Over the past two weeks my life’s free time had been almost entirely con­sumed by pho­to­shop, as the Tarot Project is finally com­ing together. I only have three things to say on the mat­ter — I’ve never taken pho­to­shop to be such seri­ous busi­ness before; I can finally say I’m more than just a noob to pho­to­shop thanks to the picto-editing skills I’ve acquired; and I haven’t felt so proud of my goods for a long time.

Before any­one asks “why all girls?”, it’s to cut down on the com­pe­ti­tion between char­ac­ter and more con­sis­tency in art style. Not to men­tion — the deck is cuter this way.

I might think about mak­ing a bishie/GAR deck later, maybe, if I feel like throw­ing away another week+ of free time.

Key­words: Zero, Blank
My Choice: Chii [Chobits]
Hon­or­able Men­tions: Sakura [Tsub­asa Chronicles][Everything CLAMP]

Con­trary to first impres­sions that the title gives off, the fool implies igno­rance rather than fool­ish­ness. It best applies to a char­ac­ter with a mostly blank slate who is ‘being released into the world’. I don’t think any­one can even com­pare to Chii from Chobits on this, whom started lit­er­ally blank with no mem­ory and a child­ish per­son­al­ity filled with curios­ity and a few prime direc­tives. She had to be taught on every­thing, start­ing from the lan­guage, and her per­spec­tives devel­oped entirely from there.

Key­words: Energy, Cre­ativ­ity, Con­vic­tion, Ini­tia­tive, Objec­tiv­ity
My Choice: Mis­aka Mikoto [To Aru Majutsu no Index][To Aru Kagaku no Rail­gun]
I Call This Card: The Doer

With a goal to accom­plish, the ini­tia­tive to get started, and the strength and resolve to carry it through, the Magi­cian is amongst the top pick­ings for ideal main char­ac­ter or pri­mary sup­port char­ac­ter per­son­al­ity in a plot-driven story. In Index, Mikoto may have been caught between a rock and a hard place and laid unde­cided until the last moment. But in rail­gun (I expect the anime to fol­low the manga), she takes the reins of the main char­ac­ter and all the priv­i­leges that comes with it, solv­ing the case solo with an inge­nious all-out use of her resources despite the fact she’s with nei­ther law-enforcement groups, just an over­pow­ered civil­ian bystander.

Key­words: Know­ing­ness, Intu­ition, Seren­ity, Intro­spec­tion, Rela­tion­ship
My Choice: Kinomoto Sakura [Card­cap­tor Sakura]
I Call This Card: The Shoujo Lead

Many of the best shoujo manga main char­ac­ters have emerged out of this mold. A serene naivety and a girl’s intu­ition sets the foun­da­tion, and through the course of the story they develop an under­stand­ing of them­selves and the world around them, as well as set­tling into that oblig­a­tory heart­warm­ing rela­tion­ship. Sakura, the quin­tes­sen­tial mahou shoujo, is cer­tainly amongst the pio­neers of this role.

By the way, Moonknives’ draw­ings are soooooooooo pretty~!

Key­words: Mater­nal, Com­fort, Fer­til­ity, Desire, Sat­is­fac­tion
My Choice: Nagi [Kan­nagi]
I Call This Card: The Mother
Hon­or­able Men­tions: Minase Akiko [Kanon]

Kan­nagi gives us plenty of imagery on Nagi the spoiled free­loader, but only tid­bits on her other, true self — Nagi, care­taker of the land. Shinto God­dess Nagi is one whom fos­ters and com­forts the crit­ters and souls of her domain, filled with mater­nal benev­o­lence and com­pas­sion. Mean­while, Nagi’s more phys­i­cal and less spir­i­tual self pos­i­tively lives off desire and sat­is­fac­tion, show­ing that other side of her­self as a pos­si­ble inner per­sona of the goddess.

Key­words: Sta­bil­ity, Author­ity, Dis­ci­pline, Tra­di­tion, Struc­ture
My Choice: Saber [Fate/stay night]

There was no con­tender to this card from the start as the Emperor marks the very essence of Saber, both fig­u­ra­tively and lit­er­ally. A dis­ci­plined indi­vid­ual who struc­tured her entire being around her ideals, Saber became a shin­ing bea­con of author­ity in one of the dark­est hours of his­tory. Even more grounded than her ideal of the King is her per­spec­tive as a Knight, car­ry­ing on the tra­di­tion of Chivalry (at least the honor part, not quite the courtship). The only thing she lacked slightly was sta­bil­ity, as she doubted her­self and her pil­lar of per­sonal ideals had been shaken far more than once, espe­cially by Rider (Iskandr) of Fate/Zero. But thanks to Shi­rou in Fate route, Saber was finally able to lay the past to rest and move on to her eter­nal dream in Avalon.

