Ensky Artboard Jigsaw Puzzles

Artboard is our rigid anime jigsaw puzzle. Instead of card, the pieces are cut from a thick canvas-textured board, and the finished picture is stiff enough to lift off the table with two hands and put straight on a nail. No frame, no backing sheet, no glue. That one property changes what the puzzle is for: people buy these to display, not to break up again.

Counts are deliberately modest — mostly 208 and 366 pieces, with a few larger boards — because the format is about the finished object rather than the hours. The cut is tight, the surface takes the colors without gloss, and the weave in the board is visible close up, which is the nearest a printed jigsaw puzzle gets to the look of a canvas.

The artwork is Japanese and licensed: Ghibli scenery, Pokémon, One Piece, Kirby and Sanrio, with the occasional battle scene from a shonen series and the occasional quiet one of a hero walking somewhere. We choose images for this line that survive being looked at every day, because that is what happens to them. A loud panel is fun for a week; a painted landscape is still worth the wall a year later.

An Artboard makes an easier gift than a card puzzle for the same reason: nobody has to find space to assemble it twice. If you are buying for a fan of a particular world, pick the scene rather than the piece count. Assembling one is an evening, two at most; the design then stays up for as long as they like it.

Each board is crafted in Japan to the same high-quality standard as the rest of our puzzles, and the entries below carry the piece count, the finished size and the series the artwork comes from. Puzzles are not a game with players and a winner — the artistry is the point, and a finished Artboard is the only kind of anime puzzles collection that hangs itself.

A note on how these look once they are up. Board stock holds the colors flat, with no glare off a window, so a stunning landscape reads as a print rather than as a puzzle somebody finished. That suits a Ghibli sky and it suits the quieter Pokémon adventure artwork; a busy battle panel is the one case where a card jigsaw at a higher count is the better buy. Fans with a favorite scene already framed sometimes buy the Artboard of it as the cheaper second copy for another room. Whatever the design, each board is crafted in Japan to the same high-quality standard, the Japanese cut is tight enough that two players can work opposite edges without the picture shifting, and the whole anime puzzles range — card, plastic and board — is laid out by world and by size at the foot of the page, which is where most of the fun of choosing one actually happens.