General comments

I strongly believe this is a great manuscript that draws attention to popular types of media that non-geologists can easily encounter in the public domain. It is therefore important to understand how geology is represented in these media. Video games have been covered in several papers in the past few years, but this manuscript makes the reader consider other media forms, especially those other than film/TV.

The manuscript was well written, and the author, who is clearly a PTCG collector, considered many of the key aspects about the PTCG during their research, such as focusing only on English cards to avoid missing other language-exclusive artworks, and to make the dataset more manageable. They clearly put a lot of effort into analysing the data and presented it clearly.  

I do, however, have some concerns about the content of the manuscript, such as whether it is plausible enough to consider that PTCG collectors would use AI to identify minerals in the artwork, especially when it is so rare for a card to include a mineral. Perhaps the AI aspect would be more appropriate as its own manuscript, investigating how accurately they perform against popular media forms (e.g. stills from movies, or in comic books as well). Furthermore, the final summary points and conclusion feel rushed and leave the reader lacking in their understanding of why this research is truly important.

Specific comments

Does the author truly believe that there is a significant number of PTCG collectors who would use AI to identify minerals within the artwork? As a geologist and PTCG collector myself, I have never once considered the accuracy of the illustrations on the cards, nor thought to use AI to identify them. In my experience of over 20 years in the hobby, collectors are more likely to appreciate nice artwork and not question the realism of it. This can potentially even go as far as most collectors recognising it is depicting a fantasy world and therefore it is acceptable for the artwork to not be accurate.

If Pokémon cards that contain minerals only account for 1% of the entire English printed roster, how many ‘mineral cards’ would the average collector actually have/see? Taking a reasonable number of 2000 in a collection, that would equate to someone only having 20 ‘mineral cards’. This seems very low and might not have a significant impact on their understanding of true mineral structures. Furthermore, is it not possible collectors are able to understand that the artwork contains fantasy elements given they depict fantasy monsters.

Ice was identified by a human expert (the author) as the most common mineral (Figure 4). However, it is barely spoken about within the text. Instead, the text focuses mainly on the other five identifiable minerals (e.g. quartz, calcite, and zircon). What is ice’s significance to the results in terms of accuracy of illustrations, reasonable environments etc? Either explain the results regarding ice or remove it from the criteria/data.

The implications of this research (Sections 4.3 and 5) feel very rushed. The results strongly support the author’s conclusion that mineral depiction within PTCG is oversimplified. However, the reasoning provided for this is lacking, only stated as influenced by gemstone markets and museum displays. The author does not appear to consider the fact that many PTCG illustrators likely lack a geological background and that some art styles may purposely choose not to take inspiration from realism or detailed accuracy (e.g. Shinji Kanda or Hyogonosuke). The author does allude to the latter in Section 4.1 but not considered again. After 30 years of producing Pokémon cards, the hobby is arguably more popular than ever, and a lack of accurately illustrated minerals does not appear to dissuade collectors. Therefore, is the Pokémon Company not justified in its approach to continue to “reproduce this selective imagery”? It would be great to expand further on these considerations.

Continuing the last point, the author simply says “geoscience educators might consider addressing these media representations”, which I agree with. However, it would be great to also expand on this further and provide examples. This would improve the significance of the manuscript by providing educators with potential starting points that they could adapt into their lessons.