Saber Lily is totally still the same char­ac­ter. Also, my fig­ure arrived last week­end — pics soon.

Key­words: Knowl­edge, Con­ser­vatism, For­mal­ity, Matu­rity, Tra­di­tion
My Choice: Oga­sawara Sachiko [Maria-sama ga Miteru]
I Call This Card: The Mentor

The hiero­phant is the pin­na­cle of a stern and con­ser­v­a­tive edu­ca­tor of wis­dom, be it a par­ent, an older sib­ling, or a men­tor. While I’m not exactly huge into Marim­ite, Honya’s sug­ges­tion of her fits the image per­fectly, with excep­tion to the yuri and dis­dain of men of course. But the series’ genre aside, Sachiko’s teach­ings on being the proper and ele­gant lady cer­tainly comes to mind, paint­ing a strik­ing and vivid pic­ture of tra­di­tional education.

Key­words: Pas­sion, Affin­ity, Rela­tion­ship, Doubt, Temp­ta­tion
My Choice: Sheryl Nome & Ranka Lee [Macross Fron­tier]
I Call This Card: The Love Poly­gon
Hon­or­able Men­tions: Hayase Mit­suki & Suzu­miya Haruka [Kimi ga Nozomu Eien]

The Lovers arcana is the def­i­n­i­tion of romance love-polygon drama, where chem­istry and pas­sion exists side-by-side to fuel doubt and inse­cu­rity and drive the story through char­ac­ter rela­tion­ships. The most notable of these series as of late is Macross Fron­tier, where Sheryl and Ranka bat­tle for sec­ond place in Alto-hime’s heart with their songs (first place will always be the open skies). Although, Sheryl fits this posi­tion far more than Ranka, who seems to be more of an imouto arche­type with a teenage crush on their per­son of inspi­ra­tion. How­ever, amidst the doubts the two were able to cap­i­tal­ize on their affin­ity to over­come their jeal­ousy, bring­ing an equi­lib­rium to the tri­an­gle by the end. That’s cer­tainly some­thing Kimi­nozo fans (whom are still war­ring) can’t say.

Key­words: Honor, Con­vic­tion, Asser­tion, Impul­sive­ness, Inflex­i­bil­ity
My Choice: Shana [Shaku­gan no Shana]
I Call This Card: The Tsun­dere
Hon­or­able Men­tions: Louise Françoise de la Val­lière [Zero no Tsukaima], Aisaka Taiga [Toradora]

Resolved and active, yet pride­ful and inflex­i­ble, the Char­iot marks all the traits of a trade­mark straight­for­ward tsun­dere in one con­ve­nient pack­age. Shana is a prime exam­ple of this, a cru­sader of worldly bal­ance whom cuts the mid­dle ground between mild and extreme tsun-tsun (espe­cially Louise whose in the domain of being pos­i­tively sadis­tic) with a healthy dose of dere~dere, all the while dis­play­ing absolute con­vic­tion for her occu­pa­tion as a Flame Haze.
It should be noted that tsun­deres with more adapt­abil­ity (e.g. Tohsaka Rin, Mis­aka Mikoto) have a tends to fit the Magi­cian arcana more, leav­ing the Char­iot for those with less intel­li­gence cre­ativ­ity and flexibility.

Key­words: Impar­tial­ity, Objec­tiv­ity, Analy­sis, Ratio­nal­ity, Deci­sion
My Choice: Lafiel [Crest of the Stars][Banner of the Stars]
I Call This Card: Lone-Wolf/Warrior
Hon­or­able Men­tions: Tabitha Orleans [Zero no Tsukaima], Tear Grants [Tales of the Abyss]

