Debunking Yugioh's Banned Card! 

I love watching these every Sunday morning before I go to my IRL locals

Some pro player should cosplay as Air Neos at a YCS and see if Konami bars him from entry. If they do, there's something fishy in there.

Its just that Air Neos made some questionnable comment on myspace in 2004 which were brought up to konami who cut their tie with him

he went back to neo space at the end phase and never returned 😢😢

I remember, when Kashtira was at its peak, someone was talking about using Instant Contact to go into Air Neos, JUST to make Konami acknowledge this card's existence again!

It has to be something about the design for sure, not just one artwork. Because like you said every single person noticed that they removed him from the Instant contact. His last anime appearnce was in season 4 in the farewell duel btween Judai and Chronos. So basicly he dissapeared after GX ended. So somehow he was bound to the anime

I bet it's something internal. Like a company head who decides what to print just hates a guy who used/does work there, that either worked on air neos or air neos is his favorite... Either that, or it's an artist dispute thing; air neos was on the box face, maybe that also has something to do with it.. granting special privilege to someone and that someone doesn't want the image used anymore? I can't imagine they just forgot about a somewhat key hero Jaden used in the anime and was the box face of an entire set.. the fact he was left out of instant contact is a good clue.

Funny enough Air Neos is in instant contact in an odd way. You can’t see his body at all but his wings are tucked behind everyone else so he’s there in a way lol

What if it was originally a design competition art and the artist went on to commit a horrible crime and Konami is just brushing it under the rug. That’s my head cannon

I'm gonna throw in my two cents: this feels like it is tied to the studio in some way. Air Neos was the last single-fusion Neos to debut (even though Humming Bird was the third Neo-Spacian we ever saw), and the fact that they covered him in the artwork of Instant Contact, which is a reference to a moment in the opening of the anime? It certainly feels that way. Copyrights and contracts are really weird in general. What would be common sense for a person turns out it isn't in a legal environment. So saying 'Air Neos being the only one affected is weird', well, it is, because these contracts and copyrights in general are weird. There is a similar example in another TCG: in the Digimon Card Game, there are two archetypes whose artwork consists of purely anime screenshots. Which is very odd given how every other card (bar some very specific alt arts) are almost always original artwork. What are these archetypes? D-Reaper, and Gizmon. D-Reaper are digital lifeforms that AREN'T Digimon, and Gizmon are artificial Digimon. And they are very unique to their anime seasons (they haven't really been used anywhere else). So I wonder if there's some rights dispute that prevents them from drawing new artwork of them, but they're allowed to use the anime screenshots? It doesn't make sense, but the situation itself doesn't make much sense. And it reminded me so much of Air Neos. Why it is in Legacy of the Duelist is beyond me. Maybe it slipped through the cracks, maybe because Konami were not the ones responsible for the game, it somehow made it though. Maybe they had an agreement with the studio, who knows. But whatever it is: the things Konami have a direct hand on, he's not appearing in. The artwork for the card game, Master Duel, Duel Links, etc. And there they are. Awesome video by the way.

I figured it was a trade mark dispute with another company. Copyright and trade marks have different rules.

Regarding the Airline company. I live in Italy and that rumor about them pressuring konami is totally fake I think, basically copyright laws here work as you said in the video, as long as they're totally different things it can happen that they have the same name. Also, the card in Italian has a totally different name that doesn't even resemble "Air Neos"

Also don't forget that Air Neos was the last of the 6 single fusions to be seen in the Anime. It debuted in Season 3 episode 1, instead of season 2 like the others (thought the game between its release in the cg and the anime debut was not too long, being roughly a month). Wonder if that plays into the situation.

Insant contact is the card that makes it being a joke leading into a somewhat redesigned reprint (or maybe new better version) the main theory for me. Since Air Neos is on the card, those wings in the back must be his....but they are way more WHITE than they were originally. Legacy of the Duelist including it does disprove any legal stuff, it would be patched out if it was, but since another company was more in charge of it they might not be in on the joke and Konami saw no reason to force it removed....maybe even even saw it as way to expand the joke. Like saving bringing back this new coloured wing version till they reveal like a Neos focused starter deck, and its HERO related so it could come anytime even after other Jaden support cards came out just months earlier the Super Archtype and its related stuff do what they want, is a pretty good hype moment that will really push up sales of the deck even if it results in Neo Spacian as a deck still sucking.

Hopefully this mystery gets cleared up at some point, the fans need to know!

He says he's going to give us his two cents, but ends with saying "I have no idea."

