The Pokémon Company apologises for plagiarising artwork in the latest TCG Pocket expansion and assures fans, 'We are also conducting a broader investigation'

There's been an important update for Pokémon TCG Pocket's upcoming expansion, Wisdom of Sea and Sky, and unfortunately, it's not a good one. After releasing previews of the set, it brought to everyone's attention that one of the best cards in the set had been plagiarised.

"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)," The Pokémon Company says in an official response.

Artist lanjiujiu called out The Pokémon Company in an X post yesterday, placing the new immersive artwork beside their own illustration, which they first shared four years ago. When the artist responsible for the plagiarised work was said to be none other than Sie Nanahara, lanjiujiu responded: "I also really enjoyed and collected the cards he created! This confused me even more."

Sie Nanahara is one of my favourite Pokémon artists and one of the most renowned. Working on card artworks since Crown Zenith, Nanahara is responsible for beautiful illustrations like the Hisuian Zoroark VStar and the full-art Ninetales from Obsidian Flames.

So it surprised me as well when the news of plagiarism first broke, just because of how great an artist Nanahara is. But now it seems like the production team provided Nanahara with the assets without properly checking their origins.

"After internal review, we discovered that the card production team provided incorrect materials as official documents to the illustrator commissioned to create these cards," the post explains. "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."

Now, this doesn't make it any better; artistic plagiarism of any kind shouldn't be tolerated, which is why I'm happy to see The Pokémon Company take such swift action. "We are also conducting a broader investigation to ensure no similar issues exist elsewhere in the game," the response continues.

"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 apologise 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."

Lanjiujiu has since responded to The Pokémon Company's actions of taking down the artwork and apologising for the mistake: "I appreciate the prompt resolution and hope this matter rests here."

"My original post stemmed solely from perplexity upon encountering questionable images online, with no means to verify their authenticity as game assets," lanjiujiu continues. "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."

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