‘Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket’ Replacing Ho-Oh EX And Lugia EX ‘Wisdom Of Sea And Sky’ Card Art Following Plagiarism Accusations
As unfortunately tends to happen from time to time when commissioning artwork, an apparent instance of plagiarism found in the respective Ho-Oh and Lugia EX cards released in Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket‘s latest set, Wisdom of Sea and Sky, has prompted the game to pull the cards’ original artworks and announce plans to replace them with new, soon-to-be-produced illustrations.
Hitting the global clients on July 30th, the Wisdom of Sea and Sky set introduces a total of 241 new cards, as themed after the Johto region in which Pokémon Gold/Silver/Crystal (as well as HeartGold/SoulSilver) take place, to the popular mobile TCG.
As has been standard since the game’s premier Genetic Apex expansion, included among Wisdom of Sea and Sky‘s new cards were a set of new ‘Immersive Prints’, each of which were bear the highest rarity-rating and play a special animated scene when inspected by the player.
Fittingly for a Johto-themed set, Wisdom of Sea and Sky‘s EX cards were none other than its home region’s mascot Legendaries, the Phoenix-inspired Ho-Oh and the Ryūjin-emulating Lugia, both of whose artwork was provided by SIE NANAHARA, a noted franchise illustrator who has previously contributed pieces to the main, tabletop Pokémon Trading Card Game as well as its Hatsune Miku crossover Project Voltage.
However, just hours before the set was primed to go live, a Chinese fan artist by the handle of @lanjiujiu took to their personal Twitter account to share their discovery that SIE NANAHARA’s Ho-Oh artwork appeared to be directly traced from one of their own, which they originally published online in December 2021.
“Outsourced painters can’t represent the officials, how they handle it is an official matter,” the artist explained in a follow-up tweet, as machine translated by DeepL. “Also there are a few things that need to be clarified:
- This picture is a commission purchased by someone else, I am the drawing author
- I just saw the leaked picture and felt incredulous, so I posted it. The possibility exists that it is a fake picture.
- As a fan, I’m probably the one who doesn’t want to believe this the most
Unsurprisingly given the extremity of this potential infringement, @lanjiujiu’s shock quickly caught the attention of numerous Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket players, who themselves proceeded to take to social media and raise the issue directly to any and every entity even remotely associated with the game’s development, including Nintendo, The Pokémon Company, Nintendo, Creatures Inc., and DeNA.
In doing so, the situation drew an official response from The Pokémon Company, who near-literal moments before Wisdom of Sea and Sky‘s release took to their official website to announce that following an “internal review”, they had chosen to pull SIE NANAHARA’s illustrations – though it was not itself accused of being plagiarized, Lugia was also dinged ostensibly due to it being illustrated by the same artist – and replace them with new ones:
“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).
“After internal review, we discovered that the card production team provided incorrect 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.
“We are also conducting a broader investigation to ensure no similar issues exist elsewhere in the game.
“To all our players who have been looking forward to this expansion, and to the talented illustrators who bring the Pokémon world to life, we deeply apologize for any inconvenience this has caused. We take this matter very seriously and are committed to strengthening our quality control processes to prevent this from happening again.
“Thank you for your understanding, patience, and continued support of Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket. We remain dedicated to delivering an experience that you can enjoy.”
To this end, due to both the last-minute nature of this decision and the inherent time needed to commission new card artwork and subsequently finalize its addition to the game, while Ho-Oh and Lugia EX were both released alongside the rest of Wisdom of Sea and Sky‘s full card list, they are currently being represented by non-descript blocks of color which simply read ‘New Art Coming Soon’.
It should be noted that rather than any malice or laziness on SIE NANAHARA’s, the fault for this error instead lies with The Pokémon Company, who appear to have incorrectly provided the artist with @lanjiujiu’s fan art as official reference material.
For his part, @lanjiujiu expressed gratitude for the situation’s quick resolution and provided a further clarification regarding his side of the story.
“Having seen the official announcement, I appreciate the prompt resolution and hope this matter rests here,” he wrote, as read via an English translation of his statement provided by the artist with assistance from an unspecified machine translation service. “My original post stemmed solely from perplexity upon encountering questionable images online, with no means to verify their authenticity as game assets. As discussions escalated beyond control, I intentionally refrained from social media engagement yesterday.”
“To reiterate: I solely delivered commissioned 2D artwork, with no involvement in subsequent model production, sales, or profit-sharing. This revealed past gaps in copyright awareness; future commissions will require strict verification of usage rights.
“Profound gratitude to the operations team for their attentiveness and swift action in removing the image. Relieved by the timely resolution. I also thank those who contributed constructive perspectives.”
