BODY: For nearly three decades, a set of 151 Pokémon illustrations has circulated through sticker books, trading cards, bootlegs and auction catalogues, and almost everyone assumed Ken Sugimori drew them. He didn't.
An illustrator posting as utsubo56 (@utsuboy on X) has come forward to confirm that he produced the full national-dex run of artwork for Bandai's Pokémon Carddass Part 3 and Part 4, released in 1997. The images — every Pokémon caught mid-attack, teeth bared and limbs in motion — have been credited to Game Freak's character designer in Japan and abroad for years, though a handful of collectors had long argued the linework didn't match.
"Artwork I drew in my twenties. It's been a long time since I saw it," he wrote, describing a workflow that now reads as almost archaeological: drafting ink laid down with a G-pen, then colour built up in watercolour on board. He also cleared up one of the set's best-known oddities. Charizard appears with a single horn rather than two because, he says, he misread the official package illustration and only noticed the mistake later when he saw the anime design. Game Freak's approval check passed it anyway.
He was working at the time for a studio that has since dissolved — the same shop that handled SD Street Fighter line art and Rockman illustrations. That dissolution may explain why his original boards scattered; he admits he has no idea how they reached the resale market, speculating that former colleagues or Bandai staff ended up with them. The stakes are not small. A Raichu original from the series placed second in Mandarake's ZENBU No. 129 auction at ¥18 million, behind a ¥19 million Arale-chan piece.
Collectors who had spent years building attribution theories responded with something close to relief, thanking him for stories no archive had preserved.
The insider take
This is the hidden cost of Japan's hanken-e system — "licensed artwork" commissioned by toy and card licensors from outside studios, produced fast, paid as flat work-for-hire, and credited to nobody. Through the 1990s that machinery generated the images an entire generation actually grew up looking at, on ¥20 Carddass vending cards outside candy shops, while the credited name stayed with the IP holder. The studios folded in the post-bubble shakeout and the boards went into desk drawers, resurfacing decades later in Nakano Broadway display cases. That the reveal lands during Pokémon's 30th anniversary, whose official theme is "connecting," is an irony nobody in Tokyo has failed to notice.
Originally reported by はてなブックマーク (Japanese).