One Piece Card Game gets a Kentaro Yabuki Nami card

The next One Piece Card Game booster set is putting a familiar face in the spotlight, with To Love-Ru and Black Cat creator Kentaro Yabuki drawing a new Nami card for ONE PIECE Heroines Edition vol.2 [EB-05]. The official product page identifies the card as an exclusive alt-art design, while the Japanese announcement reported by Oricon says Yabuki shared the news through his official account. ¹²

What is new in EB-05

The card is EB05-055, a Nami character card carrying Yabuki’s distinctive take on the Straw Hat navigator. The official image shows Nami in a sailor-style outfit, with a larger portrait of her face behind the foreground character art. It is a deliberately different look from the standard anime presentation, but it remains recognisably Nami through the orange hair, the Straw Hat Crew branding and the card’s nameplate. ¹

Bandai’s official product page says the card is part of a set built around female characters from the One Piece world. The page also lists a new Nico Robin leader card, returning heroines and six special-design SP cards, placing Yabuki’s Nami alongside a broader collection rather than treating it as a standalone release. The set is scheduled to become available on 30 October 2026 in the English product listing. ¹

The card’s gameplay text gives it the Wisdom attribute and a 5-cost value. Its effect lets a player with a Wisdom leader add up to one card from the top of their deck to the top of their Life cards, while its trigger allows a player with two or fewer Life cards to play it after trashing a card from their hand. Those details come from the official card image and are included here to distinguish the artwork announcement from a purely cosmetic collaboration. ¹

Oricon’s report says the illustration was introduced for the extra booster and that the official One Piece Card Game account described it as a newly drawn card by Yabuki. The report also recorded the enthusiastic online response, although the important news is the confirmed collaboration itself: this is an official product card, not fan art or an unannounced promotional sketch. ²

Why the collaboration matters

Yabuki is best known to many readers for To Love-Ru and Black Cat, so his involvement gives this particular Nami card an immediately recognisable authorial stamp. The official artwork leans into bright pinks, layered heart motifs and a close-up composition that makes the card feel more like a character illustration than a conventional product shot. It is also a useful example of how trading-card sets can turn a familiar franchise character into a meeting point for different manga styles without changing the underlying game identity.

The timing makes the card part of the wider EB-05 launch rather than a separate Yabuki collection. Players interested in the set will have to look for EB05-055 among the booster’s cards, and collectors will have both the card’s gameplay function and its illustrator credit to track. The official page does not describe the card as a separate guaranteed promotion, so it is safer to treat the Yabuki illustration as one of the set’s featured alt-art cards rather than promise a particular pull rate. ¹

The official trailer below introduces the wider Heroines Edition vol.2 release. It does not replace the product page as the source for EB05-055, but it provides the publisher’s own visual context for the set and confirms that the booster is being marketed as a major heroine-focused expansion. ³

Our opinion

This is a much better fit for EB-05 than a generic Nami reprint would have been. Yabuki’s illustration is visibly his own, but it does not lose the character beneath the crossover appeal: the orange hair, expressive pose and card framing all make the subject immediately readable. The official page also gives the announcement useful substance by pairing the art reveal with a real playable card and a wider set launch, rather than leaving collectors with nothing but a promotional image.

The one thing to keep in mind is that the online reaction is not the story’s main event. Excited comments can show why the image travelled, but the durable news is the confirmed EB05-055 card, its official illustrator credit and the 30 October release listed by Bandai. If the rest of the set maintains this level of visual variety, Heroines Edition vol.2 could become one of the more distinctive One Piece Card Game releases of the year.