Technical comments

• Section 2.1, Line 39: How did you reach a total of 19,875 cards? I cannot find an online reference to this total anywhere, even on Pikawiz. Also, it is worth noting that some artworks are reprinted, not just for mini-sets but in full sets (e.g. “Professor Elm’s Training Method” has the same artwork used in E-series base, Unseen Forces, and Dragon Frontier). Therefore, this total would not represent unique artworks.
• Section 2.1, Line 40: Did you include Promo cards or other mini-sets such as the McDonalds or Trick & Trade sets as well? Most of the latter reprint existing artwork and count it as a new card by including a new holo pattern or stamp.
• Section 2.1, Line 40: Was the Pikawiz database cross-referenced with any other database to confirm all cards were accounted for?
• Section 2.1, Line 43: How confident are you that the coverage and list you came up with was “exhaustive”? Did you manually screen the cards once or more times? A quick search on Google and Bulbapedia shows there are several cards from the HGSS series that include evolution stones (e.g. HGSS base Arcanine #1), and there are at least three different artworks for “Old Amber”. From my interpretation of your methodology, these cards agree with your criteria.
• Section 2.1, Line 45: “distinct geological formations” is a very broad term that could capture many different elements that do not appear to be included, such as volcanoes. Also, how can you accurately identify a “limestone cave”? You later state on Line 98 that it is not possible to identify the lithology of host rocks. The definitions you describe in the Appendix (Line 285: Major rock types) are much better. I would recommend using them in the main text body as well as the Appendix.
• Section 2.1, Line 48: “202 cards”, again I believe there are more.
• Section 2.1, Line 48: “84 different artists”. I would be interested to know later in the manuscript if there are particular artists who like to include minerals in their artwork, or if there is a general average of 2-3 cards per artist.
• Section 2.3, Line 85: How does ChatGPT and Gemini fair against identifying real minerals?
• Section 2.3, Line 86: Why was Rock Identifier used as the specialised app? Did it have the most positive reviews?
• Section 3.1, Line 96: Provide an exact number/ percentage of how many minerals occurred in caves and that were fully exposed.
• Section 3.1, Line 101: It is not explained or alluded to until the Appendix how the length of minerals are calculated. I would recommend including a short explanation earlier in the text, such as in Section 2.1, so that readers are aware.
• Section 3.2, Line 135: Provide an exact percentage for the rock-scanning app to highlight how much less this agreed compared to the other AI apps.
• Section 3.2, Line 139: Provide one or two examples of “fantasy elements” identified in the cards.
• Figure 3 caption: Reference back to Section or Appendix as to what the “13 categorical features” are so that readers can quickly look at the figures and know where to go to in the text.
• Figure 3 caption: Include a mention about the Benzécri correction in the main body of the text.
• Section 4.1, Line 167: Has the lack of paragenesis and focus on rare crystals been reported in other forms of media? If so, it would be good to cite that here.
• Section 4.1, Line 179: Artists may also be more familiar with particular mineral types or lack true awareness of other forms. I highly suspect many illustrators only have a limited background in geology, if any background at all.
• Section 4.1, Line 182: Again, it may not be an “artistic shortcut” if the illustrators are not fully aware of other crystal types. If their knowledge of minerals comes from limited geological media such as museums (as mentioned in the text), then they are only replicating what they have seen themselves.
• Section 4.1, Line 190: What do the statistics show when considering ice only?  
• Section 4.1, Line 192: Again, perhaps the illustrators are unaware of other minerals such as amphibole or mica.
• Section 4.2, Line 213: “Failure” is a strong word for saying this manuscript is investigating the minerals of a ‘fantasy world’. Numerous aspects of the Pokémon world are impossible in the real world. Why can minerals not be included in this?
• Section 4.2, Line 216: “A human could recognize”. A trained geologist such as the author is capable of easily doing this, but could a non-geologist?
• Section 4.3, Line 235: Hyper-realistic digital illustrators such as 5ban Graphics and REND are relatively new to illustrating cards. Although their work is hyper-realistic, they have yet to illustrate cards with minerals. Perhaps with time, new cards will appear.
• Section 4.3, Line 240: Explain further why this is beneficial and how educators could use the PTCG as effective communication tools.
• Section 5, Line 245: What about ice? This was the most common mineral identified.
• Section 5, Line 247: It has been previously mentioned AI also fall short in their ability to correctly identify minerals correctly for several other reasons such as not being able to consider surrounding environmental aspects or struggling with 2D image identification.
• Figure A1, Graph: The Scarlet & Violet series ended in September 2025 and was succeeded by Mega Evolutions, which is likely to continue well into 2027.
• Appendix B1, Line 293: “Official average heights” were used. Individual Pokémon, even from the same species, can drastically range in size. Also, where were the measurements acquired? Were they written on the cards or from Bulbapedia, for example?

general comments

The manuscript analyzed 202 mineral illustrations from the Pokémon Trading Card Game between 1999 and 2026. Multiple Correspondence Analysis was applied to identify the visual characteristics and found the contrasts with natural systems. Comparisons between human interpretation and AI-based identification further showed that these stylized images lack sufficient diagnostic information for consistent classification.

specific comments

This article calls for the importance of popular science education on minerals and conducted in-depth quantitative analysis of the minerals in Pokémon Trading Card Game, which are good. It would be even better if further suggestions could be given on how to enhance professionalism.

technical corrections

Because the mineral images in the Pokémon Trading Card Game are more artistic than practical, is it fair to use them test AI tools?