Dark Magician Girl is one of Yu-Gi-Oh's most popular and lovable characters, as evident
by the explosion that occurred in chat when she appeared in last year's TwitchPresents
Yu-Gi-Oh Marathon.
Having appeared in most Yu-Gi-Oh media, some fans may be surprised to know however that
Japanese fans have quite a different version of Dark Magician Girl than we do in the West.
In fact, there even exists a Dark Magician Girl card that is only available in Japan
and this is because the artist is so proud of his work that he refused to change her
appearance for an English release.
And with that notion, today we'll be taking a look at this and more, as we take a look
at how Dark Magician Girl has been censored in the West.
The first thing to point out revolves around her name.
Whilst called Dark Magician Girl in English, all Japanese versions instead call her "Black
Magician Girl".
The reason for this name change is due to the possible occult connotations of "Black
Magic" and not wanting to offend Western morals.
Similar changes have been made to many Yu-Gi-Oh cards - including, of course, Dark Magician,
who is instead known as "Black Magician" over in Japan.
This alteration also has the knock on effect of affecting her anime attack names.
Whilst her attack name in the Japanese version is Black Burning, in the English version,
the names Dark Magic Attack and Dark Burning Attack have both been used.
Sticking with the anime, like you may already be aware, 4Kids were notorious for their heavy
censorship practises when bringing the show to the West and this also affected Dark Magician
Girl, who can at times been seen with a much bigger bust over in Japan.
As you can see, the English versions also remove the hexagram on her chest - with this,
like her name, being due to not wanting to offend Western morals and the hexagram's links
with the occult and religion.
The anime would even censor other parts of her body at times, such as her first appearance
in episode 62.
Here the dub gave her a skirt during one shot to cover up her thigh, but then in other parts
of the episode the skirt it suddenly missing.
Back to the changes made to her bust and hexagram, these edits were then made to the trading
card game, with the first pack with her contained being Magician's Force from October 10th 2003.
As you can see, the Japanese artwork on the left has a noticeably bigger bust and doesn't
have the English red jewel.
Since then, there have been various reprints of the card with different artwork, such as
the 2nd version of Dark Magician Girl here, and as you can see, her bust and hexagram
are altered again.
The same is true for the 3rd alternate artwork version as shown here.
The 5th version didn't get changes to her bust, most likely due to the angle and positing
of her body, but the hexagram was still removed.
And then interestingly, the 6th version of her card, which is only available in Japan,
is the same as her first release but it changes the hexagram to a five pointed star.
This version was released in the 2016 Yugi Muto structure deck and, whilst it was released
in the West too, the English version contained the same censored artwork as her first release.
You may have noticed how we missed the 4th version of her card...
This artwork is only available in Japan and was made to celebrate Yu-Gi-Oh's 10th anniversary.
The card was released amongst others in a special pack called Anniversary Pack and all
cards included were reprints of past cards with new special artwork.
Out of the pack's 9 cards, Dark Magician Girl was the only one to not get released in the
West and this was due to the artist refusing to censor her artwork.
You may also notice the artist's signature in the bottom right corner of the card...
Thus, this card has never been released in the West due to the censorship policies that
are applied to the Western version of the game.
Naturally, Dark Magician Girl's changes can be found in other media too, including the
video games.
Duelists Of The Roses for PlayStation 2, for example, made changes to many of the female
cards to reduce the amount of skin shown.
In Dark Magician Girl's case, she was given extra cloth to cover her bust as well as having
the hexagram yet again removed.
It's interesting to note how they didn't remove the upskirt shots that are possible however.
Changes like these can be found in various Yu-Gi-Oh video games.
And whilst the latest game, Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Links for PC and mobile, didn't make changes
to her bust - the hexagram was still removed, like so.
But, that's all we have time for today but hopefully you have now learnt a few new things
about Dark Magician Girl and how she differs in Japan compared to the West.
Let us know what you think of these changes in the comments below and, until next time,
thank you for watching.