CW: mentions of SA, sex work, the Epstein Files and “situations”
I have been debating, fervently and feverishly, whether or not to discuss a certain title. I’ve been more apprehensive about it than anything else I have covered thus far - and if you know the kind of works I dissertated in the past year, alone, then you should be scared.
This is the game.
I became aware of Mousou no Mayu’s Hustle Battle: Card Gamers via an AUTOMATON WEST article about a Japanese bank blocking a small indie developer’s Steam pay-out. To be clear, it’s bullshit that it happened but not at all surprising.
There is a lot I could say on the state of our global economic dystopia and arbitrary censorship based on “vibes” but the long-story-short version of this preface is that I ended up getting myself a copy, both out of morbid curiosity and spite. Specifically, I have gotten the true, uncut, adult edition that’s not sold on Steam.
So, I played it. I have thoughts. I have concerns. I am frightened and confused. I, emphatically, do not know what to make of it.
Let me Magic Bus you through this adventure!
First off, Hustle Battle is, as the title suggests, a Deck Builder game, a fun one at that. You’ve got your cool monster cards, you form your decks, develop the ideal combinations of creatures and related skillsets before battling NPCs. A basic Yu-Gi-Oh!! setup, in other words.
The duels themselves run automatically and results are predicated by what you bring to the table. In essence, victories and losses are determined before you even start a match. The gameplay is all about creating the ideal sets for any given challenge with the roster at your current disposal.
Presentation-wise, there isn’t much to comment. Aside from the five main characters’ sprites, every other cast member is presented as a shadowy silhouette. The only CGs in the game are from the H-scenes, which I will not be discussing. A casual glance at the menu’s UI reveals it was constructed in an older RPG Maker engine.
This is about as humble and small as a project of this ilk could ever look by our modern (unreasonably lofty) standards. It’s a newly released, 2026 commercial title that can run on Windows 8. Let that sink in.
By all accounts, it’s a very unassuming work…
Now drops the other shoe.
Allow me to reiterate, what that bank did was unethical and unjust, but I find it amusing that their main concern was about the “safe” Steam-sold product instead of the other one. Not that it would make it Okay, mind you! Artistic freedom must be preserved even if you, personally, find the art objectionable.
However, what’s even funnier is the mere idea that a game like this had an All-Ages iteration in the first place! There is no world, no universe, no multiverse where it could ever pass as child-friendly.
Never mind the easily excisable pornography, you would have to vivisect the entire plot out of its cold dead carcass in order to make that rating as green as humanly possible. You would have to mutilate and disfigure the work beyond recognition to sell it on a “respectable” digital store.
Why?
Because Hustle Battle: Card Gamers is a story about Underage Sex Trafficking.
Anyway.
The evil organization Styx (subtlety) is using a children’s card game of their own making as a cover-up for a large scale illegal prostitution/gambling racket, which is itself a long-term Ponzi scheme to replace every country’s currency with said cards, thus achieving a global economic monopoly.
I am 100% serious.
You must understand, this is a world that operates under Yu-Gi-Oh! logic. Meaning, all conflicts are resolved by playing card games. Also meaning that our protagonists (who certainly look rather young) are using card games to fight a billion dollars pedophilic human trafficking ring! And if they lose… well, you can probably imagine what happens.
The kind of ever-revolving kneejerk reactions I have been experiencing all throughout this diegesis cannot be put into words. Imagine if Maximillion Pegasus were mentioned in the Epstein Files and you might get an idea of how utterly insane it felt to play.
Naturally, the most horrifying realization is that we actually do live in a reality filled with pedophile billionaires lording over us.
I am certain Hustle Battle meant to comment on how capitalism ruins your hobbies by (literally) turning its consumer base into a product and that letting corporations take control of the economy is a Bad Move. Considering what happened with that bank, the latter half of that message is certainly resonating.
Unfortunately, I do not believe its commentary is landing on account of how tonally discordant it is. Once more, picture a typical Yu-Gi-Oh! episode, going through the classic Battle Shounen motions, characters cracking jokes, silly high stakes duels, goofy one-liners, but now there’s SA slathered all over the place!
Additionally, the premise is flawed. I agree with what it has to say about capitalism (because it’s a proven fact) and I do enjoy the deck building aspect but, all the while, the idea of fighting the system by playing cards, the same cards the bad guys have created, within that very same system they control, feels hollow.
Generally speaking, the mood and the energy are not conducive to the kind of serious talk Hustle Battle should be having with its players, especially when juxtaposed to the very explicit fetish on display. It’s a case of wanting its cake and eating it too - and being excessively horny while doing it.
It was right around at this point, as I was close in reaching a negative verdict, that Hustle Battle found a way to obliterate my expectations.
I am now going to disclose a pair of back-to-back twists that flipped this game on its head. There will be spoilers after this so be warned.
Earlier on, I off-handedly mentioned most of the characters not having real sprites, only shadowy silhouettes. At the time, I assumed it was a time-saving decision. So, consider my shock and surprise when one of those shadows suddenly “transformed” into the main villain!
It’s a revelation that hit hard because it played with my (false) preconceptions about the game’s development. It’s made more effective by the fact that, while I already knew what the antagonist looked like, I had no idea she’d been hanging with me as a drab NPC silhouette, the whole time!
