The manga series ポケモンカードになったワケ (Pokémon Card Ni Natta Wake) or “How I Became a Pokémon Card”, was developed and released in 1999 by Kagemaru Himeno, who also works as an illustrator for the Pokémon Trading Card Game.
The manga is made up of mostly independent stories. Each chapter focuses on a specific Pokémon and card illustrated by Kagemaru Himeno. These stories elaborate on the card illustration, giving context to what the Pokémon is doing in the picture or how it ended up in that situation.
Each book comes with a unique Pokémon card. Both the promotional card and the cards portrayed in each chapter are original works, each one illustrated by Himeno herself.
This is awesome! Beautiful post with lots of excellent info! My Natta Wake Birthday Pikachu is the centerpiece and prize of my collection. Always thought this set was cool and I have a lot of admiration for the artist!
I absolutely love this set, and although it may not seem like it, it’s an incredibly hard to source set of cards. In 3 years of daily rummaging shops in Japan, I managed to complete the full trainers mag promo set in PSA 10 (graded myself) but only found 4 natta wake cards, only 2 of which graded a 10.
Really awesome set, and I hope to complete it one day.
I know what you mean by hard to source. Back in 2014 I was trying really hard to get ungraded Natta Wake Pikachu and other Natta wake cards through a seller in Japan but struggled to get any with high grade potential. There are just so few of them out there. I eventually settled for a PSA 9 in my collection and I’m still very pleased with that. But the hunt for high quality Natta Wake cards is super tough!!
Awesome article! Thanks for sharing the information. The cards themselves are great, but just knowing the thought process in form of a story and how that thought process ends up as a card is so interesting and gives a deeper look on Himeno-san as an artist.
I was very aware of the cards and origin, but NOT the purpose behind the books. Very cool! Thanks from creating this! An underrated series of cards, indeed.
