Hybrid 2O4 (or Hybrid 204 for Google's SEO) has arrived!
In this article, we'll share with you more about the shape and why we've decided to make this our flagship shape of 2025.
Why?
What worked for the Hybrid 2 was how the proportions of everything related to one another.
The ratio of cup size to stall point to sword thickness were all taken into account when producing the shape.
We kept all of that, but made it almost 2% bigger.
What difference does it make?
The larger ken resulted in better lunar flips, easier stall catches and more space for larger fingers to do gunslingers.
While the Hybrid 2 was great for more tricks, we received feedback from players with larger hands about making something of similar proportions but more suited to their builds.
In addition, many tamas shifted to 62mm from 61mm - needed a larger ken to be paired with it.
How does it compare with the Ascent 2?
The Hybrid 2O4 is not as big as the Ascent 2, with smaller cups and a smaller base cup balance hole.
In addition, we decided not to adopt the sarado proportions (longer) and the gunslinger support. We wanted to ensure that the 2 ken shapes were differentiated from one another to cater to various play styles.
Why did we not make it bigger?
Bigger isn’t always better
We get it, everyone wants to make a bigger shape. But we believe that there is a shape out there for everyone and the bigger does not always necessarily mean better. It can make the ken too heavy, or not be friendly for some younger players.
When designing the Hybrid 2O4, we intentionally made it smaller than the Ascent 2 to ensure that it catered to a different audience.
Is this the end of Hybrid 2? Where do we go from here?
Hybrid 2 is still loved by many players around the world. We have no intentions to stop producing that. Much like Ascent 1 and Ascent 2, we will ensure that production batches across the year will cater to both shapes.
That being said, you can expect to see more designs on the Hybrid 2O4 as we want to get it in as many player's hands as possible. This will allow us to get feedback and think of improvements.
Thank you for all the support thus far, creating kendamas for all play styles has always been our goal and we will continue to work on it.