Hinata Hyuga is the only known card that uses "non-EX" as a restriction on removal — a K.O. effect that cannot touch a single Character with POW 10 or more

Part 20 of our one-card analysis series. Today: Hinata Hyuga.

Following Sakura Haruno, this is the second of the four cards whose card number is cut off in the images.

Her effect text contains a phrase that only she uses in this particular way among the 24 known effect texts.

1Cards using "non-EX" to restrict removalOut of the 4 that print the phrase

0Characters with POW 10+ that Hinata can K.O.Out of 20 known characters

1 pairKnown cards matching on all four statsHinata and Suigetsu Hozuki N-021

What this article is based on: Hinata Hyuga’s card face comes from venue photos and high-resolution scans of the English demo card handed out at Gen Con 2026 (SAMPLE watermark, NOT FOR SALE marking; both posted by X users). Neither the official site nor the official X accounts have published this card’s face or any Japanese text for it. Because the source is not an officially published image, this article carries no quoted card image. Counts are drawn from the 38 entries in our card database (24 with readable effect text; 20 characters with readable stats).

1. Reading the card face

Field	Printed
Name	Hinata Hyuga
Card number	Unconfirmed
Card type	Character
Rarity	Unconfirmed
Chakra cost	1
DMG	1
POW	5
HP	5
Types	Hyuga Clan / Hidden Leaf Village / Team 8

The effect text runs two lines.

[Support] [8-TRIGRAM] Air Palm [During Your Opponent’s Attack] Choose 1 non-EX Character: K.O. the chosen card.

About the card number: we ourselves once recorded this card as N-010 and have since corrected it. The venue photos read as N-010, but the later high-resolution scans confirmed that N-010 belongs to Karin, so Hinata’s number went back to unconfirmed. The same scans also corrected the type line, which we had first read as {Taijutsu}, to {Hyuga Clan} {Hidden Leaf Village} {Team 8}. The Support name is also unsettled — the venue photos read “8 Trigrams Air Palm” and the scans read “[8-TRIGRAM] Air Palm”, with brackets. No Japanese wording has been announced.

2. Four cards say “non-EX” — three use it one way, one the other

Four known cards print the words “non-EX Character” in their effect text. Lining them up shows that Hinata is doing something different with it.

Three use it to narrow the reach of an effect that benefits them. Only Hinata uses it to narrow an effect aimed at the opponent.

As our piece on the four EX Characters’ Summon Requirements set out, EX Characters are trump cards that reach the field without paying chakra. The “non-EX” on N-005, N-019 and N-022 reads as a brake against chaining trump cards into play for free.

Hinata’s “non-EX” points the other way. It is not a brake on her own power — it is a blind spot against the opponent’s trump cards.

3. The result: she cannot K.O. anything with POW 10 or more

Sorting the 20 known characters by POW, split by whether they are EX:

As the EX Character piece established, no known Character with a base POW of 10 or more is anything other than an EX Character (N-003, N-005, N-014).

Which means:

Hinata cannot touch a single one of the three highest-POW cards known.

As removal, she is missing exactly the targets you most want gone. By contrast Sakura Haruno’s bounce, read earlier today, carries no restriction at all — so between two cost-1 cards on the same trigger, Sakura hits N-003 and Hinata does not.

4. A different axis of restriction from the other K.O. cards on the same trigger

Three known cards fire a K.O. During Your Opponent’s Attack. Set their restrictions side by side and the way each narrows the effect turns out to be completely different.

Hinata can fire any time but cannot reach a trump card. Jiraiya and Orochimaru reach trump cards but need the opponent rested.

Note that, as our round-up of the rested state found, nothing official explains how a Character becomes rested. If you read “attacking rests a Character”, then Jiraiya and Orochimaru become cards that pick off whoever just swung — but that is a hypothesis built from where the text sits, not a confirmed fact. All we can state is that only Hinata’s side specifies no state at all.

She can therefore choose Characters that have not moved. Among the reactive removal catalogued in our August 18 piece, she is the only K.O. that does not care about the target’s state.

