RENGA – created by Dirty Robot, an independent illustrator and comic artist -has been making huge waves in the NFT world after launching in August. RENGA is a collection of 10,000 PFP characters, hand-drawn and incredibly distinctive. Each NFT has its own identity and will form part of the vast RENGA storytelling ecosystem. Furthermore, this curated community project focuses on art, imagination, and Japanese manga/anime lore. The floor price for a RENGA NFT is now 1.14 ETH and tops the OpenSea volume charts for the last seven days with a whopping 3,605 ETH in sales.
Introducing RENGA
After such a short period (and during a bear market no less!) the RENGA NFT collection by Dirty Robot is already a massive success in the NFT community. The art is exceptional and heavily influenced by Japanese-style manga and anime.
Interestingly, ‘Renga’ (連歌) is also a genre of Japanese collaborative poetry in which multiple poets work together to create a poem. In the case of RENGA NFTs, it is the creative team behind the scenes and the community working together to bring the collection to life.
Notably, Dirty Robot, also known as Daniel Isles, based in Japan, has over 20 years of experience in the comic art form.
The RENGA NFT Black Box
There are a possible 10,000 NFT characters. However, there are currently only around 6,400 available. This is because the RENGA team opted for a unique burn-to-mint option with the RENGA Black Box.
Basically, these boxes allow you to mint an NFT, giving it random attributes. Each box is a portal to a random archetype from the RENGA world.
Initially, there were 10,000 of these boxes with varying traits. However, now there are only around two thousand boxes remaining, as more people are buying and burning the boxes to reveal new characters.
9,401 are ‘Black Boxes’, but some are extremely rare and will provide the owner with a unique 1/1 NFT when minted. The floor price for a standard RENGA Black Box is 2.2 ETH.
Of course, you can now buy a RENGA NFT through OpenSea, on the secondary market. But, the RENGA Black Box offers surprise and mystery when minting.
RENGA NFTs offer fantastic storytelling art
Significantly, this is the second NFT collection by Dirty Robots and the RENGA team. The ecosystem is built around the premise of art and community, which is visible in how they launched the collection. Holders of the first NFT collection, The Art of Seasons (TAOS) NFT holders, were airdropped with a free black box NFT. The remaining NFTs went to a public mint.
Essentially, the project aims to build an NFT project with a Japanese comic style and storyline. In the future, the NFTs will play roles within the stories.
About the NFTs
Each RENGA NFT character is unique and created using a possible 900 exceptional traits. What’s more, there is even a subsection of 1/1 NFTs. Eleven different archetype characters will live in the RENGA universe, and some are rarer than others.
The eleven archetypes are:
- Motor Corp
- Delinquent
- Agent
- Robot
- Alchemist
- Samurai
- Golem
- Ninja
- 8-Bit
- Cube
- 1/1
It will be interesting to see how the RENGA NFT project progresses in the coming weeks. There are still over 2000 RENGA Black Boxes remaining for those who want to add a surprise element to buying an NFT. Those who like the NFT storytelling art available, and want to jump in right now, can pick one up on OpenSea for 1.14 ETH.