DISCUSSION: If the TCG was animated...

[LightningTopaz]

The release of the Game Boy TCG on Switch Online got me thinking...

Let's suppose there was a TCG arc in the show (or you just wanted to write a TCG based story)--what do you think it would look like?

Would it feature Ash, Liko and Roy, Mark and Mint, OCs, or some combination thereof?

How would you anime-ify the TCG rules, if at all? Would it be more or less like the real TCG, or would it be jazzed up to Yu-Gi-Oh-esque proportions (I wouldn't recommend doing this unless you A. know what you're doing, or B. playing Yu-Gi-Oh-esque melodrama for laughs)

Would there be cards not in the real TCG? If so, what? If not, why not?

Where would this arc take place? Would it take place where the Game Boy TCG takes place, one of the canon areas, or somewhere else entirely?

 

[Greninjaman]

If it was animated, I imagine that it would be similar to Yugioh. At least in terms of how the battles/duels are played. Sure, there are far fewer things one can do in a turn in the Pokemon TCG than there are in a Yugioh monster duel.

 

[Steel_Justice]

Protagonists with gravity defying hair, over the top bad guys, hammy trash talk, people constantly explaining what the Bill card does and some truly serious business when the fate of the world somehow ends up revolving around a children's card game .

The protagonist will have a Charizard card as his ace and he butts heads with his jackass rival who runs a Blastoise rain dance deck that still somehow manages to always lose when the plot demands it .

 

[Greninjaman]

Protagonists with gravity defying hair, over the top bad guys, hammy trash talk, people constantly explaining what the Bill card does and some truly serious business when the fate of the world somehow ends up revolving around a children's card game .

Yeah, it was weird how, so often, the fate of the world would be decided by a child's card game. Like, I fail to see how winning a card game would allow you to save the world (unless the duel itself is just a distraction).

 

[LightningTopaz]

To be fair, if you knew what you were doing (and made it clear from the start that the cards had world saving or world destroying capabilities, you could make it work. Or you could play something like YGO for laughs.

 

[Greninjaman]

To be fair, if you knew what you were doing (and made it clear from the start that the cards had world saving or world destrying capabilities, you could make it work. Or you could play something like YGO for laughs.

I suppose if it was known that the cards can affect the world around them in some way, then it would be fine and would not seem weird.

 

[Viridian Beedrill]

I recently started reading about the second Pokemon GB TCG game, and couldn't help wondering how the evil team got by with only a card game as enforcement. If they were only, say, corrupting competition in the TCG circuit I could understand, but they were KIDNAPPING people! There had to be more to the cards, I thought. So I spent way longer pondering it than the game's creators ever intended and came up with this:

The four Legendary cards the player/Mark won in the first game are artifacts from the oldest-known version of what is now the Pokemon TCG. Understandably, they have great historical significance to the sport. Players compete in annual tournaments for the right to battle the cards' "Guardians" and earn the right to temporarily play with the cards. Last year Mark won that honor...but this year he and his new friend Mint stumble across agents of Team GR (a.k.a. Team Great Rocket, the villains) and learn the terrifying truth...

The Legendary cards were not game pieces; they were an early, pre-Apricorn attempt at capturing Pokémon. Through an arcane ritual, the Infinity Energy of a Pokémon could be imprinted on a card and summoned at-will as a construct. Unfortunately, this process only copied the power of a Pokémon, not its soul, so the constructs were only mindless and potentially VERY destructive tools. The ancient people realized how dangerous this was and destroyed the records of the ritual as well as the process for summoning the construct. They gave each of the four cards they had made to trustworthy people, creating the tradition of the cards' Guardians. But some of the ancients didn't think such power should be lost completely, and secretly preserved the process for making the cards.

Now, in the modern day, the leader of Team GR has re-discovered the forbidden process and is building an army of card constructs. The constructs don't obey the normal laws of battle physics, so ordinary Trainers struggle against them. But construct battles do follow laws similar to the TCG rules...

And that is how the fate of the world came to rest in the hands of a couple kids who were really good at a card game.

 

[LightningTopaz]

@Viridian Beedrill

...and this is how Ash and the gang/Liko and Roy/Mark and Mint/OCs of your choice/some combo of all of these came to save the world via the TCG.

Seriously, I would totally read this, or write it myself!

 

[Greninjaman]

If I were to do a story based around the Pokemon TCG, I would have the cards be nothing more than normal playing cards.

 

[Steel_Justice]

Seriously, I would totally read this, or write it myself!

Just be sure to put in the line : "Now I play the Trainer Card Bill! Which let's me draw 2 cards!" .

 

[Greninjaman]

Just be sure to put in the line : "Now I play the Trainer Card Bill! Which let's me draw 2 cards!" .

Also, don't forget to give your protagonist an ancient artifact that contains the spirit of an ancient king who, for some reason, looks like an adult version of the protagonist and is apparently an absolute god at the game (winning like 99% of the time).

 

[Greninjaman]

@LightningTopaz @Steel_Justice
I know, double post, but...
Why did no one ever bat an eyelash whenever Yugi transforms into the Pharaoh or vise versa? Like, why was no one weirded out that this teen transforms into what is basically an adult version of himself?

 

[LightningTopaz]

@Greninjaman

I guess the rule of cool trumped logic (like everything else in that series' world.

 

[Steel_Justice]

Also, don't forget to give your protagonist an ancient artifact that contains the spirit of an ancient king who, for some reason, looks like an adult version of the protagonist and is apparently an absolute god at the game (winning like 99% of the time).

Could be worse. They could be playing the Pokemon TCG on motorcycles .

@LightningTopaz @Steel_Justice
I know, double post, but...
Why did no one ever bat an eyelash whenever Yugi transforms into the Pharaoh or vise versa? Like, why was no one weirded out that this teen transforms into what is basically an adult version of himself?

I've always wondered that too. And how no one ever notices how Yugi's voice changes to an entirely different person's. Then again Yugioh is just weird and its sequel series are no less in the weird department.

 

[Greninjaman]

I guess the rule of cool trumped logic (like everything else in that series' world.

I guess that makes sense, unless that sort of thing has happened before Yugi started doing it and it's just seen as normal?

Could be worse. They could be playing the Pokemon TCG on motorcycles .

I could see that happening with mainly Flying Types.

I've always wondered that too. And how no one ever notices how Yugi's voice changes to an entirely different person's. Then again Yugioh is just weird and its sequel series are no less in the weird department.

Yeah. If that happened in real life, most if not everyone would notice.