Kai Tyner's Yokai: Design Log
Hello everyone, I hope you're all doing well. I'm back with another blog post regarding the design of our newest release the Yokai. This is the "second" release from Dreamcraft and was designed as a signature model for one of our members Kai Tyner. (Sagane isn't actually released quite yet)
It's been a while since we've released something, as there was a lot of personal life things going on in my life over the past few years. Recovering from some of these things took a little while, as I was in a rather weird mental state after losing both parents unexpectedly. There's a lot to do when that happens, and when it's unexpected it just makes it more confusing and tougher to deal with.
While I was in Japan last year I invited Kai to join Dreamcraft as I thought she was a perfect fit for dreamcraft. We got to hang out with Kai at Nats last year to get to know her better. In all honesty, she's a thrower I've been praying to have on the team and am incredibly honored that she wanted to join. If you don't know Kai, you're probably living under a rock; she's got one of, if not the biggest following on social media in the yoyo scene and could likely be sponsored by any team or brand in the yoyo space. Somehow, she agreed to joining dreamcraft and I could not be more excited to have her on the team.
First, lets talk about the character design for Kai and her signature. I think one of the reasons Kai agreed to join dreamcraft even though we only have Asora was due to the aesthetic and concept of the brand. If it wasn't obvious already, I'm an otaku. As a Japanese American, I grew up on anime, manga, and Japanese content. I'm sure you can tell how much it impacts my design language and aesthetic choices. So when Kai joined the team, I was excited to design a character for her, and discussed my desire to make a character for her to integrate into the manga I'm developing. A funny coincidence is that a lot of the concept for my brand was inspired by ZUN, the creator of Touhou. While it may not be noticable from an aesthetic perspective, it's more so the concept of appreciating ZUN's ability to create the music, art, game design, story, and so much more for Touhou. I thought to myself, if he can do it, so can I, and that's why so much of dreamcraft's creations are done by me. He's a big inspiration, and coincidentally, Kai is also a big fan of Touhou. This made it really easy for us to get together and discuss the concepts of dreamcraft and see eye to eye on dreamcraft's goals for the future.
Initially, she gave me a few ideas regarding the design which I sketched up last year during my trip to Japan. I used her suggestions to create an initial sketch. As time went on and she started to think about the character more, and the concepts I presented to her, the character design shifted and became more fleshed out.
We spent a lot of time getting her feedback and ideas to implement for the design. Eventually, we ended up on a concept that closely resembles her. Jokingly, a lot of our team members said "That's just Kai in anime form." Which is funny, but apt for what I've wanted to create for dreamcraft's aesthetic. Kai fits a lot of what dreamcraft represents so it makes sense that her character embodies a lot of her own personal tastes. She's always fitted, has a great sense of style, and understands aesthetics. This made it easy for us to get together and collaborate on a design for her character.
Eventually, it led to this final design which I'm very happy with. Kai chose a crimson red color for her signature, which also represents her character. If you can't tell already, each of my characters and designs pushes this concept. The color plays an important part to the aesthetic of the yoyo, and character combined. After the color was settled on we started tweaking and adding more subtle additions, such as the signature glasses with a chain, longer skirts, a wolf cut, and a more tan skin tone.
The name of the yoyo; Yokai, also helped add some features to the character and overall design. The term "Yokai" originates from Japanese folklore. Some of you might have heard of Tengu, Kappas, Oni, or Kitsunes. There are many "yokai" within Japanese folklore, which you could loosely translate the term into "monster" though it encompasses many more forms of this and is more of an umbrella term for all of these creatures. The name and term were chosen by Kai because a lot of the characters within the Touhou universe are categorized under Yokai. However, as you can see, it also turns out to be a great "pun". The name is apt for Kai as there's so many layers to this name. "YO" and "KAI" being in the name, along with it being a Touhou reference made this name an easy choice that perfectly fits her design. Because of this I also added horns, and cute fangs to her character to further push the yokai theme.
