My favourite bird Pokémon TCG card arts

Hear me out: Sophia is hosting this month’s IndieWeb Carnival on a theme of second person birds:

This means that you can write about whatever "second person birds" means to you.

I’ve been thinking about the topic for weeks in hopes that something magnificent would pop up because I really wanted to write something profound and interesting. Instead, I’m writing about my favourite Pokémon TCG cards of birds.

To start, we need to go back to 2011 and the release of Call of Legends set. This set featured Pidgey, Pidgeotto and Pidgeot pictured above. These are not the best cards in terms of playability these birds have been featured on but it’s my favourite line.

I really like Call of Legends’ frame and the art of these majestic birds by Suwama Chiaki just makes me happy. This is one of two Pidgeot lines that Chiaki illustrated, another one being from a set before this one.

Another generation 1 bird is Spearow/Fearow line and while I’m not sure if I’ve ever played any Fearow’s in the game, there’s one line especially that’s gorgeous. EX Sandstorm set was released in 2003 and features these two beauties, illustrated by Aya Kusube.

Fearow’s first attack is a reminiscent of a rather short lived 2vs2 format that Pokemon scrapped some years later. While I think it’s good that Pokemon hasn’t been publishing cards spesific to that format in way over a decade, it’s the type of format that would be fun to explore more as it brings fun new considerations to the gameplay.

The last Kanto bird I want to highlight is a Dodrio line by Yukiko Baba, released in the Undaunted set in 2010.

Baba’s entire collection of illustrations for Pokémon TCG is beautiful. Her illustrations have a lovely colored pencil style and brings the Pokèmon to life in a way that’s very fitting for the franchise.

Next up we jump to a very cool artist Tomokazu Komiya who draws very surrealistic drawings as is evident in this Pelipper from EX Deoxys set from 2005:

This Pelipper has seen some shit and isn’t particularly excited about it.

Most of the beautiful art in this post comes from the early 2000s. Starting from Black and White set in 2011, I feel the art style became less experimental and artistic. There are a couple of beautiful birds from the modern sets however.

Gapao is a relatively new artist for Pokémon TCG, having only illustrated cards (at least English ones) for the game since 2024. Amongst their 11 illustrated cards, this Braviary illustration rare deserves a spot in this list.

It was released in the Surging Sparks set in 2024, a set that has some of the best illustration rare cards ever released (like this Flapple by Uninori).

Another beautiful modern bird illustration is this Corviknight V card from 2022’s Silver Tempest set. It’s illustrated by KIYOTAKA OSHIYAMA and it would fit right in to a good Ghibli anime movie.

Recently Pokémon has started to do way more full art illustrations and I’m all for it. One bird that I recently added to my collection is Iono’s Kilowattrel from this year’s Journey Together set by Terada Tera.

It’s one of only two illutrations by Tera in the game (at least for English prints) and I love it for its strong use of colours and its happy vibes.

While I said earlier that modern cards have been bit more on a boring side, Shinji Kanda is an illustrator who has kept up the beautiful artistic style in the modern era. One could argue whether Roaring Moon is a bird (it’s more of a dragon), I’m gonna include it as a bonus pick since it’s one of my favourite Pokémon to play in the card game and I absolutely have to showcase this Kanda’s masterpiece.

What's your favourite bird in the Pokémon universe and what's your favourite art? You can hit me up via email or reply in Mastodon.