Absol Full Art Cards: Every Japanese SR, SAR and AR Print

Absol Full Art Cards: Every Japanese SR, SAR and AR Print

Collectors use “full art” for prints whose artwork fills the whole card face. Japanese sets do not print those words: the official card database prints only a rarity code, and the full-art treatments are the SR (full-art ex and Supporter cards), SAR (Special Art Rare), AR (Art Rare), CHR / CSR (Character Rare) and the gold UR and rainbow HR printings. The Absol full art cards covered here are SR, SAR and AR prints:

For how the treatments differ across sets, see our full art Pokemon cards guide.

The Anchor: Mega Absol ex, M1L Mega Brave

Mega Absol ex, M1L 038/092, RR

Mega Absol ex, M1L 089/092, SAR

Mega Brave (M1L) released in Japan on August 1, 2025, and its Mega Absol ex is a Darkness-type, 280 HP Basic MEGA-class Pokemon. Its Ability, Despair Period, knocks out the opponent’s Active Pokemon outright if that Pokemon has exactly six damage counters on it — a condition-specific effect built around setting up a precise damage count rather than raw output. Its attack, Dark Claws, deals 200 damage and discards cards from the opponent’s hand.

The standard RR print is card 038/092, illustrated by aky CG Works. The higher-end Special Art Rare at 089/092 carries the same Ability and attack but is illustrated by Mitsuhiro Arita — one of the Pokemon TCG’s longest-running artists. A third print, an SR at 079/092, sits between the two. All three share identical game text; the difference is purely which frame and artwork you’re chasing.

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For the full checklist behind this box, see our M1L Mega Brave complete guide, and for the set’s other headline chase cards, our Mega Brave best cards guide covers the rest of the box.

The AR Lineage: Battle Region to VSTAR Universe

Absol’s Sword & Shield-era Art Rare traces back two sets. It first printed as a standard card in Battle Region (S9a), released February 25, 2022, at card 51/067. Later that same year, VSTAR Universe (S12a), released December 2, 2022, reprinted the same card as a full Art Rare at 191/172, illustrated by Uta. The regular-rarity VSTAR Universe printing of the same card sits at 083/172, illustrated by GIDORA.

Game text stays consistent across both sets: a Darkness-type, 100 HP card with the attack Disaster Swirl (10 damage to each of the opponent’s Pokemon) and Claw Rend (50-plus damage). It’s a supporting-role card rather than a deck centerpiece, but the AR treatment made it one of the more collected Absol prints of its era.

The VSTAR Universe booster box is currently listed at ¥27,974 (~$182), and the Battle Region booster box at ¥13,642 (~$89) if you’d rather source the card’s original, less expensive printing.

Where Mega Absol Fits in the MEGA Era

The TCG’s 2025–26 MEGA era gave Absol its first Mega-branded card print, reintroducing it alongside the era’s other fan-favorite designs. Its Ability-plus-attack design — a conditional knockout paired with a 200-damage hand-disruption attack — pairs a build-around effect with raw power rather than raw power alone.

Mega Absol ex is paired with a second, art-focused version at the same rarity tier structure the set uses elsewhere — the RR, SR, and SAR trio at 038, 079, and 089 out of 092. That’s the tier structure Mega Brave uses for this card, so if you’re sourcing Mega Absol ex specifically, the box you open is the same box regardless of which of the three prints you end up pulling.

For the Mega Absol ex print itself, see our Mega Absol ex card guide. If you’re collecting across the wider MEGA lineup rather than just Absol, our Mega Evolution Pokemon cards chase card guide covers how the era’s chase cards compare set to set, and our PSA10 Mega Pokemon cards guide covers the graded side of the market for this generation of Mega ex prints.

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