Are Pokémon Black and White covers the same in Japan and the West?

Black and White's boxes carry the neatest piece of cover design in the series, and it is identical in Japan and the West. Reshiram, the white dragon, fronts Black; Zekrom, the black dragon, fronts White. Each mascot is printed against its opposite's colour, so the pair of boxes read as one yin-yang gesture on a shelf, a piece of design that needed no regional adjustment and received none.

The sequels extended the idea in both regions at once: Black Kyurem, Kyurem fused with Zekrom, fronts Black 2, and White Kyurem, fused with Reshiram, fronts White 2, the dragons literally exchanged between the boxes. Japanese and Western copies alike carry these images, with only the branding furniture localised, Pocket Monsters wordmarks and CERO ratings in Japan, the international logo and ESRB or PEGI marks in the West.

By Generation V the series had fully settled the question the Game Boy generations had fumbled: one global cover per version, translated rather than redrawn. What a Japanese player and an American player held in 2010 and 2011 was the same object wearing different small print.

For the Library's cover comparisons, this pair and its sequels are the control case: when the pictured Japanese and Western boxes differ, it is in type and trademarks only, and the dragons stare out of both, unchanged.