I didn’t see a thread on this so my apologies if there is one already.
This promo is Japan only, meaning we probably won’t get them in the US or anywhere else in the world… buckle up!
Starting July 22nd, those who purchase 1,500 yen or more of product from Pokemon Centers will receive a Pikachu promo illustrated by him.
Pokemon is also releasing a special TCG box set featuring his illustrations. It will come with a rubber playmat, card sleeves, a deck box, a card storage box, and a smartphone ring accessory. It will cost 6,226 yen. You must enter a lottery to buy the box via the PUBLIC TOKYO Online Store. Applications will be taken from June 18th to 28th. Results will be announced July 9th and the product will start shipping July 22nd. The Pokemon Center will also have a lottery, but the dates haven’t been announced.
Personally, I’m super excited for this one. It’s a brand new artistic take on Pokemon, and the card looks super clean. I was not a fan of the special delivery Pikachu, but I’m 100% picking one of these up
I first saw the cheeks as eyes and the unibrow & eyes as the nose so it looks really derpy and I can’t unsee it now and I need it.
Love the intended design as well though
Someone made a thread towards the end of last year asking what E4’s goals were for 2021, and I just replied saying give me ALL the Japanese promos, alllll of them. Turns out it’s bloody difficult keeping up, every time a new one comes out I need a lie down. Gotta say this is the best problem I’ve ever had! Nothing’s been enough to turn my head too far away from those stamp promos yet though. They are knocking it out of the park with this unique art!
@nish, well, if any unknown artist would have requested TPC to put this artwork on one of their cards, what would be the odds that they said yes?
But you are right, it is just my opinion. I might sometimes be a party pooper, but most of the time it comes from a feeling of seeing something that’s not fair (same reason why I’m regularly criticizing Logan when he makes tons of money with little effort or dubious methods when millions of people have to work for the same amount of money for decades). In this case, I don’t think it’s fair that this artwork (which consists of literally a hand full of lines) gets printed on a card when there are so many other incredible works that don’t, simply because those artists are less famous. In our latest efour art contest thread alone are so many artworks that are so much more impressive and more skillful than a bunch of black lines.
If he’s doing multiple illustrations and he’s already done Charizard and Pikachu, I’m hopeful we see some more Gen 1 Pokemon again! Maybe they’ll even have “IT”…
Super stoked about this! I feel like Pokemon is returning to their roots and putting up a new spin on everything!
Yu Nagaba’s done a lot of illustrations and has done some American classics in his own style:
I am very excited about this promo! It’s going to stand out in my Pikachu binder as something very unique and I love the art style personally. I hope that the reselling community doesn’t make it too expensive right off the bat. I miss the days of picking of pokemon center exclusive Pikachu promos for $12-15 off ebay right after release, it was so easy for a little while there
I dunno, I mean how far do you wanna carry that idea? If Pokemon hired one unknown freelance artist for every single card for the next 5 years they still couldn’t hire everyone. There’s no doubt that there’s tens or hundreds of thousands of artists or creative minds who would like their work printed on a card so who’s to say which ones should be picked? If you picked 300 artists for the rest of the year, why not pick a different 300? Once those 300 have done their work, could you re-hire them later or are they now too famous to be hired? Is the limit on illustrating cards before you’re too famous 1 card? 10? 100? How do you determine when someone is too famous to be hired if they’ve never done work with pokemon before? Twitter followers? Instagram followers? Pixiv followers? Amount of collabs done with other companies? My point is that it’s kind of an abstract idea to say that it’s not fair to hire one freelance artist over an existing established artist. It’s perfectly okay to not like a style of art or just think a style of art is lazy, I’m mostly just rambling now
If anything, it’s DIFFERENT. Which is dope.
We all know that if you are flipping through a binder, and you see THAT, you’re going to stop and take a closer look.
And that’s pretty cool.
I get where you’re coming from because I used to feel like this but I just don’t think this line of thinking is productive. You might not aesthetically like this artwork or what Logan does or the newest Bieber song and that’s fine. I’m certainly not a Paul or Bieber fan and I haven’t heard of this artist before. But to say it’s not fair… it just ignores all the years of work these people needed to do to become big names that allows them to make millions off a box opening or get a deal with pokemon.
The history, popularity, story that’s been built over years with these famous influencer types all matters. We all partake in a hobby where the history, popularity, rarity, story of a card matters as much if not more than the pure aesthetics. And hey if you don’t agree with me I’ll happily trade you a beautiful modern full art for one of those ugly snap cards.
