As a follow up to the intensive community contribution, so we could improve the design of Hiragana and both Novelties Laser GMK kits, I’d like to present an update and gather feedback about the current version of said kits!
I’m going to offer a special alphas only hiragana kit, for the people who appreciate the japanese culture and it’s ties with the Cyberpunk genre. I’d like to request feedback about what’s your preferred version:
- Gaijin – Latin Legends & Hiragana Sublegends
- Hybrid – Hiragana Alphas & Latin Number/Punctuation
- Hiragana – Hiragana Monolegends
You can see renders displaying each of the versions below, don’t forget to vote!
We initially had two different novelty kits and after extensive community feedback and design contribution I merged both kits into one. The balance between 1980’s and Cyberpunk references was kept and the included novelties (as you can see in the render above) are as following:
- Classic retrowave sunset
- A cyberdeck terminal
- Brazilian DEX pill from Neuromancer
- Ghost in the Shell Major’s neck neuralink
- Bowl & chopsticks
- Skull – same mold from Carbon GMK
- Laser beam – same mold from Carbon GMK
- Biohazard mycotoxin sign – same mold from Carbon GMK
- Ghost in the Shell Tachikoma (spider tank) eyes
- Rick Deckard’s Police ID logo from Blade Runner
- Ghost in the Shell Individual Eleven logo
- Origami unicorn
- Pac Man
- Blinky, Pinky, Inky & Clyde
- Space Invader’s alien
- Atari joystick
- Toyota AE86 (Hachi Roku) logo
- Cassette tape
- Stranger Things Eleven’s forearm tattoo
- 80’s shades
- RAD!
- DeLorean’s flux capacitor from Back to the Future
There’s also a magenta sunset and a dashboard green Esc. A fuel orange WASD cluster was added in order to complement the Esc/Enter dashboard green keycaps, together with a magenta arrow cluster and the iconic pair of 1.25u 88 digital keycaps to ressemble the classic Windows logo while referencing Back to the Future as well. There’s also a pair of 1.25u DMC DeLorean keycaps.
Please take a moment to express what you’d like to see on Massdrop Talk Tab and/or Geekhack Interest Check discussion pages! If you have a vision, or an idea that you’d like to see implemented, please express and we can try to design it together!
While you’re here, in case you enjoy my creations feel invited to subscribe to my official Newsletter so you won’t miss a thing! You can also connect with me via Instagram, Reddit, Geekhack, Massdrop or just send me an e-mail at mito.rmk@gmail.com – I’d love to hear from you!
MiTo 
Aesthetically, I think hiragana only is MILES ahead of latin + hiragana. Hopefully more people agree.
To me, latin + hiragana looks incredibly cluttered. Come on guys, you’re getting japanese characters on your keycaps for the aesthetics. You can touch type, I know you can. You don’t need latin legends.
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Thank you very much for the reply Kbac!
To be honest I like Gaijin and Hiragana equally and don’t really enjoy the Hybrid. I think it’s gonna be nice regardless – both the condensed intriguing look or the trimmed down minimalist design.
Well, let’s see what you guys prefer!
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I agree kbac, but I don’t think they can touch type.
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I doubt it’s a matter of touch typing driving some people to prefer the Roman + Hiragana alphas. Personally, I prefer the “Gaijin” kit, since the aesthetic reminds me of JIS boards like this Realforce: https://www.massdrop.com/buy/topre-realforce-91u-jis-layout-keyboard. But I also enjoy typing on a nice set of blanks. All depends on the board/look I’m going for.
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