In the fall of 2023, I traveled to Thailand as usual, and immediately visited the area where Chatuchak's Betta fish stores were concentrated.
I feel relieved when I come to this dirty block that I have been visiting for over 30 years. There seems to have been a plan to demolish this place and redevelop it, but fortunately that hasn't happened yet.
This tourist attraction, also known as Sunday Market or Weekend Market, has a rough, old-fashioned atmosphere, and if it were to become a modern, neat market, it would lose half its charm.

There is a section called Soi Pakat where many betta fish shops are gathered, and this is my favorite place in Bangkok and is the main place to collect information and model fish. However, some of them have become too famous among people involved with betta fish and aquarium fish, so personally, I keep other treasured sources.
There are two stores on Soi Pakat that mainly sell wild Betta fish. Although there is a large overlap between the products, each product has its own unique color and seems to be completely segregated.
I personally get my supplies from these two shops without bias, and I can say that they are indispensable.

This time as well, I put off looking at other betta shops, and when I showed up at this wild-type shop, I was offered the betta that I had been waiting for. That is the alien samurai that we will be introducing here. However, this fish is not a new variety that was just released, but a variety that was already created in 2020.
At the time, only the male version was released, and I remember missing out on it because it was quite expensive. If you want to record your own betta fish, you should basically buy multiple pairs of male and female fish. Unless there is a serious need, it is rare to purchase only males. The owner of this wild-type shop knows this, and has appealed that the alien samurai this time can be sold as a pair, including a female one. This time, the items lined up in stores were Alien Samurai in green, copper, and silver.

The emergence of individuals with these phenotypes from the same litter can be said to be a characteristic of aliens. However, the blues that normally appear together were not lined up, so what about blue? When I asked about it, I was told that it is extremely rare, perhaps because the appearance rate is low.
For normal aliens, blue and green are the basic body colors, but they seem to be different for alien samurai.
When introducing this alien samurai, I really wanted to introduce Blue as well, so I requested that only the male Blue be available, but unfortunately I was unable to obtain one during my stay last year.
This alien samurai is said to be bred at the shop owner's farm, so I asked him about the process behind its creation. The answer was that it was a cross between a normal alien and a plastic cut samurai. This Plakat Samurai is probably the Black Dragon that has recently been circulating under the name Samurai. Originally, what was called a samurai was an extremely rare fish that appeared like a special item from a dragon-type fish, and only the head was covered in metallic color. If I remember correctly, it was a shop called Interfish in Chatuchak that started using the name Samurai for plastic cuts. After that, this Samurai became popular and was sold at a high price, but since it could not be fixed as a breed, it became even more prized.

After that, somewhat similar phenotypes such as Black Dragon and Red Dragon began to be distributed under the trade name Samurai. If I have a chance, I would like to introduce this samurai in this column. This is a bit off-topic, but if you crossbreed an alien with a Plakat black dragon, the Plakat blood will be strong, and the body shape will end up being a Plakat. Therefore, it is essential to breed the animal back to the alien's slender body while preserving the color from the plastic cut.

This is how the Alien Samurai was created, and unlike before, it was able to be mass-produced, so it was released at a relatively affordable price. Although it has become quite fixed, is it still a samurai body color? It seems that it cannot be fixed safely, and it was confirmed that there are large individual differences. The homework around here doesn't seem to be that difficult, so I'm sure I'll be able to meet an even more sophisticated alien samurai in the near future. At that time, I would also like to introduce the blue specimen that I was not able to introduce this time.