Pokemon Fan Shares Surprisingly Violent Early Pokemon Cards

A Pokemon fan has shared a collection of cards they’ve picked up from the early days of the Pokemon series, which feature surprisingly violent imagery. The Pokemon cards use artwork by the iconic series artist Ken Sugimori, who was responsible for designing the early pocket monsters of the series.

Pokemon has been going strong for over 20 years, and while the Pokemon TCG series is well-known and loved, they aren’t the only Pokemon cards to exist. This particular set of Pokemon cards actually predates the Pokemon TCG series, and many fans never knew it even existed.

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Reddit user RoyalCities shared images of the Pokemon card set they picked up that features old artwork by Ken Sugimori. The Pokemon card set was a bit puzzling for the OP, as they initially weren’t sure what they had. While some of the cards are simple illustrations of iconic pocket monsters, a number of them feature surprisingly violent artwork of various Pokemon pulverizing each other. For example, Ditto is subjected to abuse by both Krabby and Kingler, who stretch and squash the Pokemon, respectively. Psyduck gets bullied by Tangela and Tauros, while Exeggutor is seen stomping on Diglett.

Pokemon Card Origins Explained

It turns out that these are Pokemon cards from the Carddass line. The cards date back to 1996, pre-dating the Pokemon Trading Card Game, with one card released for each of the original 151 Pokemon. Many fans were surprised to learn about these cards, as they not only didn’t know there was a card series prior to the Pokemon TCG, but also because much of this artwork has been rarely seen elsewhere. One of the other interesting elements of the artwork is that this series is so early that it features some of the original designs of Pokemon, like Charmander having visible back spikes, which only appeared in the Gen 1 games.

While the exact value of this Pokemon card set isn’t known, it’s an interesting piece of Pokemon history that’s exciting for fans to discover all these years later. Fellow Pokemon fans seem to be particularly enthusiastic about the attacks shown on the cards, as outside of the anime, manga, and Pokemon fan animations, battles have never been depicted quite like this. To this day, Pokemon fights typically consist of one Pokemon doing a move and its opponent being struck by it, rather than the two physically interacting as seen here. While it would be extremely difficult to create complex animations for attack interactions between all possible Pokemon, this artwork gives a glimpse of what it could be like.

Pokemon

Pokemon is a franchise that needs no introduction. One of the most successful media empires in history, Pokemon spans games, television, films, manga, merchandise, music, and more.
 

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Satoshi Tajiri