He never returned from the extra deck after he was set back

Air Neos is kind of weird as far as Neos fusions go in that it didn’t appear in the anime until quite a bit later than the others, in early season 3 rather than mid season 2. My guess would be the designer in season 3 was different than in 2, they managed to get some kind of strange and unique deal and thus Konami isn’t able to freely reprint it because they don’t own the design of the character. Air Neos does appear in Legacy of the Duelist, however that was made by an American company rather than Konami so it’s possible this restriction only exists in Japan or they simply didn’t think to check for it. Cases like the Korean Strike of Neos reprint are odd, it’s possible that it was simply leftover stock from 2008 or maybe again not being Japanese lead to some kind of loophole or they just didn’t realise it was a problem. It’s all very odd

If the issue is the name, just print a card with same effect but different name.

Air Neos could have beed reprinted in Speed Duels box and it would boost seals for Speed Duels and it would little bit save it from cancelation.

Konami is just trolling us I'd imagine

My personal headcannon was that someone at Konami is actually the biggest Air Neos fan on the planet, and wants to slowly but surely buy every single existing copy of it for himself. Kinda like in the anime with Kaiba and blue eyes. the prank theory is a good too tho. Anyways im pretty sure the reason is indeed a "silly" one. No way Konami is scared about some random ass airline company or a single artist (especially if, as you said; only one card was by that scary artist apparently).

I imagine it couldnt be anything related to the art because then you could just do an alt art and it couldn't be something related to the name because then you could just reprint it and change the name, which they have done for cards before. I buy that there's some kind of legal rights to something in the card or someone at some level of the company was personally sleighted by someone and it's just not worth it to include air neos in anything until they revisit the archtype and do a major neos spacian support. A lot of those major Japanese game companies can be extremely stubborn and set in their ways, so it could be something dumb and petty,

4:14 *Me seeing disney doing their best to basically tell to the family of someone who died in one of their restaurant from food allergy do their best to say "yeah you signed a paper to be in our park saying that you re risking your life for being here so screw you, no money for the death of one of your loved one"* I know this seems like a odd comparaison. But just to say no matter how silly you think something is, it will happen. Or else there wouldn't be so many people on the internet eating hot pepper/soap/things that definitly that can cause death for view.

I don't think it's the artist cuz if it was the artist then why hasn't Konami just made an alternate artwork of it and call it a day? I think it has to do with the artwork but in the terms of the anime and not who drew it and if that's the case that might be why we still haven't gotten a new one yet which makes me happy that I got three ultra and ultimate rare 1st ed air neos back when they came out near mint for my hero collection, not realizing at the time that they never be reprinted again so I'm glad I got them on the off chance that if I ever need money for an emergency I have something to sell to fall back on lol

Janjo must have read my comment on another video discussing this a few months ago. I said the same thing that the neos airline reasoning was nonsense and that they wouldn't have just went after Air Neos, but the entire Neos archetype as the company is just called "Neos" and the website is called "neos air". The entire Neos line would have been in jeopardy. My head cannon is that Air Neos is tied up in that legal battle Konami had with Upper Deck. A lot of people don't realize that Strike of Neos and the packs around that era was subjected to the counterfeit scandal. Strike of Neos was heavily counterfeited. To combat having to deal with rulings at tournaments they quietly did that reprint for Samurai assualt. It was also the only card from that era to not get a proper Ultimate Rare re-release. I think it's because Konami saw the card had very little usage.

i’ve always hoped one day someone would win a YCS tournament using Air Neos. that way they would have acknowledge its existence. it would be interesting if konami did something on purpose like not showing/live stream that one specifically

My friend was wondering the same thing about Iron Chain Dragon, and the iron chain cards in general. Iron Chain Dragon only sees play in Edison format today. It's another card that people want reprints of, because it's an $8 rare (give or take) as of now. And its only purpose is to have a level 6 synchro for Debris Dragon. It's the only target in the format.

Someone needs to put this in an extra deck for a ycs and then send it off of punishment so that way they have to acknowledge it

Air neos with the full card art was featured in Duel Links in a cutscene in 2020 i think so the card art ltself cant be the reason.

i think they just wanna see how high the price is gonna go. its like a test case. they dont actually care.

