Ichiro Araki is unquestionably one of the greatest card workers the world has known. He shares with you some of the best card and coin magic Japan has to offer. Filmed on location in Japan.

Ichiro Araki Master Cards

Tricks
The Return of Angels: A rather nice ace assembly. You start off with 4 red back aces and 12 blue back cards which you then divide up into four separate piles with three blue backed cards and one red back ace. And essentially what happens is (since I’m pretty some of you have figured it out already) three of the piles become all blue backed and the last pile is the four red backed aces. Then you magically make three of the aces go back to there original pile. All in all a rather nice assembly does require some skill but probably worth it. There is a demo for this effect on the MM website. Overall I give an 8/10

Twisting Ace Plus: This would be Mr. Arakis take on the Twisting the Aces routine not bad at all just more or less your basic Twisting the Aces routine with a twist. (No pun intended) What kind of twist is it you ask? Peppermint. (Pun intended…. sorry.) After you go thru the whole routine you reveal the Ace of Spades was a red backed card all along! Gasp! 7/10

An hors d’oeuvre: This is a pretty cool trick that involves the four aces and four kings. Essentially it’s a rather visual transposition of the fours ace and fours kings switching from one hand to another. Really cool looking and it’s pretty simple to. 8.5/10

Araki-Hofzinser Aces: Obviously this would be Mr. Arakis version of the Hofzinser Aces. Admittedly I don’t know the original but after seeing this I wouldn’t mind checking it out. This trick yet again requires four aces and a spectator selecting a card which they then put back into the deck. You ask the spectator to pick there favorite ace which will get taken out and set to the side. You tell them the three aces will “magically” find your card. You proceed to spread the deck and the three aces are turned face up with one face down card which is….the fourth ace! This means the spectators selected card was on the table the entire time. This is one of the few tricks that is performed with a spectator on camera and the spectator very much enjoyed the trick to. I’d give this trick an 8.5/10.

Acrobatic: This trick requires any four of a kind to be selected. You take the four of a kind cleanly put them in the deck then proceed to throw the deck in your free hand with your other hand holding presumed lost four of kind. This was another one of the tricks performed before a spectator and again the spectator loved it. Seeing the deck get tossed from one hand to another and having your presumed empty hand holding the four of kind gives a nice visual to it. 7.5/10

Jewelry Force: It’s as the title says a force which he uses mainly to force an indifferent card in this case a red backed card. Again I liked it. One of the reasons I’d liked it was it looked very similar to the classic force. Though it isn’t mainly because it requires a little more work sleight wise. Would I use it all the time? No. Half the time? Nope. A quarter of the time? Yes. I can see where this particular force would be useful just not something I’d use all the time. 6.5/10

Araki Pass: This particular like Medifro fried me. I tried to reverse engineer the crap out of it before I got the DVD but to no avail I couldn’t figure it out. Then when I got it I wanted to throw stuff at my TV because it’s very simple. I love this pass because of how deceptive it truly is. 9/10

Araki-Erdnase Change: Just some tips for the Erdnase Change. Nothing spectacular. 6.5/10

Chon’s Invisible Pass: I’ve never heard of this pass before but this is Mr. Arakis variation of the pass. The pass seems more useful face up then face down like most other passes. 6/10

Side Steal: His handling and variation on the Side Steal. I like it but I’d just stick with the original side steal. 7/10

MA-Double Lift: This by far one of the most un-natural looking double lifts I’ve ever seen. Now the tips he gives to get into the double hint are very nice just not the double lift itself. 4/10 on the double lift 7/10 on the tips

Electric Change: A nice color change a bit anglely though. Can’t have somebody to your immediate right or left depending obviously on if your left or right handed. 7/10

Electric Change Version 2: Same thing as above but something you could use for a card under glass routine. 7/10

Shadow Change: A variation of the Erdnase transformation 2. A very cool color change I could see myself using this particular change more often as it seems more visual to me. 8/10

Teaching
The entire DVD consists of Mr. Araki doing the handling but with Ben Salinas doing the translating. And everything comes out very clear and easy to understand. So good job Ben!