#zebstrika

Zebstrika - Royal Blood (Royal Blood)

Zebstrika (2018)

Artist: Shin Nagasawa

Source: TCG

Japanese: Dark Order 8/52

English: Team Up 45/181

(No shiny review requests in the inbox right now; send 'em if you got 'em.)

Blitzle: Blitzle's shiny is really simple; it swaps the standard zebra black/gray out for a dark navy blue, and makes the electric blue accents green. I think this works pretty well; the blue is dark enough that the eye and ear still stand out and look properly electric, and the overall palette looks nice.

Zebstrika: For some inexplicable reason, Zebstrika, instead of being the navy blue of Blitzle, is...uh, purple? The purple isn't a terrible color in and of itself, but it's weird to take a two-stage evolution that already matched and then just arbitrarily handle one of the two shinies differently.

I also think the navy worked better as a whole; it was a more neutral color that allowed the emphasis to go to the eyes and ears, whereas here they don't pop quite as much. It also doesn't help that the green doesn't jive as much with the purple as the blue. Again, not a bad shiny, just not as good as Blitzle.

see: pulling both a reverse zorua and zoroark; and then flipping to the final card of the reverse zoroark pack to find a REGULAR holo zoro as well. I goddamn love that. And also:

But getting both the SR and SAR Hilda out of these two bundles is my pack luck's funniest joke yet. Again I'm not usually crazy about the trainer cards, but god DAMN that SAR. That is a keeper, I love her. She is getting. A display page.

Pluuuuus <33333

Hilda (White Flare)

hello i fixed my sketch. i love my zebstrika. she’s a beautiful girl.