It's funny this came to my YT feed just after i bought an ultra rare air neos from an anime convention. This past weekend, it's odd, to say the least.

it might be a scapegoat situation, Neos himself is basically a blatand rip off of ultra man, in many ways from design, to his name(there is a character called ultraman neos) and his fusions aren't that far from rip offs either, they might have gotten some issues with the rights of neos against ultraman, and since neos is too important being the staple of it's archetype and a protagonist's ace monster, they used one of his fusions instead, the one that looks the most like ultraman, air neos who is the only fusion that has the color red and white, just like ultra man, and although base neos looks more like ultraman, air neos was probably a good enough scapegoat instead. also it's not the only card they haven't printed again, at least not the only one that isn't from an event, there's a monster grom judai's friend(I don't really remember him) who's archetypre revolves around vehicles, one of which is based on a nasa aircraft, and I don't wanna say any weird theory, but after gx ended, for quite a while most new cards were 100% original, or at least they tried to not make them look like anything that might be already there, while before that, we had characters that looked like link from zelda, marvel and dc superheroes, or like I mentioned before, ultraman. Edit: it's worth noting that ultraman is quite a big deal in japan, and during the year 2008 and 2009(the subsequent years where air neos was dropped), 2 ultraman movies where released, and you can see how much similar neos is with ultraman especially in the 2009 movie, so having neos, a card from one if not the most popular cardgame in the world, especially in the gx era, during the near release of those movies, movies that basically need to thrive on the japanese public alone. it might have not sit well with them to compete with a worldwide phenomenom, so something must've happened between yugioh and ultraman, and air neos had to take the blow, instead of neos himself.

I bet they will have an QCR in the tins or Worlds prize card before the anniversary ends 😂

it's probably banned because the top dog at konami got FTKd by it

I am glad I still have my ultimate first ones when they came out.

Crazy how low supply can create demand.

I may be wrong but I seem to remember seeing a video about Air Neos. It was about how it was rumored that the artist who drew Air Neos for konami took his design idea from another franchise. I think it was Power Rangers or something similar. Anyway, it came out and konami didn't want to get sued and to avoid that they decided to remove Air Neos to avoid copyright issues.

So interesting that Air Neos appeared in Legacy of the Duelist Link Evolution (2019) a game that's not too old. Wonder why it was oki for Nintendo but not the other games?

Bro isn’t even in master duel 😭

Someone needs to get a job at Konami asap and spill the beans about Air neos on Reddit or Twitter lmaooo

4:12 didnt microsoft change skydrive to one drive

What's your leading theory regarding Air Neos?

I was just about to bring up the KOF series

It pains me to say I have a copy of the Ultimate Rare but it isn't in the best condition. I don't even remember owning it before. x.x

Idk what happen ... but I manage to get 2 ultra, in french good condition, even one first edition for a bit less than 65 port include by pure luck on Ebay Nice for me but ... Not everyone have luck Especialy anime fans, collectors that do full sets, neos/HEROS collections it's such a pain in the ass to get. My advice : begin by this for a jaden deck or making a list without this fusion

What if it never got a reprint because of a certain neo group? Think about it. Something that a company would never want to associate their product with. Something they would not want to put out the open and would probably scrub everything they possibly could of it. The game from 2019. The card being in it easily could have been a mistake. There's plenty of games where stuff accidentally gets left in developer tools, stuff like that. Even people getting sets early accidentally has happened. So my idea is a certain neo group which doesn't deserve to be named could have been using the card or the card art for something. The correlations I can come up with is tattoos of the color, red and birds. And some of those tattoos kind of resembling the same pose as the card. It's not uncommon for people or groups to use characters or other things as banners. I don't know if anyone remembers. There's a point in time where people use Manny from the diary of a wimpy kid to rally against things. In conclusion, in my opinion, it makes the most sense that that's the main reason why it wouldn't get reprinted.

They can call it wind neos, problem solved! lol

Air Neos is also on the card art for Dimension Explosion, which is a card in Master Duel, so it might not be the design. I’m more weirded out by the lack of Spellbinding Circle. It’s a pretty recurring card in the anime, yet is missing from Master Duel and Duel Links

A Simpsons edit would'a been gold here, 'I must go! My people need me!' Air Neos is our version of Poochie 😎🤙

The weird part is that it is included in neuron, along with its artwork in master duel and duelinks on the card "dimension explosion"

its like they could easily renamed it as aero neos and redesign it and called it for day

I highly suggest it might be a legal dispute or licensing controversy or even a business strategies etc all three have coalesced interconnected overlap usually because law is very complicated at the college level as a theology student it is very reminiscent of the parable of the talents or the workers just for reference. Matthew 20:1-16, Luke 12:42-48 and acts 2:44-45.

Missed opportunity by Farfa and Josh to ask an ex-Konami employee (who was on their podcast) about this card.

It wasn't just 2019 that it was reprinted, it was reprinted last year as well. Korea has IP law agreements with the US. If there was a problem with printing it in the US, there would be a problem with printing it in Korea who is the reason the US still gets censored art - they use it and do NOT get LART. And neither has been the case after the fact, as you show from your US reprints. There's no way they gave the artist of this one card a better deal than the creator of the game. And even if they do, the reprints show that they can just print more of the set. They're constantly reprinting the decks in particular and Have re-released 7 sets in the last 13 months. If the deal was for some reason only for that one set, they would just reprint Strike of Neos like they did the other 7 sets. Whatever it is, there is no reason to believe it is IP law related.

