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Become part of the straw hat crew on your own awesome card.

In Japan, it’s custom toward the end of the year to send out nengajo (New Year’s cards) to friends and family, wishing them a happy new year. They’re similar to Christmas cards in other countries, and sometimes they end up being pretty creative.

But this year the Japan Post has teamed up with One Piece so you can create the ultimate nengajo: wishing everyone a happy New Year as part of Luffy’s crew!

▼ This could be you, running at the head of the crew
alongside Luffy, Chopper, and everyone else!

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To get started on making your own card, hop on over to the nengajo-making website. It’s all in Japanese, but we have a step-by-step guide you can follow right here.

▼ First, click on the big red “begin” button at the bottom of the page.

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▼ Next, choose if you want your character to be a boy or a girl.

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▼ The red button lets you build your character from scratch,
the green button lets you use a photo, and the bottom buttons
let Luffy or Ivankov decide what you look like. (Use those at your own risk!)

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▼ If you choose the photo option, you can then pick either to take a picture
from your webcam (top), or upload a photo (bottom).

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▼ If you choose the webcam option,
position yourself until you’re happy and then press OK.

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▼ And voilà! The editor will do its best to match your picture.
Hey, that’s not bad for a first try.

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▼ You can make any adjustments you want to the face shape, hair, eyes,
nose, accessories, and more. We just fixed our hair color and clicked OK.

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▼ Da dun! Once you’re satisfied with how you look, click the red button.

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▼ Now it’s time to put your character into a card. There are 10 designs,
and then beneath you can choose what your character is doing in each.

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▼ We decided to go with a sophisticated kimono card with Nami and Robin.

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▼ Once you click OK you’ll come to a confirmation screen.
Click the red button to finish.

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▼ You’ll get a pop-up telling you that you can order actual prints of the card
to send to people if you like. Feel free to close it via the X below.

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▼ And there you have it, your One Piece nengajo! To order prints, click the red
button and to share it, scroll down to the Twitter and Facebook buttons.

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▼ There are a ton of great designs to choose from,
like doing a dance with Mr. 2…

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▼ …or just looking badass with Luffy, Zoro and Sanji.

▼ And just for the curious, here’s what happened
when we let Ivankov decide what we looked like…

ivankov

▼ …and here’s what happened when we let Luffy decide what we look like.
Complete with a Luffy-esque back button at the bottom.

luffy

To make your own One Piece nengajo, head on over to the Japan Post website and get started! It’s actually a lot of fun and surprisingly high quality, considering they could’ve just gone the easy route and only let you pick from a few characters or card designs. It makes the perfect New Year’s gift, after a bow-wrapped Coke of course.

Source: Japan Post
Images: ©Japan Post ©Eiichiro Oda/Shueisha, Fuji TV, Toei Animation via Japan Post
[ Read in Japanese ]