The com­bi­na­tion of being imper­sonal and objec­tive marks this arcana as the mold in describ­ing those cold, mission-driven types, espe­cially the ones with robotic ratio­nal­ity and blunt­ness. In mod­ern fic­tion writ­ing, these char­ac­ters always develop bonds of cama­raderie as the story pro­gresses. But even with the onset of emo­tional inter­ac­tion, they are still the ones whose logic remain firmly in con­trol when the story hits its cli­max. An Abu by nature whose race is best known for their detached and cal­cu­lat­ing demeanor, Lafiel exem­pli­fies this even more as her Ruler-to-be forces upon her absolute objec­tiv­ity in all deci­sion mak­ing. She may be closely attached to Jinto, but she cer­tainly won’t hes­i­tate to leave the planet he’s dying on when logic and neces­sity calls upon it — even if she must shed tears (a sin for Abu roy­alty) in fear for his life when she returns.
I really wish I could find a good, clear shot pic­ture of an Empire of Abh navy ves­sel for this card, be it the Bas­roil Assault Frigate or Admi­ral Spoor’s Red Patrol Cruiser.

Key­words: Soli­tude, Reflec­tion, Philo­soph­i­cal, Under­stand­ing, Guid­ance
My Choice: Naka­hara Mis­aki [Wel­come to N.H.K]
Hon­or­able Men­tions: C.C. [Code Geass]

I would call this the ‘Wise Old Man’, but char­ac­ters of this arche­type today are not nec­es­sar­ily old, and often con­tains a gap­ing hole between all that wis­dom. They’ll still serve as a guide for the lead­ing char­ac­ters, but the influ­ence no longer flows one-sidedly. Mis­aki gets the spot­light from me not because she fits the card any bet­ter than C.C, but because she leaves a far more impres­sion­able image. At the start we find her a com­pas­sion­ate guid­ance coun­selor — still an ama­teur, but with a deep drive for philo­soph­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal under­stand­ing. It’s not until later does the truth sur­face: that she’s every bit as messed up, if not even more, than Satou (her patient) is and requires just as much Hermit-help as she offers.

Key­words: Oppor­tu­nity, Des­tiny, Cycle, Devel­op­ment, Sur­prise
My Choice: Furude Rika & Hanyuu [Hig­urashi no Naku Koro ni]
Hon­or­able Men­tions: Suzu­miya Haruhi [The Melan­choly of Haruhi Suzumiya]

As much as Haruhi may attempt to match it, with Haruhi-tards argu­ing so, Hig­urashi def­i­nitely exem­pli­fies the ulti­mate use of Fate, Des­tiny, and the For­tune card itself. Here our hero and hero­ines are trapped in an end­lessly repeat­ing cycle of hor­rific deaths, in which only the two lolis (nippa~!) com­pre­hend the sit­u­a­tion and must strive hope­lessly to defeat the antag­o­nists’ schemes. It wasn’t until the umpteenth cycle did they finally seize the day through the power of hope and team­work and man­age con­sec­u­tive suc­cess­ful sneak attacks upon the final boss. Well played Sev­enth Expan­sion! Bravo!!!

Key­words: Con­trol, Patience, Sta­bil­ity, Dis­ci­pline, Gen­tle­ness
My Choice: Shi­rakawa Kotori [Da Capo]
I Call This Card:
Hon­or­able Men­tions: Sak­agami Tomoyo [Clannad]

The strength arcana rep­re­sents the ideal, almost-perfect men­tal­ity that I wish I had. These are the char­ac­ters who have truly mas­tered them­selves, while main­tain­ing the sense of com­pas­sion and duty to make Con­fu­cious proud. Da Capo’s eter­nal god­dess Shi­rakawa Kotori comes in at the head of this cat­e­gory. Her one true love may not return her affec­tions, but Kotori’s care of Juu­nichi, fol­lowed sub­se­quently by her vol­un­tary step­ping down upon Nemu’s return, had cer­tainly touched the hearts of view­ers every­where. Yes, it denied a good romance-drama sce­nario, but it also gained the sym­pa­thy of the audi­ence (even the Nemu-followers) and pre­served her per­fec­tion for eternity.

Key­words: Accep­tance, Non­ac­tion, Con­formism, Con­tem­pla­tion, Sur­ren­der
My Choice: Matou Sakura [Fate/stay night]
I Call This Card: The Defeatist

The Hanged Man is the exact oppo­site of the Magi­cian. It is the pes­simist, the defeatist, the fatal­ist, who allowed them­selves to be taken by the worst of fate with­out fight­ing back. Sakura per­son­i­fies this trait in Fate/stay night’s truest and most touch­ing arc — Heaven’s Feel. The fact she sur­ren­dered to the dark­ness while Shi­rou was bet­ting his very being on the line may have made me rage, but her hor­rific past nev­er­the­less drew enough sym­pa­thy for me to for­give her.
At this moment, I’m really glad I did this card set on hero­ines so I didn’t have to rage over Shinji Ikari (Neon Gen­e­sis Evangelion).

