How could a collection like Azukis fumble like it did with the Elementals? This is not the question. The real question was what they were looking to achieve from this poorly thought-out move. Money? Grow the "Garden"? We'll soon know.

We decided to show Azuki having an introspective dialogue with its fellow Elemental counterpart, an existential dialogue that ends in now answer and mostly verbal anger. I had a fair idea of what the most important question would be that's raised: "Weren't Azukis enough?" There were 10k of them excluding the Beans, and yet they needed to "grow" the Garden. Why? I didn't see any other reason but the fact that they were in need of some liquidity that they could then squeeze out via CB. And that's exactly what they did.

If anybody lost in this Garden battle it's neither the Elementals nor the Azukis, it's the users who were fooled into believing that this would be another great collection that provides another great opportunity at making new money.

The dialogues were tailored around this dilemma and were put through an online Japanese text-speech app. Thankfully they came out pretty decent, for the emotions that are at play. Next I went on to create the elemental backgrounds that could be animated as there was little animation to be done on the characters.

Mixed with some great music, and AE FX the artwork was ready to be shipped straight into the Garden. We have to extend our thanks to the anonymous holder of the Azuki that gave us their support and permission in using the character for the artwork.

What we are trying to do is not put the project to shame, but to create a dialogue between users and the producers about we can grow projects and the space hand-in-hand.