Last week Pokémon TCG Pocket was hit with an alleged plagiarism controversy that resulted in the game developers pulling the Lugia and Ho-Oh ex immersive cards from the new Wisdom of Sea and Sky set.

The new artwork has kept the same backgrounds as the controversial original cards, but the subjects themselves have been redrawn and replaced.

The artwork was redone by the original artist Sie Nanahara, who has also been cleared of any wrong doing. After the artist began to experience abuse on social media, a statement was put out by Pokémon TCG Pocket to clarify the circumstances that led to the cards mistakenly referencing fan art. The statement has only been shared in Japanese, but Poke Beach translated it to roughly the below:

“(card art is) usually created with the illustrator’s creativity and individuality in mind,” for some artwork, like the immersive Ho-Oh in this case, the production team asked Sie Nanahara “to simply redraw their concept sketches.”

The statement made it clear that any fault lies solely with The Pokémon Company and Creatures for providing Sie Nanahara with incorrect materials as official materials. The statement in Japanese can be seen in full below:

The new Immersive Art Cards are a beautiful update, and if you’ve been lucky enough to collect the placeholders previously, you’ll know find the new cards have replaced them in your collection.

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