Key­words: Con­clu­sion, Loss, Inescapable, Trans­for­ma­tion
My Choice: Chise [Saishuu Heiki Kanojo]
Hon­or­able Men­tions: Kamio Mis­uzu [AIR]

By far the worst card to draw, the death arcana rep­re­sents inescapable tragedy. Saikano is by far the sad­dest anime series I can imag­ine. Every episode, from the first to the last, was unde­ni­ably tragic. Every char­ac­ter was brought out with poten­tial, seiz­ing the audience’s hearts (be it a good or bad way), before being dragged to their tragic fate. They fought against it, they tried, and they failed against the inevitabil­ity. Chise fits the card even more than other tragic heroes/heroines as the story focused on her slow trans­for­ma­tion into a weapon and the grad­ual loss of her humanity.

Key­words: Equi­lib­rium, Har­mony, Syn­the­sis, Recov­ery, Tran­scen­dence
My Choice: Nun­nally Lam­per­ouge [Code Geass]
I Call This Card: The Peace­maker
Hon­or­able Men­tions: Mihoko [Saki]

The Tem­per­ance card rep­re­sents the saintly char­ac­ters capa­ble of link­ing opposed fac­tions by the vir­tual of their kind­ness. I’ll put Nun­nally up on this, for her blind­ness has given her the abil­ity to see into people’s souls, bring­ing forth the benev­o­lence that gave her strength. She became a gov­er­nor who strove to bridge the gap between the Bri­tan­ni­ans and the Japan­ese. She will­ingly sought mar­tyr­dom, tak­ing sins upon her­self, in order to return peace to the world. Then, thanks to her onii-sama, she man­age to become a sym­bol of global unity by the series’ end.
My first choice of this would actu­ally be Mihoko due to her het­er­chro­mia. But good, iso­lated art­works of her are hard to find.

Key­words: Obses­sion, Anx­i­ety, Temp­ta­tion, Pes­simism, Anger
My Choice: Fuyou Kaede [Shuf­fle!]
I Call This Card: The Yan­dere
Hon­or­able Men­tions: Ryu­uguu Rena [Hig­urashi], Kaname Chi­dori [Full­metal Panic]

The devil is a nat­ural card to describe the typ­i­cal obses­sion and/or para­noia that dri­ves a Yan­dere towards vio­lence. My selec­tion for this is dear Kaede. She’s almost the per­fect wife in a tra­di­tional social sense. Yet, she’s also laden with an exces­sive amount of bag­gage, includ­ing a full set of inse­cu­ri­ties, her obses­sive devo­tion to Rin, and her ten­dency for vio­lent out­bursts. All of this caused her to men­tally break down in the worst way pos­si­ble when her best friend Asa back­stabs takes Rin from her. Poor, poor Kaede.

Key­words: Chaos, Cri­sis, Down­fall, Dis­il­lu­sion, Rev­e­la­tion
My Choice: Tsukimiya Ayu [Kanon]
Hon­or­able Men­tions: Hayase Mit­suki [Kimi ga Nozomu Eien]

The Tower rep­re­sents cli­matic chal­lenges of the most dra­matic kind — when a well-crafted but illu­sional real­ity col­lapses, reveal­ing the dire cat­a­stro­phe hid­den under­neath. In a sense, it’s almost an abstrac­tion of the KEY Cry­ing Game for­mula. Ayu’s story from Kanon is prob­a­bly the best and most lit­eral exam­ple of this: when Yuuichi even­tu­ally finds out that Ayu is but a dream from a past cri­sis, it dis­il­lu­sions his joy on find­ing the love of his life and sparks a rev­e­la­tion which hurls his world into chaos.

