On its face, this question seems like madness. The Pokémon TCG has never had so much fantastic artwork or been so adept at showing it off. The introduction of the Illustration Rares and Special Illustration Rares approach a few years ago allows us to see tons of full art treatments, and there have even been sets like Black Bolt and White Flare last year, where every single Pokémon in a generation gets its own full art. It’s not as if all these cards have similar treatments either. There’s a wide range of styles on display.
But in that case, why has the reaction to the new Mega Rayquaza SIR, undoubtedly a masterpiece, and even more impressive for being artist Kazuki Minami’s first card since winning an illustration contest, been so decidedly mixed online?
There is plenty of hype behind the card, don’t get me wrong. It’s a visually stunning work, and I’m sure it would be enough to have fans eagerly cracking packs, even if there weren’t lots of other great full arts in Delta Reign (spoiler alert: there are). However, I’m noticing an unusually high volume of voices expressing dissatisfaction, or comparing the art disfavorably to some of the other best Rayquaza like the Evolving Skies versions.
Perhaps it’s simply that you can’t please everyone, that internet commenters love to complain, and that there are a lot of good Rayquazas to compare this one to, but I don’t want to dismiss the negative views so out of hand.
My suspicion is that, while the Pokémon TCG as a whole has a lot of very different art, its big chases are beginning to trend towards a similar look. Specifically, SIRs often go for an ultra-detailed, highly textured image, with a dense, almost abstract background. This is visually interesting and impressive, but once you’ve seen a few, or worse, put them all together, they do start to lose some of their impact.
Perhaps Pokémon is suffering from success. After all, some of the most notable and celebrated TCG artists of recent years like Akira Egawa and Shinji Kanda are famous for their ultra-detailed pieces, real ‘feast for the eyes’ stuff. When these guys get so much attention, is it all that surprising that newer artists may start to see them as the blueprint?
More concretely, it doesn’t help that Delta Reign comes immediately after Pitch Black, and that Mega Rayquaza ex’s SIR looks in some ways very similar to Mega Darkrai ex’s. Both pieces are great, they make the Legendary Pokémon (okay, technically Darkrai is a ‘Mythical) they’re depicting look imposing, but perhaps they don’t actually show the outlines of the Pokémon all that effectively.
I think it’s actually the less championed Illustration Rares that do a better job of making the Pocket Monsters actually feel like real creatures, often placing them in more realistic settings, and making them feel like part of the world. And I think that’s what most of the new Rayquaza-naysayers are craving. After all, you can’t truly comprehend the scale of a legendary Pokemon if there’s nothing in the background you can use for scale.
While overall I love the new cards from Delta Reign, I think The Pokémon Company should experiment with a few simpler SIRs for its big face cards – just to keep things varied!
Do you agree? Let me know your thoughts over on the Wargamer Discord.
Source: Wargamer