The explanation which makes the most sense to me would be an issue with TV Tokyo, since we do have precedent for that - the Limit Over Accel Synchro monster Shooting Quasar Dragon didn't get a print until 2022/3 because that monster was actually owned by TV Tokyo and NAS rather than Konami at the time. THAT SAID, Its appearance in Legacy of the Duelist is because the game was developed by another company. However, the absence of any patch to remove it in all the years Legacy was "current" does somewhat rebuke there being a legal issue with the card (Unless somehow Konami, TV Tokyo and NAS never got made aware of it to this day).

My thoughts >Neos Air Semi-plausible, but unlikely, it's too absurd. >Artist drama Somewhat plausible but not specifically a legal thing. I'd imagine it's more just personal beef and someone at Konami has made a point of only doing it with one of that artist's cards because it's easier to pull off from a corporate standpoint. It is easier for power harassment to be in the form of, "That one specific card? I'm just going to prioritize other cards over it." than it is to actively target every card with art made by the guy. >Rights with Takahashi/Gallop This actually is possible. Konami has rights to Yugioh but they don't have rights to everything, some of the assets are owned by Studio Dice, and this is one of the theories about why Dark Magician Girl artworks are comparatively limited in the worldwide releases, because Studio Dice holds the rights to those artworks rather than Konami. There also are theories about Air Neos with TV Tokyo, because Air Neos was on TV prior to it being released as a card game there MIGHT have been someone who messed up some of the legal paperwork and it resulted in TV Tokyo holding rights to the design. I think this is at least somewhat believable, because it's the only thing where every person involved could have been acting in a purely rational manner and cover not only for why they can't reprint the card but also why Air Neos is absent from promotional material and card artworks and also it being linked to the design rather than the card art would explain why they can't just make an alt artwork (like they did with Mad Lobster). If someone has to be doing legal work for all the monster designs as they go to broadcast, they may have missed that Air Neos did not appear in Season 2 and assume that the legal stuff was handled for all the Neos fusions, except his first appearance was in season 3. It's not that TV Tokyo would be strongarming them and saying they can't use Air Neos, but that just for legal reasons they need to go through the step of reaching out to TV Tokyo and for a card that is basically irrelevant on a gameplay level that it's more trouble than they're willing to go through. Legacy of the Duelist throws a hatchet into most theories but it's possible that due to it being a largescale project and not something that being both a game that was using the anime as a marketing position and not being a live service game they wanted to make the card list as comprehensive as possible from the start and simply went through whatever legal hassle there was anyway.

I warned Air Neos to stay away from those school grounds😂

My best guess is that whatever agreement that Konami has with Gallop or NAS or whatever distributer for the anime, the first 5 Neos fusions are grouped separately from whatever agreement they had with Air Neos as Air Neos debuted in season 3 while the first 5 debuted in season 2, indicating that whatever agreement for the cards didn’t extend to include air Neos. Maybe they had to renew it and only bothered to do the original 5 and not whatever agreement had air Neos either because A. They couldn’t be bothered to do so or B. They purposefully chose not to as the other cards included with Air Neos weren’t worth bringing back so they chose to not complete the Neos set. A weak answer but the only thing I can think of.

Shiba Warior Taro is the Only TCG card to never be officaly sold in Europe or UK it is still legal to play since the only pack it was in was never sold in those regions.All Reprints of Metal Shooter are US region only. King of Feral Imps only Holo Printing is only in a Chinese Starter deck always found that weird since its a Key card in all Reptile decks way more than Snake Rain ever was.

I still think it’s the airline, they never seems to mess up arts rights stuff before or after. Cease and desists can be stupid I guess. Even if a court wouldn’t rule that the airline brand could be confused for the card, it’s not worth it to fight a court case.

Heros are trash *raccoons be like *

As soon as I win the lottery, I’m going buy this card. Literally every other E Hero is completely accessible in today’s game except Air Neos. About the only modern day yugioh media to still have him is Neuron, and that’s not really saying much since it’s just a database.

We need someone to summon Air Neos during a feature match and see what happens lol

Me waiting for the "WHO?" Comments

Nightmare Troubadour?? 👀🎧🎶

why don't they just redraw the art. this wouldn't be the first time they've done that (Mad Lobster). I think people would prefer the card to exist even if it's redrawn.

I thought it had to do with Upper Deck and they are unable to reprint it.