The Artist Behind Mega Darkrai

Mega Darkrai is finally getting a card. Pokemon's next set, Mega Evolution: Pitch Black, lands July 17 with Mega Darkrai ex as the headline.

The card itself is illustrated by Akira Egawa, and that fact is doing more work in this set than the Pokemon on the front of the ETB.

Who is Akira Egawa?

Egawa has been an official Pokemon TCG illustrator since 2019. She debuted on Unified Minds and has illustrated more than 85 cards in the main Pokemon TCG since, plus another 30+ for TCG Pocket. That is the shortest tenure of any artist in the active top ten. And she is definitely in the top 10.

SNKRDUNK ranks her #6 on its 2025 list of the top Pokemon TCG illustrators of all time, with the note that "if we were to redo this list in 2030, Egawa could easily be #1 by then."

The Gamer puts her at #15 in its all-time ranking of 21 illustrators, where she sits alongside artists with three decades of work, and describes her style as "incredibly detailed" with the Pokemon "captured in dynamic poses that convey majesty."

The Pokemon Company itself put her on the judging panel for the 2022 Pokemon TCG Illustration Contest. That's an institutional credit, not a fan vote. Her own description of her process, from her 2024 official interview: "I personally pour a lot of attention into giving Pokémon a detailed, uneven texture."

Of the artists who entered the program from 2019 onward, she has the deepest catalog and the highest acclaim by a meaningful margin.

The phrase community discussion keeps coming back to is "instant pull-from-the-pack recognition."

What her catalog looks like

Her chase-tier work is legendary across the last three years:

• Crown Zenith, Galarian Gallery. Three of the chase secret rares in Crown Zenith are hers: The Giratina is widely called the single chase card of the entire set.

  

• Charizard ex SIR, Obsidian Flames. The painted SIR variant of the set's headline card.

• Hydreigon ex SIR, Surging Sparks

• Mega Latias ex SIR. Her first SIR of the Mega Evolution cycle.

The pattern that holds across all of those: when Egawa draws the chase variant of a Pokemon, her card tends to be the most chased art in the set. The pattern she'll be tested against in Pitch Black is whether the Mega era still rewards that.

What that means for Mega Darkrai

Mega Darkrai ex SAR is her first Darkrai and her first flagship card for an entire set.

The leading indicator is already trading. Abyss Eye (JP version of the Pitch Black set) released in Japan on May 22.

Release-week guides have reported the Mega Darkrai SAR at approximately ¥85,000 raw ($534 USD). Reported pull rate on Abyss Eye: roughly one SAR per 3.4 booster boxes, one MUR per 45.

If the pattern from her Charizard SIR in Obsidian Flames and her Crown Zenith Galarian Gallery work holds, the English Darkrai SAR opens at or above the JP raw print and settles into the same "most expensive card in the set" position. That's the bullish case, and it has the body of work behind it.

The September problem

Pitch Black has roughly eight weeks of clean runway before the calendar gets heavy.

Storm Emerald (Mega Rayquaza ex) ships in Japan July 31, with English expected in September. Rayquaza is widely the most-wanted Mega slot of the entire cycle. 30th Celebration lands September 18 in the first worldwide simultaneous Pokemon TCG release ever, with all-foil packs, six cards per pack, and a new opalescent rarity tier. That product will eat headlines on contact.

Anniversary years aren't automatic tailwind, either. Evolving Skies released in August 2021 and didn't spike during Celebrations in October 2021. It traded slightly below MSRP through the back half of 2021 and only ran up through 2022. The anniversary narrative reaches new releases on a lag.

Pitch Black has to do its work on its own, in a window where the next two products on the schedule are both bigger headlines.

Our take

If you only know one thing about Pitch Black going in, make it Akira Egawa. She has spent six years building the most consistent track record of any recent Pokemon TCG illustrator, and Mega Darkrai is the kind of Pokemon her style was built for. The JP raw print is already telling you the floor.

As the back half of the year heats up leading to the 30th Anniversary of Pokemon, we look for top artists to do their best work on the coolest Pokemon, and that’s exactly what Egawa has done here. We’d expect this to perform as the years continue, even if prices reset after a hyped launch.