It's official: Nintendo just nuked a beloved fan-made Pokémon YouTube channel.PokeNational Geographic YouTube channel, which produced beautifully animated Pokémon documentaries, has faded into history following a sudden onslaught of rapid-fire copyright claims from Nintendo of America.PokeNational Geographic gave Pokemon fans beautifully animated nature documentariesImage via PokeNational GeographicCreated by EliousEntertainmentYT, PokeNational Geographic has been pumping out 3D animated shorts modeled after segments from National Geographic nature documentaries. Brought to life through Blender and other 3D modeling software, the shorts followed wild Pokémon as they dawdled about their natural habitats, all while the David Attenborough-esque "Professor Ginkgo" dropped interesting facts about whatever Pokémon the short covered.Fans love to imagine what their favorite Pokémon would look like in the real world, and few official or fan-made works have tapped into those daydreams better than PokeNational Geographic. Elious did every Pokémon featured in the series justice; the way they move and interact with their environment clearly communicate their unique quirks, and Ginkgo's delivery perfectly complements the delightful antics the Pokémon get into.Sadly, it seems Nintendo wasn't as charmed by PokeNational Geographic as their fans were. In a video uploaded onto a separate YouTube channel on April 26, 2026, Elious explained that Nintendo of America pummelled his latest Pokémon National Geographic videos with copyright strikes. YouTube allows channels to have up to three of those before they're marked for termination, and it sounds like Nintendo pushed PokeNational Geographic over that threshold with extreme prejudice.Throughout the video, Elious pushes back against Nintendo's accusations that PokéNational Geographic videos stole "content used in Pokémon video games, including audiovisual works, characters, and imagery." He outlines his animation process, highlighting that he created every Pokémon model used in the series from scratch. The only in-game assets Eliou admits he lifted from Pokémon games are the pixelated cries, which are never used for longer than three seconds and, in his opinion, fall under free-use rules.Unsurprisingly, Elious took the news pretty hard.“I can’t fight this. I don’t…I don’t know what to do about it because it’ll remove everything. Almost 100,000 subscribers over three years of making these animations, and it’s all going to be gone in seven days.”While Elious does intend to continue uploading videos on a new channel, he has no plans to create new Pokémon content. He's currently downloading every video in the series for personal use, as they've already helped him land several promising animator jobs and internships. I wish him nothing but the best.The post You know that Pokemon nature documentary channel? Yeah, it just got shut down appeared first on Destructoid.