Some of my favorite artworks in the TCG are scenes that reference locations or events from the games. This Zapdos from vending series is an excellent example:
I love that this card depicts Zapdos in its original location near the abandoned power plant in Red/Blue/Yellow. It brings the pixelated landscape to life, detailing what many of us probably imagined when we first played the games. When I look through my binder collections, I often find myself stopping at cards like this the most. I would love to hear what some of your favorite references are!
(No need for me to post the pic, almost everyone knows this card.)
This is me trying to analyze why one of my fave cards “Moonbreon” (Umbreon Vmax alt art) is so popular. It has to do with what’s in the artwork and what Umbreon is doing in the artwork, which Umbreon has never done before in any of its cards!
The artwork’s components are real simple; seaside scene of a small rural town, a full Moon illuminating the starry night sky, Umbreon climbs on rooftop of a tower and yearns/prays towards the full Moon. Yet it’s these simple components that make this card !
The pokemon’s action in the card has great reference to real life practices. Full Moon in metaphysics is the greatest natural source of “Yin” energy, it has great religious and spiritual uses to many people who harness the Moon’s “Yin” Energy in some ways or another. That makes the card clicks with so many people.
Below are some info I gathered, feel free to read for interest:
The brightest and largest object in our night sky, the only place beyond Earth where humans have set foot upon, the Moon makes Earth a more livable planet by moderating our planet’s rotation on its axis, leading to a relatively stable climate and temperatures. Without the Moon, Earth would spin faster and become colder, a day would only lasts 6 hours.
It also controls and pulls the ocean tides, creating a rhythm that has guided humans for thousands of years. How stimulated, active, and balanced our neurological system is, is also directly related to the phases of the Moon. There are many ways in which people can make use of it to handle their mental fluctuations. Many human beings go into “tides” within their neuro system because the whole oceans are going up. Around 70% of our body is water, so in other words, Moon can also control us humans.
Some studies say that on full Moon days, people tend to become more imbalanced, or those who have anxiety and depression go out of control. But in actual fact, the Moon does not cause madness; it just pushes your energy in a certain way. If your main quality is joy, you will become more joyful. If your quality is love, you will become more loving. If you are meditative, you will become more meditative*. If you have a mental illness, that will also get magnified. Whatever your quality is, it gets magnified because of the full moon.
*For people practising meditations, full Moon nights are said to be more conducive for meditation as nature gives the practitioner a free boost of energy.
In horoscopes, of course, the Moon’s influence is an article of faith, but the full Moon has also been linked, in all seriousness, to everything from traffic accidents to kidnappings, casino payout rates to A&E admissions, sleep-walking to aggression by professional sportsmen. And, as with many of these things, there is often some evidence.
One American study discovered that murders could treble at the time of a full Moon. A three-month tracking of 1,200 prisoners in the maximum security wing of HMP Leeds found that there was a distinct increase in violence on either side of a full Noon.
Animals aren’t immune either: In February 2004, National Geographic News reported that Chanchall Bhattacharjee and colleagues at the Bradford Royal Infirmary had “reviewed 1,621 patients admitted to the infirmary’s emergency room between 1997 and 1999 for animal bites and found that the chances of being bitten were twice as high on or around full-Moon days.”
@Schileru You totally expressed what I like in vendings! Cards referencing real in game events or biome feel so special.
Also, that zapdos and kabuto are really what I had in mind: imagining this is the power plant you saw in Pokemon red, or that this is the mystical kanto technology that can revive fossil feels so real and dark. Awesome.
