In my opinion, unless they decide to phase out the classic ozora, there is no debate. Get both! But yeah, that's my only concern. The new shape looks rad, but I love my Classic ozora and I'd hate for it to go away.
I say get both as well, because every Kendama has something different to teach you as a player, be it unlocking new possibilities with stickier paint or a much cleaner shape, or gaining consistency from using a less preferred paint or /clunkier shape. Destroy All Damas.
No, other way round. 10 years from now we will be back a JKA standard. The JKA spent 30 years tweaking their specs to arrive at a kendama standard that was not too difficult and not too hard to play. Over that time they had bigger kens, bigger cups, swoops and square slip stops etc. The new Ozora REShape thing is because the JKA and Yamagata kobou have seen what western players currently want/like and is an opportunity for them to boost their coffers. As far as I'm aware the JKA is a non-profit and Yamagata Kobou probably run on pretty tight margins. The likes of KUSA, Sweets and Krom to name a few run on a different business model and although they all give a lot back to the community they ultimately need to make money. So new product, paint designs etc is the way to go. Bigger cups and sticky paint help the seasoned pros show off what a kendama can do better and also because they are easier to land tricks on, hold the attention of new players longer. That's how I see it. I'm probably way off the mark though.
Agreed, I love my Shift, but it's at the point where it's on the edge of being awkward to grip the tama when attempting a lunar and have your hand out of the way so you don't accidentally thumb the ken. That said I do hope Ozora widens their tama hole just a tad and have a bigger bevel from their classic shape. There's something to be said for having more precision to spike the tama, but I find being able to jam with little concern for precision more fun when I'm just jamming for myself.
@Jasper B., @Carlos Habbenero et al. let's see if we can drive this thread back to discussion on the Ozora Reshape. Maybe a new thread regarding the upcoming releases from KUSA could be created for discussion of those topics.
@goenKendama a quick rudimentary measure of my Prime pro mod and I’m getting pretty similar on the cup sizes. Can’t wait to get hold of one or two of these REshapes!
It's hard to know right now. Even though the game and toy are roughly 100 years old, I'd say kendama is in its infancy. I remember the mainstream deck shapes in the mid 80s when I started skateboarding. Decks were wide, period. Tails were clearly defined from noses because the noses were quite small. I remember doing nose grabs and my finger tips touched the base plate (and who even uses base plates under their trucks anymore?). There was an almost decade long transition into the nose being (approximately) equal in length to the tail. It took almost 15 years for the decks to thin out to modern standards. The thinning of the decks was mostly driven by the "death" of freestyle skateboarding which drove Rodney Mullen into the street scene. Mullen and fellow old school freestyler Steve Rocco became unexpected and unlikely company owners. These two drove the gradual decrease in board width closer to what they were used to from their early experiences. Hence the modern skateboard shape and its how it arose is an odd anomaly. It's an evolution of the traditional vert/pool decks of the 80 into today's standard. At the same time it's a devolution into an earlier well known shape resembling the classic freestyle decks of days gone by. Thinking by analogy on how kendama shapes are changing... getting bigger like vert decks did... or winding backwards as the modern shape has... I suspect it's going to take a few highly influential players/company owners, and more time to see where the "standard" kendama shape settles. That's my long winded two cents!
Anybody able to post pics/a list of the ozora reshape lineup (At KWC), possibly cop one that I like and ship it to me? I'll pay for it + shipping. Otherwise, when are they to be released in online shops?
They've said they've been waiting on the packaging but they will be at distributors soon. Probably more artistic than helpful but here's a pic from their table at KWC. Other than the ones above they had the JKA Festa colors too Black/Silver and Black/Gold. Also here's the one I've got the hots for but they only made 30 in colab with 430. Word on the grapevine is that they might release one of their own later on.
Yep Keyaki, hence the very intense difficulty I had to resist. I intentionally walked past it with my eyes cast elsewhere.
I need one of those Keyaki Fourthirty collabs! I'll even pay a little extra to anyone that can cop a couple for those of us who did not go. @goenKendama If you were able to ship it to me I would give you a little tip that you could use towards buying your own 430xozora. It may be difficult/expensive to ship all the way to Minnesota though. I don't think I'd be willing do any more than $5-$10 shipping + tip for the trouble.
I’ll post comparison pics later too with my shift since I just went to KWC. The cup size overall is very similar to the shift if not exactly the same. The reason why the base up looks so weird is because of the angle from the ring stall to the slip stop is different from the angle of the sword. Usually it’s close to parallel with each other but they went ahead and angled it a lot more (don’t ask me why because I don’t have an answer).
You should have hit up your MN brethren they just headed back today I think. Shipping from Tokyo is considerably more than $5-$10. Standard Airmail for 2kg starts at 2760 yen, EMS 4500.