Sharona Antonipillai

Influence - South Asian TCG

The concept of my thesis is finding a way to combine my South Asian culture and anime. Through different explorations, I’ve decided to deliver that concept through a personal lens.One thing from my childhood that stuck out from the impact of anime was Trading Card Games (TCG). There were so many anime that created TCG of all the creatures and characters in their shows, and the idea came to me that one way to combine anime and my culture was to create TCGs. Although I don’t encounter creatures in the same way these anime characters do, I encounter a lot of tropes that have become common stereotypes encountered in my relatable to other South Asians. I turned them into the subjects of my TCG.Although they aren’t anything new, dating back to as early as the 1800’s, TCG are making their rounds in popularity again due to the pandemic. I found TCG to be a relevant piece for my thesis to create as a commentary to how many products are becoming popular from South Asian origin, ingredients you find in a regular South Asian household. Anime is also growing in popularity again. Things that I grew up experiencing for being associated with all that as lame or gross. It all connects back to a subjects growing in popularity.The deciding factor I looked at to create rankings of my cards are the influence they hold over the other, the advantages and disadvantages. The types of cards in my game are Attack/Monster, Trap and Spell cards.For the back of my cards I wanted to create a design on the back of the card that says something about the content of the front of the cards going to be South Asian related. I decided to make it look like gold jewelry as it is one of the most important values to my culture. Each card comes from my own personal experience of my culture. The intention of my Trading Card Game is to be collected, in a similar way to the original TCG's back when they first started selling in packs of bubble gums for sport cards. Except my South Asian twist is to sell them in packets of bindis/pottus as a collectors items with a similar price bracket.