Ember.

Post event sentiment run thru This to write my thoughts out and for those who wants to read after spending a week in LA hanging out with holders / team. Will ofc write the good and the bad. 📸 christopherdavila // ig Pulled up to the Azuki office — the lot was full, team was on-site grinding. It’s rare to find a squad this aligned, deep in the brand, building day in and day out for the future of Azuki and anime. I've seen team members come and go over the years and it's definitely a hard thing for the core team to balance and keep everything moving. At Anime Expo — we had smaller room for the panel featuring Gorō Taniguchi. Tatsuyuki Tanaka wasn't there because he wanted to lock in for episode 3 of the Anthology series - as bullish as you can be for the Anthology. Teaser looked great and definitely will be studied by the industry and hardcore anime fans. Primed to put Azuki in the limelight at the higher up of totem pole. About 70% turnout, with a mix of holders and a few fans in the crowd. It wasn’t huge, but it was intimate — and the presence of non-holders shows the IP interest is expanding beyond the bubble. Also worth noting: Crunchyroll approached Azuki to work on a collaborative piece for Anime Expo. One of the biggest anime platforms in the world actively recognizing what’s being built. As for the search engines, they're currently the first to pop up and @animecom being second if you look up Anime on Google. Things are looking up for @animecoin 📸 @FishxCD On the TCG side — I registered for the noon tournament during the event and got to test out the Alpha decks. Super polished. Mili-foam cutouts for the box, 50 cards in the premade deck, 8 boosters inside. The quality of the art and the wrapping for the boosters were really good. The gameplay felt overwhelming at first, but it clicked overtime — especially once you start playing around with Gate and Leader mix and match combos in the future. Fun to theory craft and optimize, even if each deck leans a bit linear for now. All holders lost to JCM's One Piece TCG Ringers - not sure if it was intentional for us to all get smoked and for them to win every Tourney Winner Token Card but they'll definitely spread the word about @AzukiTCG 🤨💀. Some explanation or thought process here would be nice. Made sure @JCM1117 's arm was massive here. The main event itself was packed. Execs from Dentsu and other partners were visibly tuned in. Everyone was having a good time, most attendees were ecstatic about Azuki’s event. The venue got so full, fire marshals had to step in. There truly ain’t no party like an Azuki party. Azuki Studio // Westbrook was announced last week. This lines Azuki up for Netflix, Hollywood connects, and speed on the anime production. The collaborations within the studio has patent to AI tools that would speed up how fast the Azuki IP can be published and new episodes and animation works. Most web3//crypto takes a few years for a trailer. Azuki can now spit out shows at record time than most anime series. Puts Azuki as something that's hard to replace or dethroned in NFTs or Anime brand proliferation for newer IPs. Next Azuki killer amirite heh. Animecoin and Azuki NFTs Toughest part of all this is the price. As most know I am balls to the walls when it comes to conviction bets, so if I die here I die here knowing I put my bags into something that's worth riding to zero (But hopefully not) AnimeCoin - there’s currently no recurring utility beyond during limited drops. No staking, no farming. But that also means: no inflation pressure. Most of the people who wanted out have already sold. At these levels, upside vastly outweighs risk for new entrants. If this rotates back up, it moves fast. There's some utility cases , culture coin case , and a hell of a ticker for most exchanges. Skies the limit. For the NFTs - It's in a really rough spot. A few whales still waiting to exit but majority has been cleaned out. There is also a BendDao wall that sits around 5 eth from the loans during TGE. But that doesn't really matter until we hit back to those prices. In the grand scheme — this is all nothing in the context of volume. CEX volume on AnimeCoin already dwarfs NFT action - by 99.5% when it moves. DEX and Onchain wallets are still the main users when it comes to buying NFTs. This one's harder to work around but I would think most would find the Azuki collection undervalued based on what they've build so far and the potential future that's coming. Also some arent aware Zagabond has been working with the @ethereum foundation and ofc @arbitrum team for animecoin. So expecting Vitalik to rock an Azuki isn't out the the door haha but definitely a harder task to tackle for the NFT Side. (Unless Chapter 2 gets a little more excitement or something that'll help boost morale of holders) End of day Azuki’s not sitting around waiting for meta shifts or the NFT meta to come back - As Seraph posted. They’re building across multiple verticals at once; betting on a moonshot from jpegs coming back would be copium, so now they’re expanding Azuki into the corners of the Anime world to find newer holders. My main thought right now (unfiltered) is their skin in the game vs mine - they're on a salary pay still even if our bags keeps going down. Me homeless vs them not homeless gamble - so it hurts when things go south. Sorry not sorry thoughts when prices go bad haha - I've also said this to Dem post Vegas mortem. 😂💀 Also by this thought - they're more incentivized for Anime to go up than Azuki (So probably buy anime dips) TL;DR Hate these current prices - Azuki / Anime good. It's a steep climb but it'll be a fun one. Also excited for the luxury watch retail collab + Azuki's biggest initiative this year. Also @animecoin // @arbitrum coded. Ikuzo.