When accusations of plagiarism are made, there’s usually an awful lot of back-and-forth, denials from all sides, and rarely clear-cut satisfaction. But after yesterday’s claims by a Chinese illustrator that his artwork had appeared in Pokémon TCG Pocket’s brand new set, Wisdom of Sea and Sky, the mobile app’s official X account has released a statement saying the affected cards have been removed entirely.
“We want to share an important update regarding the upcoming expansion, Wisdom of Sea and Sky,” says the statement from Pokémon. “It has come to our attention that there was a production issue regarding the illustration of Ho-Oh featured in the immersive card artwork for Ho-Oh EX (3-Star) and Lugia EX (3-Star).”
While the euphemistic “production issue” doesn’t bode well, the statement goes on to be a lot more direct. “After internal review, we discovered that the card production team provided incorrect reference materials as official documents to the illustrator commissioned to create these cards. As a result, both cards have been replaced with a temporary placeholder that the team is actively working to replace with new artwork as soon as it’s ready.”
It sounds like well-loved illustrator Sie Nanahara was provided references either by Creatures Inc (the team behind PTCG art) or DeNA (the developers of this app) that included fan-made art, rather than previous official Pokémon artworks. This explanation lifts responsibility from the artist which—as we’d suggested previously—would have been a very surprising move by a very established creator.
“Immersive cards” are the animated collectibles that appear in every set of the digital card game. They are one of the top selling-points of the app, offering magical cards that play out beautiful animated sequences when clicked on. As a committed player, I’ve collected all of the previous immersive cards (finally got Celestial Guardian’s Solgaleo’s Lillie card yesterday after months of trying), and so know that these being missing from the new set is a pretty big deal for players.
It also means that replacing them is no easy feat. PTCG Pocket uses a mix of freshly commissioned art and classic cards, and in pretty much any other circumstance could have switched the affected artwork out with anything from the colossal archive. However, given the Ho-Oh and Lugia cards are animated, these will take vastly longer to create, often requiring enormous artworks for the camera to pan around, or complex 3D animations. Neither can be rustled up in an afternoon.
Unfortunately, the “temporary placeholder” in question is literally just some “coming soon” text. When “played” it just shows a black rectangle.
So far, I’ve not seen any accusations made regarding the Lugia immersive card, although suspect that it’s been removed at the same time as a precaution. While no blame is being placed on the artist, it makes sense to be concerned that the same issues could have arisen for both cards given they came from the same creator.
The Chinese artist whose work was copied has posted a statement regarding the issue as well, albeit an ambiguous one, referring to a past commission but not who commissioned the work. “I solely delivered commissioned 2D artwork,” he says in his own translation, “with no involvement in subsequent model production, sales, or profit sharing. This revealed past gaps in copyright awareness.” He added “profound gratitude” that the artwork had been removed.
The artist responsible for the immersive cards, Sie Nanahara, has yet to make any statements, and hasn’t responded to a request for comment.
.
