If you're wanted to know how this merge between Anime and Tarot started, it started with a simple question: What number is the Moon on the Tarot deck?. A schoolmate of mine happen to have a tarot deck so I wanted to ask her this question because I wanted to make an image of my favorite character, Sailormoon, on a tarot card. She promised me to bring it the next day, but I became impatient when continued to break her promise. She did kept her promise, but already too late after I found out about the Tarot on the internet and a reference book to answer my question. Not only did I find out about the Moon's number, but also the rest of the Major Arcana.

      It was March 1999 when I thought of the deck. I selected anime characters (and three non-anime personalities) to represent the cards besed not only on the meanings of the cards but also what I obviously see and those what I thoroughly see. Naturally, I selected characters that have a large influence in me at the time, not on the most popular anime in the world at the time. I admit that some of those anime are actually the ones I hate, but they still, in my opinion, are good on their spots. I printed their images in black ink and pasted them on 11 ½-sized index cards, cut into halves (two of them, by the way, used to be my research cards). That started Assorted Anime Tarot (Major Arcana only), which not only included popular cartoons like Sailormoon, Ranma ½, and Dragon Ball Z, but also there non-anime personalities: MTV Asia VJ Sarah Sechan (I later replaced her with fellow VJ, Jamie Aditya), the wheel of the game show Wheel of Fortune, and the Undertaker, the popular pro wrestler from the World Wrestling Federation (now World Wrestling Entertainment).

      While I already made the AAT website under the Cartoon Network Akazukin Cha Cha homepage, I was already tinkering the idea of putting anime characters on the Minor Arcana, as many more anime have influenced me. I first made a first draft with only a table and blank for any new ones. I already put the Eto Rangers on the Knight, Queen, and King cards and became my selection. Later I reshuffled the selection table so I can have a clearer choice. To even fill up the table, I have to ask some people in my surroundings and a little help from the internet and a e-mail sender named whitewolf to know anime that I still did not know at the time. I also discovered back then that some anime are almost impossible to find on the net (before I discovered IE 5's capability to surf Japanese language sites), so I thought of other anime characters to replace them. Like the Major Arcana, the Minor Arcana also contains non-anime personalities: Savage Garden, the cast of ER, Jonny Quest, characters from a non-existent anime, the Backstreet Boys, Aqua, and Nintendo's mascot Mario.

      It was until December 1999 that I finalized the list and did what I did to the images of those in the Major Arcana. The Assorted Anime Tarot which used to be composed of only Major Arcana cards became a full blown anime deck.

      But May 2000 and still many anime are still influencing me. I knew at the time that I can't make new cards for my tangible deck. But since I can alter the ones on my virtual deck, I decided to replace the non-anime personalities to make the Assorted Anime Tarot into an all-anime deck. Still relying on my old selection techniques, I hastily, but successfully selected new characters to replace the ten non-anime personalities. An all anime deck is done, but it the original non-anime personalities are still present as they are based on my tangible deck.

        If you were confused in my explanations in the entire website, the "Original" cards are those cards that have non-anime personalities in it. They are part of my my "first" AAT1 deck, which are composed of 39 one-half index cards cut into half. The "All-Anime" cards (those it chose until May 2000) were not tangible until around August 2002 when I decided to use images from this website to make the "second" AAT1 deck, a.k.a. the tangible All-Anime deck, together with some color ink (my printer is a Canon BJC-210SP printer) and 10 sheets of specialty board.

        As for AAT2, it was created in December 2001, when some people examined the cards of AAT1, and wanted "changes" in it. Since AAT1 cannot be changed anymore (because of the guidelines given below), I decided to make a second deck. Although formulation of the second deck was longer (it took 11 months; the original AAT1 deck was created in 10 months), it has relatively quicker.

        On December 2001, the characters to be put on AAT2's Major Arcana were selected using my stock knowledge of anime not yet mentioned in AAT1. The characters were selected using the guidelines, the personalities of the characters, and the synopses of the anime involved. The AAT2 Major Arcana was finalized on Christmas Day, 2001.

        The development of AAT2's Minor Arcana did not materialize until September 2002, when more and more anime influenced me. I first formulated the Court Cards. In the selection of the Court Cards, a motif is used along with the guidelines: Pages should be children 12 and below; Knight should be beings who are either aliens, magical beings, or animals; Queens should be women 13 and above; and Kings should be men 13 and above. Personalities were also considered.

        The reason I said that formulation of AAT2 is relatively quicker is because while AAT1's Minor Arcana (both pip and court cards) took seven months to develop, the pip cards of AAT2's Minor Arcana (the Court Cards were finished by then) were developed in roughly a month. Research through the internet was used to select the characters on the pip cards. Most of the characters selected were chosen based on the meaning of cards themselves (although either number, logical symbolism of the suit, or both were involved also). The Minor Arcana was finalized on late October 2002.

        Like the AAT1 All-Anime Deck, the AAT2 deck was made tangible, using again the same printer with color ink and 10 more sheets of specialty board (which have a different texture than the first one).

      I have been mentioning that I have a criteria for choosing my characters for the Assorted Anime Tarot. This would be also my bases for future decks such as AAT3. Here are my bases:

1. The anime involved should be seen in Japan from 1985 to the present. That is because the most popular anime today are made in this period. That is unless the anime is an institution in Japan, regardless of its popularity outside Japan; or it is created by either Osamu Tezuka, or Rumiko Takahashi (that's why I considered Lum); both of them are legends.
2. The anime should influence me at the time I picked them. But there you can suggest any new anime that I didn't know.
3. No two or more characters or groups of characters from the same anime should appear on the deck. In short, it is only a one-anime-one-card policy. If there is character of an anime that already appears on the deck, bad luck if you wanted to put another character to the mix. But there are some exceptions:
   • The Eto Rangers. It is simply because they are more than 10, which is a requirement for characters.
   • Sailormoon and Sailor V. At first I thought Sailor V was a seperate anime. That was until I found out from someone that Sailor V never became an anime, unfortunately it was already too late, so let it be.
   I'll be trying mot to make exceptions to the rule again for the creation of AAT2.
4. They should be original, not directly based from literary classics. I'm aware of the fact that there are some anime that are based from literary classics. They have to be new and original. But I put Nadia because of the fact that it more of an original anime rather than as an adaptation of Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.