While it may be an unexpected fact to some, it’s nevertheless true that the Yu-Gi-Oh TCG is no stranger to controversy. A notable part of this controversy can be seen in censored Yu-Gi-Oh cards; this censorship typically occurs after the cards are reprinted abroad. This is due to differences in sociocultural norms between Japan and the rest of the world in matters such as religion, violence/gore, and sexuality, among other matters.

Card censorship in the Yu-Gi-Oh TCG can broadly be divided into several categories. The vast majority of Yu-Gi-Oh TCG card censorship relates to religion, violence/gore, firearms, and sexuality; there are also a few outlier examples which don’t fit into any of these categories.

Religious References

Among the main examples of religion-related censorship in the Yu-Gi-Oh TCG are cards which have had a hexagram, better known by most as a “Star of David”, removed. Since the Jewish population in Japan is extremely small, most people there would not immediately make the association between the hexagram and its religious context. However, outside Japan it’s much more likely for such cards to be seen as trivializing Judaism and thus inherently anti-Semitic; thus, all hexagrams on Yu-Gi-Oh TCG cards were cut when they went abroad. Among these cards are Double Spell, Magicians Unite, and Owner’s Seal.

Many Yu-Gi-Oh TCG cards also reference Christianity. Once again, there’s a cultural disconnect because of the small Christian population of Japan; hence, the symbolism of the crucifix doesn’t “carry” in quite the same way in Japan as it does abroad, leading to more instances of some considering the cards’ illustrations to trivialize the religion. For this reason, cards such as Card of Last Will, Grand Convergence, and Mystical Donator all had their respective crucifix imagery removed in their international versions.

Finally, elements such as pentagrams and demonic horns are almost always removed from international cards’ illustrations. In the 1980s and 1990s, many people in the West were taken in by the idea of the “Satanic panic”, when vast swathes of pop culture were incorrectly linked with Satanism. While there obviously aren’t any links between Yu-Gi-Oh and Satanism, it would nevertheless have been a really bad look when the cards went abroad. Thus, cards such as Chaos Scepter Blast, Fiend’s Hand Mirror, and Dark Magician Chaos, among others, had related imagery scrubbed.

Violence/Gore

Social taboos against visual displays of violence and gore in media are generally stronger in the West than they are in Japan. For this reason, many cards were censored in their international versions. For example, blades and axes shown on characters in illustrations are either removed or obscured in the international card versions. Some cards for which this censorship took place include Zombino, Frightfur Wolf, and Bad Aim.

Perhaps the most notable examples of card censorship related to violence and gore are those which involve blood. In Japanese media and pop culture, depictions of blood aren’t deemed as “inappropriate” as they are in the West; hence, if the cards with illustrations that do have blood in them were left uncensored, many people abroad might find the cards off-putting. Some cards which experienced censorship of blood imagery include Junk Puppet, Rigorous Reaver, and Super Rejuvenation.

All references to deaths via violent means are censored in international prints of Yu-Gi-Oh TCG cards. The censored illustration of the Dramatic Rescue card depicts a girl who’s tied to a tree instead of having a hand in a guillotine. Butterflyoke’s sanitized version, meanwhile, removes a hand in a pond to delete the allusion to a drowning person. Another example is the international version of Wattcancel which replaces an Ojama Yellow being electrocuted to death with an image of a red X with a lightning bolt.

Firearms

Cards that depict firearms are also subject to censorship in their international versions (yes, that also includes the US. Surprised?). Guns are usually either redrawn to look less realistic (examples: Gatling Dragon, Meklord Emperor Skiel) or replaced by lasers (examples: Machina Defender, Twin-Barrel Dragon).

Grenades, such as in Ring of Destruction, and cannons, such as in Junk Box, aren’t spared either. They might be redrawn or even outright removed from censored international versions. Even bullet shells are scrubbed from these censored illustrations. Cards for which such applies include Magical Musket – Last Stand and Igknight Reload.

Sexuality

When most people think of the word “censorship”, they’ll usually relate it to sexual content first. True to this idea, much sexual content is indeed excised from international cards’ artwork. There are way too many examples to provide a succinct list of specific cards; however, what we will do is provide several methods by which sexual or suggestive content is censored.

• • Revealing clothing is made less so
• • Cleavage is altered, covered, or erased
• • Busts are less accentuated
• • Additional clothing is added
• • Crotch areas are de-emphasized
• • Mouths are edited to remove suggestive implications
• • Overt anatomical references are erased

It’s also worth mentioning that due to demographic demand, many of the original uncensored cards fetch higher values than their edited counterparts. The vast majority of the cards which have had sexual or suggestive content cut from international releases, after all, depict female characters. (There are many reasons why this is so, but that’s a topic for another time.) Once again, the number of cards to which this value disparity applies is far too large to go into further detail here; nevertheless, it undoubtedly does exist.

Other Censorship

With certain cards, there are even specific cases of censorship for reasons seen almost nowhere else in the Yu-Gi-Oh TCG. These include the following:

• • References to tobacco (Aquaactress Arowana, Spy-C-Spy, The Six Samurai – Kamon)
• • References to alcohol (Number 41: Bagooska the Terribly Tired Tapir, Tyrant’s Throes)
• • Red Cross symbols (Injection Fairy Lily, Weed Out, Numinous Healer)
• • Trademark/copyright issues (Retaliating “C”, Fairy Tail – Snow)

Finally, all cards which bear images of Japanese characters either have them translated (such as in the illustrations of Limit Reverse, Scarlet Security, and Into the Void) or outright replaced with English text (examples include Back to Square One, Onikuji, and Trap Stun). Such changes are presumably done to make the cards more relatable to players and collectors outside Japan; however, this form of censorship has also been criticized by some who consider it a type of cultural erasure.

Over the years, there’s been a significant amount of fan backlash against Yu-Gi-Oh TCG card censorship with many players and collectors claiming that the censored imagery detracts from the overall experience. To partially address this matter, Konami released the Lost Art Promotion 2022 in regions outside Japan and Asia-Pacific. The Lost Art Promotion 2022, as implied by its name, contained various cards featuring artwork which had previously been censored in those other regions.

Nevertheless, card censorship will always be a highly controversial topic within the Yu-Gi-Oh TCG fandom in general. It is, after all, about a topic that goes beyond any TCG in and of itself: almost every media franchise has had to deal with the question of censorship at some point.

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