A Chinese Pokémon fan has noticed that a piece of fan art of Ho-Oh that they say they created appears to have—based on leaks—been mirrored and included in the forthcoming Wisdom of Sea and Sky set, coming to mobile app Pokémon TCG Pocket tomorrow.
Obviously no one is making any accusations of plagiarism at this point, and given the new set doesn’t arrive until tomorrow none can be made, but the similarity between the two pieces of art is striking. As The Gamer reported, X user lanjiujiu posted images of their original piece of art, featuring legendary Pokémon Ho-Oh, alongside an image of the digital card to be included in the next Pokémon TCG Pocket set. And, well, they look the same.
In a more recent post, lanjiujiu added (in Chinese, translated by X) that the original artwork had been commissioned for them to create by someone else, and put forward the suggestion that the image of the forthcoming card could be fake. The card, included in collections on various Pokémon fansites, shows the static image that appears on one of Wisdom of Sea and Sky’s two animated cards—that is, a card that, when pulled in the game, will play out an animation that begins and ends with the main image.
The two Ho-Oh are not identical, and clearly there are only so many ways to draw the same Pokémon, but when you flip and overlay the two images, they certainly line up.
What makes this situation more bemusing is that the artist listed on the Pokémon card is Sie Nanahara, who has provided plenty of adored previous cards in the TCG, as well as across multiple other franchises. Nanahara created the beloved art for Crown Zenith’s Hisuian Zoroark VSTAR and Obsidian Flames’ Ninetails, for instance.
So what are the possibilities here? One is that the card that’s being shown as part of Wisdom of Sea and Sky is in fact not real. The images shown on various sites are based on a leak, rather than an official reveal, and there’s something odd about the coloring and overlapping images on the H0-Oh card. It has that strange, washed-out look on the left and right, with the images not matching, and that certainly wouldn’t be in the final image. It could be because the card animates, and these are from different points in the animation. Quite how an incorrect art would have slipped into the otherwise apparently accurate leak isn’t obvious, but it remains the case that the art makes it look very odd.
An unlikely possibility is that lanjiujiu created their art after the fact, but again, no such accusation is being leveled here. It’s suggested the art was actually made in 2021.
Another possibility is of course that something untoward has taken place. It’s worth noting that the two drawings aren’t identical, tiny details like the curls on the Ho-Oh’s head being drawn differently and the far longer tail, which reduces the likelihood this is a rushed Photoshop fake. The prolific artist involved has yet to respond to various inquiries on their X account, although they did post a message before the issue was originally raised that machine-translates to “As expected, you won’t improve unless you draw originals.” It just doesn’t seem to fit that this artist would suddenly lift someone else’s work.
We’ve reached out to both Nanahara and The Pokémon Company to ask about the situation, and to find out if the image in the leaks is accurate to the set, and will update should we hear back.
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