Project Title: Palkia V (Alternate Art) X Relativity

Creation Year: 2022 / 1953

Read This if You Are Into: Impossible architecture, visual paradoxes, trading card art, or spatial storytelling.

Design Significance: M.C. Escher’s Relativity is a cornerstone of spatial illusion — a world where multiple gravitational pulls coexist, stairs loop impossibly, and orientation is a matter of perspective. Nearly 70 years later, illustrator Kouki Saitou channels that same logic-defying energy into the alternate art for Palkia V from Pokémon’s Astral Radiance set. The card plunges Palkia into a shattered, Escher-like environment of intersecting planes and floating staircases, making a direct visual nod to Relativity while reimagining it through a cosmic, high-saturation lens.

What makes this design especially effective is how it reinforces Palkia’s lore as the Spatial Pokémon — a deity-like figure with dominion over space itself. By invoking Escher’s architectural paradoxes, the artwork turns spatial control into a visual experience: you’re not just seeing Palkia’s power, you’re inside it. Saitou’s illustration doesn’t just quote Relativity; it evolves it, adding motion, narrative, and dimensionality to a static tradition. It’s a perfect fusion of classical influence and modern storytelling, all packed into a 2.5 x 3.5 inch frame.