Key­words: Joy, Seren­ity, Opti­mism, Trust, Gen­eros­ity
My Choice: Nia Tep­pelin [Ten­gen Toppa Gur­ren Lagann]
Hon­or­able Men­tions: Suzumi Tamao [Straw­berry Panic], Yumemiya Arika [Mai Otome]

The Star arcana is a wish­ing star, one that brings joy and hope. No one could per­son­ify this one bet­ter than Nia from Gur­ren Lagann. Kind and peace­ful by nature, Nia is an end­less opti­mist who pos­i­tively extrudes hap­pi­ness and has a pre­pos­ter­ous amount of trust in Simon. With some­one like that pour­ing self-confidence into him, Nia gives Simon the very boost he needed to not only to get over his brother’s death but lit­er­ally drills his way into the heav­ens. BEST. SUPPORTING. CHARACTER. EVER!

Key­words: Fan­tasy, Anx­i­ety, Decep­tion, Fear
Prime Can­di­date: Cross Yuuki [Vam­pire Knight]
Run­ner Up: Shin­dou Chi­hiro [ef], Ori­hara Kozue [Chaos;Head]

In many ways, the Moon card par­al­lels the Tower arcana, except it accen­tu­ates upon the illu­sion and the anx­i­ety that builds up before shat­ter­ing the mirage, rather than the dis­il­lu­sion­ment and rev­e­la­tion that comes after­wards. I picked Yuuki to dis­play its con­strast from Ayu’s Tower. Whereas Ayu’s arc in Kanon cli­maxed after Yuuichi’s rev­e­la­tion, focus­ing mostly on his emo­tion tur­moil, Yuuki’s story focused on build­ing up to the moment of awak­en­ing itself. In my opin­ion, it was Yuuki’s dis­tress and suf­fer­ing prior that seized the high­light of that par­tic­u­lar arc, as it slowly unrav­eled the lay­ers of con­spir­acy that grants Vam­pire Knight one of its finest traits.

Key­words: Joy, Opti­mism, Energy, Assur­ance, Splen­dor
My Choice: Takamichi Nanoha [Mahou Shoujo Lyri­cal Nanoha]
I Call This Card: The Mahou Shoujo
Hon­or­able Men­tions: Kurusug­awa Himeko [Kan­nazuki no Miko], Aoi Nag­isa [Straw­berry Panic]

Being “the Sun to another’s Moon” is an old lit­er­ary descrip­tion that epit­o­mizes the Sun arcana. This card embod­ies the class of Mag­i­cal Girl char­ac­ters with their defin­ing traits of being open, ener­getic, and opti­mistic — a bea­con of light and hope to every­one around them. Those of the Star arcana inevitably brings change for the bet­ter to other, defin­ing and bright­en­ing their lives just as the Sun does for the Moon. Out of all the Mahou Shoujo, I have to claim that Nanoha and her befriend­ing cre­ates the most per­fect anal­ogy to this card, as her will­ful but car­ing nature con­tinue to con­vert each sea­son of vil­lians to life-long friends and diehard comrades.

Key­words: Judg­ment, Rebirth, Abso­lu­tion, Rebirth, Hope
My Choice: Ichi­nose Kotomi [Clannad]

As one of the cards truest to its name, the Judg­ment arcana rep­re­sents a reset, typ­i­cally by aton­ing from a sin­ful past to face a brighter future. I could prob­a­bly have picked a more fit­ting char­ac­ter from Neon Gen­e­sis Evan­ge­lion, but I set­tled on Clannad’s Kotomi, as her entire story revolved around her mak­ing amends with a dread­ful past. Thank­fully, with the help of Tomoya and that old gen­tle­men, Kotomi man­ages to for­give her­self and bring both direc­tion and mean­ing back into her life.

Key­words: Ful­fill­ment, Accom­plish­ment, Inte­gra­tion
My Choice: Furukawa Nag­isa [Clannad]

This is a hard one to give to a char­ac­ter, as The World is a card for com­ple­tion. In other words, the char­ac­ter rep­re­sents a gain, or sim­ply one given life, only at the end of a story after accom­plish­ing all the chal­lenges. The only one my friends and I man­aged to think of is Nag­isa, whom returned for the true end only after Tomoya and Ushio man­aged to gather enough hap­pi­ness to grant a mir­a­cle and revert their tragic fates.

That’s all~ Will make ban­ners later.

Pos­si­bly Related Posts

• Major Arcana and the Dou­ble Cycle of Life: a Clan­nad Approach
• 2010 Spring Anime Pre­view Thoughts
• The Yan­dere Ori­gin in Psychology

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