Lastly, I wanted to also design a yoyo mascot for her character. I'm not sure if I'll be doing this for every design we release, but I felt like Kai's signature and design needed it. Personally, when I think about yokai a lot of images come to mind, but one of them that fit this yoyo mascot concept was a sort of ghost. So I sketched up this concept and asked Kai about it, added the horns, then refined the concept and it felt like a perfect fit.
This is my first character I've designed for someone else. Before this I was just designing characters to fit a story, and concept for dreamcraft's eventual manga/comic I plan to release. I learned a lot about character design, but this also gave me a lot of confidence in my ability to create characters for others. I really enjoyed making this character and am excited to bring her to life for Kai, and all of you to enjoy.
Next, lets talk about the design of the yoyo. Before Yokai came to life, we created a small batch of prototypes for her. This design was dubbed "Ataraxy" and was designed by Joo. The design was a unique idea that we sort of threw at Kai to get her opinion on something tangible. It's a bit of a wild concept, but it's a magnesium titanium rim bimetal that's roughly 52mm wide weighing about 66g. This was done for a few reasons, but mostly just to explore different materials while also testing a new manufacturer we're working with. We ended up with a few b-grades and one that was unplayable. The other protos were fine and we had Kai play them for a few months before revising her design. This was done sometime at the end of last year in 2025.
After letting Kai play this prototype we noticed that MG is simply a material that's not easy to work with, or play with. She was often cutting strings, sending her Ataraxy flying. We tried a few different solutions to fix the string cutting but none of them really worked out. Though, through this we learned a lot about MG designs, and also Kai's preferences.
After talking to her and getting a better understanding of what designs she likes or enjoys and what she requires out of her yoyo we hit the drawing boards to sketch out a design for her in CAD. Initially, the design was closer to 50-55mm wide but after having Kai try a 60mm wide yoyo she had expressed that 60mm was more to her preference. If you have ever seen Kai throw, then you'll kind of understand the reasoning behind this. A lot of her 1A trick style involves a lot of zoning elements, moving, spinning, and hard to hit combos. Having the extra width was important to assisting her in landing these tricks.
As design trends start to shift, we find ourselves in a yoyo landscape where yoyos are getting wider and wider. Far more quickly than the last decade or two of yoyo design. This sort of reflects the trend of yoyo tricks which are also pushing toward zontals, zoning, and more "jawns" as the kids like to call it. So naturally, it's understandable that this design is trying to push that envelope on wide yoyos.
When I returned from my Japan trip in late 2025, we met up for CenCal's Yo-Yo Classic and got to work on her new design. This time we decided that we'd keep it simple and target an affordable monometal design. We took Kai's suggestions, ideas, and preferences then implemented them onto this new design. It turned out to be 66.6g, 60mm wide, and 57mm in diameter. The shape stayed pretty similar, but we added a slight concave curve in the catch zone.
After designing Yokai, we placed our order sometime in early 2026. Kai decided on her signature red color, along with the same blue and pink from the previous Asora run.
We ended up receieving Yokai only days before Nationals. Thankfully we were able to get a lot of feedback on the design and had a great time at Nationals. We had a few for sale there, but I think most people weren't aware of it since we really didn't promote them since it was pretty last minute.
After Nats ended, we had less than a month to get ready for our trip we planned to Japan for Worlds in Himeji. Kai, Joo, Tony, Angel and Myself all spent 3 weeks in Japan together and had the trip of a lifetime. It was a lot of fun to travel around Japan, but also great to meet so many other players from around the world and develop a stronger connection to people in Japan. We didn't sell any Yokai there, but this gave us a chance to have more people try Yokai and everyone seemed to enjoy it!
We eventually returned stateside after the trip and I began working on getting stuff ready for Yokai's official release. For me, I always have a specific goal when I release a new design and wanted to make sure Yokai met the same standard as Asora did.
I hit the drawing boards and started working on designs for the Stats Card, along with the artwork for packaging, and getting pins made for Yokai. I eventually came up with this art for Yokai's Card which is somewhat tangent to the Sagane and Asora art I created. A lot of it is inspired by Japanese Race Queen outfits, with a slight twist. I turned these into cards and sent off the design to a manufacturer to get the cards and pins made for the release.
