The artist behind the new Futuristic cards explains how he made them
An official video interview with Japanese artist YOSHIROTTEN covers the Futuristic rare, the foil Basic Energy cards and the special artwork in 30th Celebration, with close looks at Mew ex and Mewtwo ex.
The Pokemon Company has put out a video interview with the artist behind the new-look cards in the anniversary set. He is the Japanese artist YOSHIROTTEN, and he sits down with Satoru Nagaya, an art director at Creatures Inc., one of the companies that makes the cards. The video is above and it is short.
They talk about where his artwork comes from, what he was going for with the Futuristic rare, the foil Basic Energy cards in 30th Celebration, and the set's special artwork. The video also shows his past art projects and holds the camera on the surface texture of the Mew ex, Mewtwo ex and Basic Energy cards.
Why the texture is the point
Card finishes are hard to sell in a photograph. A holographic pattern that looks flat on a screen can look completely different in your hand, tilted under a lamp. Filming the card and moving the light across it is the only way to show that before the set is out.
That is what this video is doing. It is not a reveal of new cards. It is an argument that the finish on these ones is worth the price of the box.
Futuristic Rare, explained
A rarity is the tier a card sits in, and it tells you how often one turns up in a pack. Futuristic Rare is a new one attached to the anniversary set. The cards use a different visual style from the usual Pokemon card, built by an artist from outside the normal card art pipeline.
The name has already appeared on the site in a different context. The Japanese Futuristic Box, at 27,500 yen or roughly $171, holds two Pikachu ex promo cards in that finish, one themed on day and one on night. Our 30th Celebration buyer's guide tracks that box and every other confirmed product.
The energy cards are the sleeper
The foil Basic Energy cards are the part collectors underrate every time.
Basic Energy is the plainest card in the game. It pays for attacks and does nothing else. Every deck runs a stack of them, and almost nobody thinks about what they look like. Making those the cards a guest artist gets to redesign is a smart choice, because they are the cards that sit on the table for the entire match.
There is a practical wrinkle. Foil Energy is not a card you chase for resale the way you chase an Illustration Rare, which is a card with full artwork and no text box over the picture. Foil Energy is the thing players actually put in a binder and then use. Demand for it tends to be steady and quiet rather than sharp.
Bringing in an outside artist
Pokemon has increasingly handed cards to artists with their own audiences rather than only to its regular illustrators. It works for both sides. The artist reaches an enormous audience that would never see a gallery show, and the card game gets a look its own house style cannot produce.
It is also a hedge against sameness. A card game that has run for decades has to keep giving people who already own everything a reason to want the next set, and a genuinely different visual language does that better than another gold border.
30th Celebration is out worldwide on September 16, 2026. Pre-orders are live on Pokemon Center, and the packs are not sold on their own, so getting these cards means buying one of the boxes.