PokéNational Geographic Creator Says Nintendo Copyright Strikes Are Forcing the Channel Offline

Over three years, the series helped popularize a wave of Pokémon nature-documentary videos across social platforms. Some later entries in that broader trend have been made with AI tools, which Elios notes appear to be trained on copyrighted material. The irony is not subtle, even by internet standards.

What the strikes appear to target

Elios says the copyright complaints cite the use of Pokémon video game “works, characters, and imagery.” He argues that almost everything in the pseudo-documentaries was made by him, including the visuals and presentation.

The major exception, he says, is the use of the in-game cries heard when Pokémon enter battle. Those audio samples are each under three seconds, and Elios believes they should fall under fair use. That is his position, not a court ruling, and YouTube’s strike system rarely gives creators the luxury of a slow legal debate.

Elios also says he would have been willing to delete the videos Nintendo objected to, but claims he was not given that opportunity before the strikes stacked up.

YouTube and Nintendo of America did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Why the shutdown matters beyond one channel

For Elios, PokéNational was not just a fandom project. He says it directly helped him build a career.

“I've gotten internships, I've gotten jobs because of PokéNational, because I showed people my animation skills through that,” he says.

He also says he spent the past several years making the videos more educational and translating them into other languages so teachers could use them in classrooms. In other words, the channel had become a portfolio, a teaching tool, and a fan project at the same time.

Now, Elios says he is downloading his videos for preservation, but will not be allowed to upload them again. He plans to keep making art on a separate channel, but it will no longer be based on Pokémon.

“I don't know how to save the channel, I don't know if I can,” he says.

Then he puts it more bluntly: “PokéNational is dead.”