About us

Who are we?

KaibanZero is an Asian owned apparel brand that pushes anime as an art medium. We believe that manga and anime is just as if not more powerful than reading as a way to immerse ourselves in world building.  As a result, all our clothing has designs that focus on a central theme/story, and are not just random characters slapped on for popular appeal. We grew up watching Anime and being made fun of for it, and wanted to push what we love in a way that we see it: Slick, immersive, and inspiring. 

What does KaibanZero mean? 

"Kaiban" is the name of the Maplestory guild I was in back in the day. It basically means a beggar in Vietnamese, and was just a fun name that I loved to use throughout my life. "Zero" is a concept I've always loved, because it represents the starting point, as well as the end. When your health is zero, it usually means game over, and yet can also be looked at a restart. I spelled my name with a zero one day, and someone said it was cool, because I gave zero a meaning when I attached it to myself. It stuck with me ever since, and now I've just combined my childhood names together to be KaibanZero. I thought long and hard about a name that could stand for the brand, and realized I should just go with a name that is a direct representation of me.

 

How do you come up with your designs?

I'm always reading on forums/reddit to discuss the mangas I'm interested in most, and have a base of which characters are beloved. I want to highlight them in their greatest moments and base our designs on telling a specific story in some correlation. I find some mainstream designs distasteful when they just bait casual fans with a bunch of random characters or loud designs that don't coherently make sense (Example a picture of Naruto next to Sailor Moon.) We want to represent those who aren't really given the limelight or just haven't been represented in the way we think best showcases their storyline. 

How are your clothes made/How do I wash them?

We screen print our clothes ourselves. Wash inside-out in a standard washer of your preferred setting. We recommend hang drying for best results, however the use of a regular dryer is just fine. Shrinking in our shirts is extremely minimal and our designs should not fade due to the quality of our prints. Everything is made via small batch in house, because we value quality! Sometimes the neighborhood cat named Simon comes along to cheer us on. (=ↀωↀ=)