It’s a clever twist that works exclusively in the context of a zero budget RPG Maker indie title and nowhere else. A unique strength borne from the limitations of this particular medium, and that’s not even the most mind-blowing reveal to get thrown at my general direction!
If you engage with the side-content (which is necessary to reach the true ending), a rather important fact about the protagonist, Itsuki, is eventually brought to light. The boy has Face Blindness. In place of people, he only sees… shadowy figures.
I discovered this right after the last twist. I want you to imagine my reaction.
Every choice regarding presentation and assets has been deliberate. The shadows are diegetic because that is how our kid perceives the people around him. The only exceptions are the four characters he learnt to recognize after he had fun playing card games with them.
The distance by which my jaw dropped as I beheld such information cannot be quantifiably estimated. Again, these turns could only work in this specific medium with this specific baggage and presumed budgetary woes. That’s what made them powerful. That’s what forced me to reevaluate Hustle Battle for the 69th time!
On that note, let’s circle back to its many problems.
At this stage, I still don’t know what to make of Hustle Battle, and that is mostly because it does not know what to make of itself. Themes clash with tone clashing with characterizations in recurring cycles of bafflement. Every issue boils down to the question of how you are supposed to engage with the text.
The world of Hustle Battle is nonsensically bleak. Every adult is either a sex offender or a closeted sex offender. A molester can just go to a public park to solicit “favours” from school girls and the only ones who will bother to stop him are children who believe in the Heart of the Cards!
The game is superficially saying that underage prostitution is bad but it appears to be disinterested in expanding on that initial framing. This often results in scenarios where the main characters are able to brush off the most horrific, traumatic events imaginable as just a form of “self-discovery.”
Look, I said I wasn’t going to bring up the H-scenes, and I still won’t describe them to you, but it’s an inescapable fact that Hustle Battle has a vested interest in validating the fetish around which it was built. Those scenes are entirely consequence-free treats for the benefit of the audience. It is moot to complain or be scorched-earth angry at them for deliberately being what they are but I’m still taking umbrage at how little consideration was given to their narrative repercussions. This is a game where you can “Power of Friendship” your way out of sexual trauma.
I must draw the line here.
It’s frustrating because of the few things in here that I legitimately enjoyed - beside the solid deck building and incredible plot swerves. For example, our protagonist coping with his life-long medical condition through his hobby and freely embracing femininity as part of his identity were genuinely heartfelt moments.
I liked the sex positivity. Itsuki’s group has this endearing, nebulously defined polyamorous situationship. All the main heroines are openly promiscuous and they are stronger for it… Or so I would be saying if these were any other characters from any other story!
Personally, I’d like this group of queer, deeply traumatized yet sexually liberated friends to be a little older. I’d appreciate it if they weren’t solving all their conflicts by playing Duel Monsters. I would be ecstatic if the overall framework were to be slightly more mature than a Yu-Gi-Oh!! style Battle Shounen.
I suppose that is how I actually feel about Card Gamers, after all: good themes, bad theming. Interesting concepts, weird framing. Likeable characters, misguided characterizations. Lack of commitment to a tone, and I’m still confused. You can see why I was so hesitant to talk about it.
In fact, I still cannot wrap my head around how an “All-Ages” edition of this game could possibly exist. I mean, there is a whole feature where you are supposed to get serviced by the heroines after you pay them with cards… which is exactly what the bad guys are doing.
Just as a reminder, this game says underage prostitution is bad. That’s why every girl in this game is OK with it!
Yes! ThAt MaKeS sEnSe!
I have one remaining loose end to tie up. I wound up acquiring the much maligned Steam copy. I tried it out for approximately half an hour before requesting a refund. Here are my findings.
As I suspected, it was a thoroughly hacked-up, de-fanged, censored product to the point of being unrecognizable. All mentions of prostitution, human trafficking, even the shadowy figures (for some confounding reason) were absent.
Styx is not a sex slavery ring but an “illicit organization” that forces youngsters to do “crimes.” The public park sex pest is now a “scalper” and the main characters are “”“"college students”“”“. The inexplicable removal of the silhouettes automatically ruins both of its twists.
Gone are its insalubrious contents just as much as its themes. It’s certainly become more tonally coherent but at the cost of everything that made it interesting. Its edges have been so utterly smoothed it might as well be a frisbee. Needless to say, my previous criticisms towards the 18+ title retroactively feel like a Monkey’s Paw curse.
Yet, it was still not good enough for that bank. It was made into the most rules-compliant, guidelines-adherent, gormless entity it could possibly be and it still couldn’t pass the arbitrary "vibe-check” from a random payment processor. This was targeted harassment, pure and simple. That’s it.
If you have to take anything prescient or meaningful out of this entire dissertation is that I am and I will always be against Censorship. It doesn’t matter how much the fiction offends my sensibilities, it’s still ultimately fiction. The existence of Hustle Battle: Card Gamers will not be harmful to real kids.
Actual rapist politicians backed by the pedophile billionaire class, on the other hand, are doing all the harm in the world to you and to everyone you have ever loved. A random person in Japan making a Yu-Gi-Oh! porn game starring a bunch of drawings is nothing in the grand scheme of things. That would be my final note on this entire journey.
…
You know, I spent many hours in Optimization Hell to make my sweet decks.
I would [CENSORED FOR THE ALL-AGES EDITION] to have a multiplayer mode, in all honesty.
—
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