From here this is inference: a cost-1 effect that K.O.s one Character in any state is, by the standards of what is known, very cheap. Putting “non-EX” on it looks like trading away an answer to trump cards in exchange for that cheapness. But nothing official has ever described design intent, and this is a reading drawn from a sample of only 20 characters.

5. The only known pair matching on all four stats

Hinata’s line is cost 1 / DMG 1 / POW 5 / HP 5.

Cross-checking the 12 cards with a legible chakra cost, exactly one pair matches on all four of cost, DMG, POW and HP.

In the terms of the POW/HP mirroring we mapped in the N-004 article, this pair is one of the symmetrical 5/5 lines. Four known characters are symmetrical (two at 5/5, plus N-007 and N-013 at 8/8), but Hinata and Suigetsu are the only pair that also matches on cost and DMG.

The interesting part is that their effects point in opposite directions. Hinata removes an opponent’s Character; Suigetsu shields your own Character from Support effects — that is, he is the card that blanks removal like hers.

6. Both {Hyuga Clan} and {Team 8} belong to Hinata alone

Finally, the type line. Two of her three types appear on no other card among the 38 known entries.

• {Hyuga Clan} — Hinata only. {Uchiha Clan} appears on six cards; Hyuga on one
• {Team 8} — Hinata only
• {Hidden Leaf Village} — 20 known entries carry it, the most common village type

Counting the cards with a team type makes the imbalance obvious.

Team 7 N-001, N-003, N-004, N-009, Sakura Haruno, art-version Naruto6cards

Team 10 N-008, N-011, Choji Akimichi3cards

Team 8 Hinata Hyuga only1cards

Ino Yamanaka (N-011) requires “if you have ‘Shikamaru Nara’ and ‘Choji Akimichi’” — the whole of Team 10 on the field — and the three known cards make that work exactly. Team 8 has no partner confirmed at all.

This is unconfirmed: whether the rest of Team 8 (Kiba Inuzuka, Shino Aburame, Kurenai Yuhi) will be made into cards has not been announced. The official site’s ARTWORK gallery shows 12 cards, and none of them are Team 8.

7. Still unknown

• The card number (the venue-photo reading of N-010 proved wrong; currently unconfirmed)
• The rarity (not legible in the images)
• The official Support name (“8 Trigrams Air Palm” versus “[8-TRIGRAM] Air Palm”)
• The Japanese name, effect text and technique name (only the English demo card has been confirmed)
• Where a K.O.‘d card goes (as our trash piece set out, no official document defines what is sent to the trash)
• Which product she appears in (unannounced)

All of it waits on the official rulebook and card list. We will update her card database page and this article as soon as anything is confirmed.

Summary

• Hinata Hyuga is a Character card: cost 1 / DMG 1 / POW 5 / HP 5, types {Hyuga Clan} {Hidden Leaf Village} {Team 8}. Card number and rarity are unconfirmed
• Of the four known cards printing “non-EX”, three use it to narrow what they summon. Only Hinata uses it to restrict removal
• Because every known Character with POW 10 or more is an EX Character, Hinata cannot K.O. any of them
• On the same trigger, Jiraiya and Orochimaru are “rested only, up to 2, EX allowed”; Hinata is “any state, 1 card, no EX” — a different axis of restriction
• Hinata and Suigetsu Hozuki (N-021) are the only known pair matching on cost, DMG, POW and HP — and their effects point in opposite directions
• {Hyuga Clan} and {Team 8} belong to Hinata alone, and nine of the 10 cards with a team type are Team 7 or Team 10

Related

• Sakura Haruno is the only known card that does not say “K.O.”
• Suigetsu Hozuki (N-021) is the only card that says “will not be affected”
• How do you play a card that “cannot be summoned normally”? — deck building lessons from all 4 EX Characters
• 6 of the 7 removal effects in the NARUTO Card Game come from face-down Supports
• Five revealed cards say “rest” — yet nothing revealed so far actually rests a Character