Rayquaza · Emerald (EM) #9

2 comments

1. 

   Blob Takeshi

   (9 years ago)

   Did this card predict Mismagius Rayquaza?

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2. 

   Ambassador

   (3 years ago)

   I have the reverse holofoil of this set and it feels like the undervalued/unknown chase card of the set – gold foil on Rayquaza’s name, Rayquaza itself, the EX Emerald set stamp, and so on and so on, all conjured together probably so that someone at PUSA could say they “brand synergized” EX Emerald coming out around the same time as the Pokémon Emerald game released. But it’s all out of thin air – EX Emerald shouldn’t exist.

   It’s bizarre because it’s followed by Call of Legends, which is effectively a Intl.-only set that exists just to fill time until the BW video games launched and the Generation 5 marketing campaign started. For an edition that’s otherwise always *behind* in being able to release as many cards as in Japan because of major differences in how releases are handled, HGSS base set essentially released *too soon*, and so the Intl edition needed the LEGEND block to have more cards than it did, and was scrambling to try and create entire sets out of disparate individual products that didn’t complement each other, with COL being the pinnacle of “wtf are you doing, TPCI?”

   Twylis’ comments on UL Lucario regarding the thematic incongruity of Unleashed as a set reminded me of how EX Emerald is its direct precedent with how some Gen 3 sets were handled. EX Emerald is a set with no equivalent Japanese set, instead being cobbled together from several separate decks – it doesn’t feel as disparate as Unleashed only because none of the individual products have any particularly pronounced cohesion anyway, but some of the “leftovers” of those decks ended up being thrown into EX Holon Phantoms as filler, where they do stick out as out of place. EX Emerald is the example in extremis, really – someone wanted a set called Emerald to come out around the time Emerald came out, so they conjured it out of nothing – but several sets were adopted completely out of order just to be able to tie sets of certain names with their in-game equivalents. This ends up confusing to try and sort out, and sometimes the motivations don’t make sense, but among other examples;
   – I hope we’ll one day figure out what the heck happened with EX Sandstorm. The more I look at the set the more I think it is made up of the scraps of Jamboree. Why are some cards which were included in EX Sandstorm and have artwork which complements the desert theme of the set included not in Japan’s ADV2 (Miracle of the Desert), but instead held back for inclusion in Japan’s ADV-ex1 Team Magma vs Team Aqua?
   – I remain convinced that the e-Reader-compatible cards in EX Team Magma vs Team Aqua are artifacts of some kind of scrapped set.
   – What on earth was the motivation for turning Rocket’s Celebi into Dark Celebi? And why include it in Hidden Legends? Were they trying to foreshadow TRR, despite it being *two* sets away and nothing in the middle set to bridge the gap?
   – Boxtoppers RG Charmander #113 and TRR Charmeleon #110 are just bizarre. Might tie into the above scrapped set, but …just bizarre.
   – Other boxtoppers are also a mess. There’s no compelling motivation to release Rocket’s Raikou 𝒆𝒙 in EX Deoxys rather than include it in EX TRR. And why did they throw Rocket’s Persian 𝒆𝒙 in Unseen Forces? If you’re already shuffling things around, you might as well try and aim for cohesiveness. DS Azumarill #114 could’ve been a POP Promo,
   – EX Legend Maker should’ve been released before EX Delta Species, and reversing them actually muddles the “lore” of the entire Delta block.
   – As mentioned, for no apparent reason some of the cards that you might’ve expected to make it into the hodgepodge EX Emerald megaset were held back for inclusion in EX Holon Phantoms. Why so long? And why there? Why not just save them for Power Keepers instead of suddenly being pressed to create almost-an-entirely-new-set from scratch?

   So much stuff was shuffled around and at the end of the day it really feels like the biggest winner is this card – Rayquaza got to have his own set, released in time with the video game, where he’s the star¹. Every other set, at best, got to keep its theme with no/very minimal dilution of its themes (e.g. EX FRLG, EX TRR, EX DS). I am as interested in figuring out what was going on with Gen 3 as I did at the start of posting on this site, and while I have a very strong handle on the extent of how many changes occurred and a decent amount of theories, I’m as confused by the possible motives for all of this as when I started. Will I ever get the answers I wonder about? It’s been a hell of a long time. Assuming this was all done by people who this was only ever a job for, their memory retention won’t be great, and they have limited incentive to set the record straight. On the other hand, assuming this was done by people who do care and do think they did a good job, if you ever come across these comments on the site – feel free to set the record straight. You have access to more information than I have, and maybe you can clarify why it feels like shadows of Jamboree exist in the EN adaptation of the ADV block, and why the EN adaptation of the PCG block feels so incoherent².

   ¹ If I trusted TCG fans to have more of an understanding or interest in the history of the card game, I’d probably go crazy bullish and try to corner the market on the card, honestly. You’re missing the trees for the forest to think any card other than this Rayquaza is the chase card of the set.
   ² And for bonus points, we’re probably never going to find out what the point of the 9 digit alphanumeric codes on Gen 3 cards were unless the person/people responsible for putting them on there comments.

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