by So… what is a “Trunade” and why is it giant? Is it a giant? What the heck is it!?! The story behind Giant Trunade may surprise you! This big, bad, banned card has an interesting past. Let’s investigate this card and try to unravel what a “Trunade” even is.
A Giant Problem
First off, let’s talk about Giant Trunade as a card. This card has a simple, yet devastating effect: Return all Spell and Trap Cards on the field to the hand. This card is a mass non-targeting, non-destruction backrow removal. Non-targeting, non-destruction is the best form of removal. Many cards, even backrow cards, have effects that protect from targeting, destruction, or both. But GT gets past both. Now you might compare this to Harpie’s Feather Duster, or Heavy Storm, and you would be close. These are the best backrow removal cards in the game. And that is why GT and Storm are banned, and Feather Duster is limited. Storm can even be used to proctor your own cards via destruction.
Retrains
Trunade, Storm, and Feather Duster have all been either banned or limited for nearly their entire exitance. Feather Duster even has its own specific counter: Gryphon Wing. Storm and Feather Duster have even been retained into different forms to make them less powerful. Check out Heavy Storm Duster (a combination of Heavy Storm and Dust Tornado), Storm, and Gryphon’s Feather Duster. Even Trunade has been retained! Look at Hey Trunade and Hey Space Trunade.
Trunade?
Now, where is my dictionary?… Oh, yeah, “Trunade” isn’t a real word. No, really! The word “Trunade” is a totally fake, made up word that does not exist in any language. So, what does it mean and where did it come from? Well, the word exists because of a localization/translation “error.” In the original Japanese, this card’s name is Harikēn (ハリケーン) or hurricane in English. When this card was translated into other languages, it was changed to “Giant Tornado.” But for some reason, when it was translated into English, the localization team used the Japanese pronunciation of the word for “tornado” which sounds like torunēdo. This pronunciation somehow became skewed and ended up being spelled “Trunade.” The name has since become iconic, and it just stuck. Remember this next time you think about this card!
