Grimer · Scarlet & Violet (SVI) #126

2 comments

1. 

   Ambassador

   (1 year ago)

   I’ve been waiting for this set to drop to point this out! Here are a couple of searches to take a look at;
   series:neo,e-card c:d
   series:ex c:d -is:dual-type -is:dark

   Prior to Generation 3 of the TCG, Dark-type Pokémon had white text on a very dark background. They kind of had to do this, since black text on a black background wouldn’t really be readable. But then the Gen 3 template for Pokémon cards had a significant deviation, in that the attack text portion of the card was shaded lighter for all types. I don’t think it made much difference for the other types, but it made a different for Dark-type Pokémon in particular – they could have black text like all the other Pokémon types had.

   This was absolutely deliberate, because when you look at Dark Pokémon of the Gen 3 era, whose card template deliberately makes the lighter part of the Gen 3 card template a very dark black, the text necessarily returns to being white[1];

   series:ex c:d is:dark -name:dark-celebi

   After Generation 3 ended, Dark-type Pokémon reverted to having white text on a black background, as they had dropped the lighter portion from Pokémon card templates …until Gen 9! I am still waiting to see how much of this idea of Gen 3 fanservice is going to actually pan out, but it does seem to me like the return of the lighter portion is meant to remind us of the stylings of Gen 3 card templates. However, the return of the lighter templates doesn’t see the return of black text on Dark-type Pokémon. I’m of the impression one of the reasons the Gen 3 TCG tweaked the template the way it did so that cards could be consistent on black text across the board, so at least to me, it seems like Gen 9’s revisit of it seems to be misunderstanding the point of why the template is the way it is? (n.b. all the above is true across EN *and* JP editions.)

   [1] Dark Celebi has to be filtered out; the card was originally Rocket’s Celebi, and it looks like PUSA didn’t realize this nuanced difference while they were switching it over; their Dark Celebi is incorrectly using a dual-type template – probably a quick tweak of the one used for Team Aqua’s Cacnea and Cacturne – rather than a Dark Pokémon template.

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     TwylisAmbassador

     (1 year ago)

     I’m glad they kept the white text, personally. I see it as a core part of the Darkness-type’s visual identity, and find the gen 3 card layout broadly ugly with Darkness getting the worst of it by far.

     Wonderful international silver borders aside, I find the gen 9’s layout a step down from 7 and 8 specifically due to that gen 3-like translucent film layered over the card body, but it at least avoids gen 3’s weird little circle indentations.

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