What are your unpopular opinions in pokemon?

Team rocket is an S tier set tbh. Amazing set cohesion, 0 stock art (that I can think of), awesome theme. The only way it could be improved was if the non holos had exclusive artwork instead of just being the same as the holos, like neo rev.

EDIT: After looking through the cards in the set, I will say a lot of the holos have boring backgrounds. Like dark machamp is literally just pure grey which does look cool in holo, but could be greatly improved with some actual drawn background. Dark dugtrio is one of the best holos in the set for this reason.

8 Likes

My top 3 has to be Dark Dugtrio, Dark Slowbro and Dark Machamp. All the Eeveelutions should have been holo.

If they needed to ditch something to make room they could do away with the Alakazam, the rocket trainers and public enemy number 1 Dark Weezing.

6 Likes

Well it looks like I went to the right thread at least - I’m thoroughly outmanned on this one :rofl:

4 Likes

Team Rocket is easily on par with base-fossil and tops the gym sets by a mile

2 Likes

The art in Rocket easily trumps the preceding sets. Combine that with all the Kanto 'mons and it’s easy to see why it’s a favorite.

2 Likes

Theres no such thing as a junk slab

3 Likes

14 Likes

Can’t quite put my finger on it, but I feel like a lot of the Japanese vintage cards are uglier than their English counterparts. For some reason Gym Heroes and Challenge holos come to mind…

Maybe something to do with the thicker header and HP/LV running onto a second line? Team Rocket seems to follow the same trend

At the same time I love Japanese cards like Fossil Articuno and Dragonite, I probably prefer them to the English versions from Base, Jungle and Fossil because of the cosmos holo

6 Likes

I think the larger top border for the gym series 1 & 2 may have been done to stop the holo from appearing over the pre evolution stage in the top left corner. The holo just cuts right through on the base Japanese Charizard and I think it continues like that until the gym series 1 & 2 sets. It was fixed to where it stops at the stage border in the neo sets. I still like most of the Japanese cards better than the English ones though.

3 Likes

I am gonna pretend I didn’t read this.

Anyways

The CD promo Zard/Stoise/Venusaur should have been in Base Set and the base set ones should have been promos.

2 Likes

hard disagree. the way they handled the whole situation was dodgy and they should be called out just like anyone else.

1 Like

meh. objectively base set is the worst wotc set of all time if you look at artwork. talk about “ok”. just a stock image with some generic background. completely uninspired

1 Like

probably because of all of those japanese exclusives that were repackaged into an english set. with that said, Vs series is clearly the best looking E series set :stuck_out_tongue:

1 Like

took a while for me to figure this out, but i think its because the layout of the card is more cluttered on the japan variant for the gen 1 prints. gen 2, they were closer together, and then starting with e series, they were pretty much the same.

2 Likes

I have thought about Base Set art before in this context. The way I see it is that it’s THE introductory set to Pokémon, the purpose being to showcase new creatures called Pokémon, and particularly to highlight the characters most prevalent in the first games, i.e. the starter evolutions, Gyarados, Zapdos etc. Because of this Base art was never going to be much more than portraiture, and honestly didn’t need to be more than portraiture.

What (at least in my view) Base holos benefitted from was a good proportion of artwork to holofoil, particularly that gorgeous rich holofoil in 1st ed base and shadowless - god that holo looks good. Once people became familiarised with Pokémon, what they do, and what the Pokemon ‘world’ is about, it basically gave TPC license to create more abstract arts in later sets without confusing the consumer base as to what the hell was going on with these new collectible cardboard creatures. More creative license = easier to deliver better art. That’s just my take though.

3 Likes

cant really agree with cards like abra and dragonair in the set, not to mention the 3 first partner first forms. they did plenty of creative illustrations. just nowhere near as many as any set afterwards, which makes it objectively the worst.

1 Like

Hard disagree on that. They are more fleshed out than a mere stock image + generic background like you’ve mentioned. Dark Slowbro, Dark Arbok (alternate “chest” design), Dark Golduck, Dark Dugtrio, Dark Jolteon and so on. The overall sinister tone an nature is well displayed on most of these cards in my opinion. But hey, to each their own!

1 Like

How do you mean that? Web was only released in Japan and it did not repackage any Japanese-exlusive cards into English. It’s quite the opposite, there are originally English-exclusive cards (the legendary birds) that are only available in Japanese due to being released in Web.

It’s been a long day tho, so I might just be too tired to understand your comment.

3 Likes

Base set is not “objectively” the worst, that’s factually incorrect.

7 Likes

I think its the fact that the japanese version seems more washed out in its colors as well.

1 Like