Hey, thanks for the open mind!
I was afraid I would tick someone off. But technically I'm only passing on what Honda corporate is saying, and so far I've never been burned by Majestic Honda when I go by their parts diagrams, and I get a lot of parts from them. Not to say mistakes don't happen...but I trust them more than forum discussions.
Go to Majestic Honda and take a peek. The way they describe it is exactly the way my own VX was set up, incidentally. Illustration #2 on the diagram is described by Honda as a joint, coming right out of the breather chamber, and that's exactly what it was on my VX too: an empty joint...but from the outside it looks just like a PCV valve so it confused me initially when I could look right through it.
(Under the VX & CX models they don't show it as available, but under all the other models it shows as available and it's called a joint--here's a perfect example of what you're talking about: sometimes things get funny on OEM diagrams even. But all the civics of this generation had the same system according to the fiche diagrams from Honda so in this case it just took a bit more digging.)
And #6 shows on all civic pages from this generation & year as a PCV elbow and they all have an identical part #. And that's what mine was too: I don't see any contradiction here. And even if Honda does cancel production of a part later on, that's irrelevant to this discussion: it was still designed to use that part. So whether people believe me or not is a moot point. I'm nobody. It's the manufacturer they do or don't believe. And I've seen parts guys give bad intel on their own products too, which only confuses things, which is why I try to go straight to the source the parts guys go to when possible. I just wanted to help by shedding OEM light on the subject.
I'm sure you could gut them and it won't *destroy* your performance. You might not even notice the difference by the seat of your pants. But it won't help either, and you will get vacuum interference, even if minor. They were designed to have a PCV valve, like every other engine these days and that only makes sense. Cheers!