The Pokémon Firm has requested gamers to cease harassing the illustrator answerable for two TCG Pocket card designs which have been eliminated following accusations of plagiarism.
Earlier this week the cell sport obtained its newest replace, Knowledge of Sea & Sky, however earlier than it launched Chinese language artist @lanjiujiu famous on X that art work that they had beforehand created of Ho-Oh appeared to have been used as the idea for one of many new playing cards within the growth.
The Pokémon Firm then addressed this in an announcement, “deeply apologising” for the difficulty and eradicating the design of each the Ho-Oh EX and Lugia EX playing cards for now, changing them with a placeholder picture which merely says “New Artwork Coming Quickly”.
Throughout its preliminary assertion, The Pokémon Firm defined that it had supplied the playing cards’ illustrator with “incorrect reference supplies”, however it seems that followers have continued to harass the illustrator and accuse them of plagiarism.
Now The Pokémon Firm has stepped in once more to emphasize that the fault lies with its personal card manufacturing staff, and never the illustrator.
In a brand new assertion posted on the Japanese Pokémon TCG Pocket account on X, the corporate burdened that the difficulty arose when its personal card manufacturing staff despatched idea sketches to the illustrator (seemingly based mostly on the present artwork), and requested the illustrator to easily recreate it.
“We’ve grow to be conscious of some criticism of the illustrator concerning the illustrations of Ho-Oh EX and Lugia EX in Pokémon Buying and selling Card Recreation Pocket, which we introduced on Wednesday, July 30,” the brand new assertion reads (through machine translation).
『Pokémon Buying and selling Card Recreation Pocket』ホウオウex（★3）、ルギアex（★3）に関するお願い pic.twitter.com/Q28OTfw3ga
— ポケポケ【公式】（Pokémon Buying and selling Card Recreation Pocket） (@PokemonTCGP_JP) July 31, 2025
“The difficulty with the illustrations was brought on by the cardboard manufacturing staff at The Pokémon Firm and Creatures, Inc offering incorrect supplies to the illustrators as official references. All accountability lies with the commissioning get together.
“Whereas many illustrations are created with a robust concentrate on the illustrator’s creativity and individuality, in some instances, the cardboard manufacturing staff might request that illustrators merely recreate the idea sketches supplied by the manufacturing staff.
“On this case, the difficulty arose as a result of the cardboard manufacturing staff supplied the illustrator with incorrect idea sketches, and the illustrator faithfully created the art work in accordance with the consumer’s requests. Subsequently, we kindly ask that you simply chorus from criticizing or slandering the illustrator in query.
“We want to as soon as once more supply our deepest apologies for the inconvenience brought about to all of the followers who assist Pokémon every day, and to all of the illustrators who’ve contributed to the creation of Pokémon playing cards. We are going to proceed to try for much more thorough high quality management and to stop recurrence, so that everybody can get pleasure from Pokémon Card Video games with peace of thoughts.”
Following the preliminary removing of the cardboard designs, the artist @lanjiujiu mentioned they had been “grateful for the immediate decision” and hoped the matter may very well be put to relaxation.
