Character Hanafuda キャラクター花札 [きゃらくたあはなふだ, kyarakutaa hanafuda] are a subgenre of hanafuda patterns that generally feature characters and imagery from popular television, manga, or video game franchises. Alternatively, they may follow some other theme, often specific to a particular region or hobby.
As they tend to have additional subjects depicted on every card, the designs of these decks often make it more difficult to differentiate between certain cards and card types. For that reason, along with the generally lower construction quality of these cards, they tend to be more collectable than they are play-worthy. That said, many of them come with rule leaflets, and almost all of them should be usable to play any hanafuda game, provided enough attention to detail and/or familiarity with the specific deck.
Angel’s character hanafuda may be considered to be of generally lower quality - they are more for collecting than for playing. They are printed on cardboard, with exposed sides.
Nintendo’s character hanafuda tend to be of intermediate quality; they are properly backpapered like traditional karuta and come in reusable plastic cases, but the print quality may not be quite as good as their main lines of hanafuda.
These hanafuda are generally considered to be of higher quality than those made by Angel, but are still not backpapered. Their sides are black to match the borders and backs, rather than bare cardboard.
These hanafuda are known to exist but have simply yet to be categorized by publisher.