GB Pocket Card - Anime Version

1998 / Game Boy Pocket

The product is printed as GB Pocket Card Anime Version, and the original manufacturer leaflet lists 160 card types. The documented structure behind that total is 151 numbered Pokemon cards plus 9 unnumbered anime character cards. All 151 numbered cards are now identified from photographed physical cards, so the numbered run 001 through 151 is complete. Number 079 was the last open slot and it is now read off one card that photographs both of its faces beside a ruler. All 9 character cards are now listed by name as well, so every type the leaflet counts is accounted for and this checklist is complete. Eight of them are read off a character card back, which prints the name in the slot where a numbered back prints its number and carries no number line at all, and the ninth is the Ash row this archive already carried from artwork alone. Jessie and Nurse Joy were the last two, and both are read at full resolution on one photograph that holds the box for this product in the same frame, each of them beside a numbered back of the same plate, which is what proves the two layouts belong to one release. Ash is the one character whose own back has still never been photographed, and that row rests on front artwork and the anime rights footer alone until one is.

The original Kyodo Animation Version leaflet prints 160 card types and shows Mewtwo #150. That figure is now read on the retail display band for this product as well, printed twice on each of two bands photographed unfolded and side by side, once in the title block as the largest type on the band and once in the bullet list beside its own box and body colour bullets, so four instances across two physical specimens. The same band prints the Sumida-ku publisher block for Kyodo and the item number 4947122970032, which passes its own printed check digit and sits one item number above the Final Collection. Its rights line names the anime broadcast credits alongside Nintendo, Creatures and Game Freak, where the Final Collection band names only the first three, which is a printed difference between the two products rather than an inference. That total is not a license to fill the remaining rows from Pokedex order. Finish variants and exact release dating remain under research.