The recent gaffe of the "immersive" art for Ho-Oh in TCGP also brings up a bit of an issue that affects not only Pokémon but also many other game franchises in the world. It concerns the treatment of art that is specifically made for official media and art that is made by fans for their purposes. More specifically, these two realms can be considered to have a "divide" between them that may be difficult to resolve. Even with that difficulty, there is an imperative to discuss the situation and what it means for both parts of the divide.
Considering the realm of gaming franchises, Pokémon can be regarded as a "friendly" one with respect to fan art. If it weren't, all the fan art out there - including, say, by "Trainer K" - would have been quashed with a certain immediacy. Of course, any art with a highly and particularly evident negative light can still be quashed; this would likely be the course for any other (game) franchise, even for ones that like and appreciate fan art. Not only the art but also image (as in reputation) have to be protected after all, as a human mannerism.
What becomes the primary concern of the divide, as with all sorts of nice things in today's world, is money and how that is brought about by the art in question. Pokémon is commercial, certainly, so there's money to be had from official art. Fans may not necessarily be in it for the money (also in a sense, perhaps in knowledgeable ways), but at the same time, Pokémon also cannot enjoy that benefit willy-nilly from fan art, which sheds a light on the "authenticity" issue that surrounds the aforementioned TCGP art gaffe and its production.
For that, licensing becomes a concern that is drawn into this divide. If something is licensed, especially by prior agreement and intent, then Pokémon can stand to make money off of it - and it should, given how costly official merchandise is these days. But then, there is the difficulty - perhaps close to impossibility - of licensing something that wasn't licensed in the first place, which ties into the issue of making fan art official and yet again ties into that gaffe. The complicating issues make an apparent divide even more stark.
So, apart from revealing more bits about that gaffe, all the points above highlight the situation that official art and fan art are separated not only by their creation process but also the issues that they present for each other, which may not be easily bridged. What may be more easily bridged, however, is appreciation on both sides where legalities aren't involved (too deeply) and positivity is apparent. It seems that there will always be a divide; the question is how to work with and around that divide for the good of everyone.
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