The Pokémon Company has asked fans to “refrain from criticising or slandering” the illustrator behind the two card designs pulled from Pokémon TCG Pocket over claims of plagiarism.

Earlier this week, The Pokémon Company pulled two card designs from Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket following allegations that they’d plagiarized a fan’s artwork.

The Pokémon TCG Immersive artwork for Ho-Oh, featured in the game’s new Wisdom of Sea and Sky expansion, came under scrutiny after fan artist lanjiujiu posted comparison images of artwork they designed for a commission in 2021 that look very similar to the Legendary bird Pokémon’s new design.

In response to the images, fans claimed The Pokémon Company had plagiarized the artist’s work and urged lanjiujiu to take legal action. One fan even created a comparison video of the designs and suggested the design had been “traced” without credit.

In response to these claims, The Pokémon Company issued a statement on July 29 in which it acknowledged there was “a production issue regarding the illustration of Ho-Oh featured in the immersive card artwork for Ho-Oh ex (3-Star) and Lugia ex (3-Star).”

“After internal review, we discovered that the card production team provided incorrect materials as official documents to the illustrator commissioned to create these cards,” The Pokémon Company said in the statement.

As a result, it is conducting a “broader investigation” into the game’s card design and has pulled both cards and replaced them with temporary placeholders while the team works to replace the artwork. These temporary cards show Ho-Oh’s stats, name, and other details, but where the Pokémon’s usual design is a “New Art Coming Soon” message.

Now, the company has released a new statement on the controversy, which it posted to Pokémon TCG Pocket’s Japanese X account.

In the new post, the Pokémon Company took full responsibility for the allegedly plagiarized designs, saying the “defects were caused by the card production team at The Pokémon Company and Creatures Inc. providing the illustrator with incorrect official materials” (translation via Google Translate).

“While most illustrations are typically created with the illustrator’s creativity and individuality in mind, some illustrations are requested to be cleaned up from concept sketches created by the card production team,” the company said in the post.

“This incident occurred in the latter case, where the card production team provided incorrect concept sketches.”

Further down the post, the company then asked fans to “refrain from criticising or slandering” the cards’ illustrator as they “faithfully followed the client’s request.”

“We would like once again to offer our deepest apologies for the inconvenience caused to fans who support Pokémon on a daily basis, and to the illustrators who support the production of Pokémon cards,” the post continues.

“We will continue to strive for more thorough quality control to prevent recurrence so that everyone can enjoy the Pokémon Card Game with peace of mind.”