Now we're just waiting on those things to come in to release Yokai, so it should be ready to drop online soon. I wanted to release this blog post to give you as much info as possible on the design before we drop it or announce the drop date. Once we have a better idea of when those products will come in I will release the date of the drop!
The Yokai is a wide, 60mm monometal that is, from my experience, one of the best options out there on the market once it's released. It has a very nice nimble feel to it, not sluggish, and not too wide once you get a feel for it.
I found that many 60mm wide throws I tested felt off in some way; either the shape, the performance, or the way it maneuvered on the string in play. A lot of 60wide feels "flimsy" in play. I know using keywords is kind of confusing, but the best way I can describe it is that, they do not feel stable in play, or wobble a lot on the breakaway. Another term you could use is "floppy" If you've ever played an ultra wide 3D printed yoyo that's 200mm+ wide you'll understand what I mean.
So much of the material is being used to widen the yoyo that the rim weight often takes a hit, which causes it to lose spin time and stability. To counter this we chose 7075 and pushed the design to have as much rim weight as possible to increase the performance. I noticed that the wider you go, the "thunk" feeling from extreme rim weight is lessened, creating a more even weight distribution. Because of this, the Yokai feels a lot more "normal" in play like a 50wide, but also has a nimble, zippy, and fun characteristic in play due to the extended width. The weight for this design was clocked in at 66.6g but I would say it feels closer to 64g in play. I think that this feature helps the quick combo, zoning, and zontal play as it feels very easy to maneuver the yoyo how you want while also being able to hit your tricks. As some who have tried it have said "this is like cheating." The extra width really makes it easy to hit your tricks.
We've also had it extensively play tested by our resident tech thrower Tony, who was able to navigate through his tech combos with no problem. Naturally, over the years people have said that wide yoyos can disrupt dense tech mounts, but we've found that this 60wide design was able to navigate it with no issues. One major benefit of all of this is how great this design is at zontal playstyle, it almost wants to stay zontal and can zip through your zontal combos with no problem. Since receiving Yokai, it's one of the main yoyo's he's been using and loves it a lot.
Lastly, there is a small design feature we added, which was, of course, to add the ability for it to hold Duncan sized caps. This sort of came in as an after thought after we had designed it and realized we could add a ledge to hold caps while maintaining the original design. This was far easier to implement than Asora was. We also designed it so that the caps are harder to remove, as Kai also plays 5A. Having the ability to add rings to this design reduces the sound of the counter-weight hitting it, and also allows the user to adjust the weight to their preference. With that in mind, we wanted the caps to fit more snug than the Asora.
As a word of caution, there is no hole inside the hub to remove the caps, if you do place a cap inside Yokai, there is the chance you will not be able to remove them.
We plan to drop Yokai soon, with a more exact date to be announced soon as I'm still waiting on a few things to come in from the manufacturers to include with this release.
We had a small soft launch for Yokai at Spirit Yoyo Contest in Long Beach and had a great time doing so. It was our first time having a booth set up and were blessed to launch Yokai there with the help of our friends at Stardust.
Spirit was a ton of fun, and received great feedback for the design. I worked on all of the art and packaging for Yokai to get it ready for this event but didn't receive a few things in time for the event but they will be here for the online drop.
Yokai will come with a pin, stickers, stats card, felt bag, and a string like Asora did and will retail for $90 from our store. There's a limited amount available in each color.
Yokai Red, Sagane Blue, Asora Pink, and Yokai Red with engraving.
Thank you to everyone who has been patiently awaiting the drop. I know it takes me time to get everything prepared for the release and drop, but I really want to make sure that I give it my best anytime I do release or sell something. I could just throw them in a box and ship them off, but for me, that's not up to the standard that I've set for myself. I want to make sure that whoever picks one up gets the full experience I envision for each release and hope that you will all enjoy the Yokai.
This is so peak