Things that were edited out on Cartoon Network include scenes of intense combat violence (ex. almost all shots of pilots, including main characters, in their cockpits before having their machines destroyed); cold-blooded or brutal murders that are non-mobile suit related (ex.
getting shot by ZAFT soldiers loyal to Rau Le Creuset and Patrick Zala); all references to the fact that the Living CPUs need to take performance enhancing drugs; and most notoriously, handguns being sloppily and inconsistently transformed into neon-colored lasers, dubbed "Disco Guns" by fans, for the majority of the show's run. Also, there was little to no use of the words "kill" or "die" in the middle of the series airing. Since most of the series had been edited by Williams Street before broadcast, Cartoon Network changed very little in terms of content allowance. However, the airings of the final two episodes were left mostly unedited, with only a few elements being affected—namely the guns used by Azrael, Patrick Zala, and one of the ZAFT soldiers (which was given neon-colored lights in certain but not all of the image frames), airbrushing the naked Flay's body in the final episode to avoid showing her cleavage, reducing the amount of blood shown, editing the character's lines; to remove either inappropriate language or controversial lines, and the removal or altering of flashbacks of graphic assassinations. The Canadian version debuted on YTV's Bionix block in September 2004 at 9:30 p.m. where it got a better reception and aired comparatively uncut, with almost all of the material listed above intact.
In Japan, it occupied the Saturday 6 p.m. timeslot on MBS and TBS, widely considered a prime timeslot.
but you know what they say by history being written by the "winners"
