, the series was well established. The timing of this card’s copyright aligns directly with that broadcast window.

More than two decades on, well-preserved examples of these cards are harder to come by. They were printed for everyday use by children rather than archival storage, and vending machine distribution did not favor careful handling. It is also worth noting that today’s One Piece Trading Card Game, also produced by Bandai, is an entirely separate product line with no compatibility with this series — the two exist in different eras of the franchise’s collectible history.