"We don't expect the incident will have any immediate impact on our business in the Christmas season, since the television program and game are different," - Nintendo spokesman to CNN over the incident (December 1997)
Until sometime after 7pm that fateful day it was a normal December day,
with thousands of school kids sitting close to the TV after a very gruelling
school day. The show was already gaining a large audience (10 million) and TV
Tokyo had the latest episode ready to air - "Dennō
Senshi Porygon," starring Porygon, the lovable pile of living electrons and
vertices. Little did anyone know that, thanks to a red and blue strobeing
light effect, this episode will result in the world record for (as worded by
Guinness) "Most Photosensitive Epileptic Seizures Caused by a Television
Show."
"About 20
minutes into the program there was a scene of a rocket explosion that flashed
red and blue lights at a rate of about 12 times per second. This
explosion scene was mixed with about five seconds of flashing lights from the
eyes of "Pikachu," a popular Pokemon character. Suddenly, viewers
started to complain of blurred vision, headaches, dizziness and nausea. Some
people even had seizures, convulsions and lost consciousness. A total of 685
children (310 boys, 375 girls) were taken to hospitals by ambulances. Although many
children recovered during the ambulance trip, more than 150 of them were
admitted to hospitals. Two people stayed in the hospital for over 2
weeks!"- from this webpage (2000)
Another 12,000 kids said to have symptoms, but they proved to be cases induced by mass hysteria. This incident was named by the press as the "Pokemon Shock." Thanks to this "shock" Pokémon gained (for a few years) notoriety as "that cartoon that sent hundreds of kids to hospital." A trivial fact that came with it as Pokémon left Japan to conquer the world via America, beginning the creation of piece of modern folklore that became a basis of a number of jokes, particularly on The Simpsons and South Park.
After the incident (in the mist of bad publicity)
like a faulty fairground ride, the show was pulled off
air until further notice. This had an effect on the anime's future. The original plan was to have the TV series end just when the first movie was released. But because of the show been pulled temporary, that ruined the plan. The series as it was originally planned (with Ash in competing in his first Pokémon league) ended way after the first movie premiered. Knowing the kids will want more, the battle seizure incident unintentionally led to the making of more episodes, leading to the series running for much longer than planned.
This wasn't an isolated incident. Back on 29th
March that same year an episode of YAT Anshin! Luxury Space Tours sent four viewers to hospital. But the scale of
the "Pokemon Shock" made the Porygon incident much more notable
- especially outside Japan. People had been hospitalised due to
seeing seizure-inducing visual effects on TV since the 1960s. In 1993 a TV ad
for Pot Noodle induced seizures in three viewers
in the UK. This incident was enough for British broadcasting authorities to
take action, introducing guidelines to prevent such incidents again. But what
about the rest of the world? Its something that could happen on any TV channel,
video game or YouTube clip. Around one in 100 people suffer from epilepsy and
about 5% of them have the form that is triggered by flashing light effects,
so a lot people can potentially suffer if a very popular TV show featured such
offending effects. If broadcasters had little or no thought about them an
incident was bound to happen eventually - and it did in 1997.
The incident was so serious that TV Tokyo contacted
expert help from the other side of the world - Professor Graham Harding from Aston
University, Birmingham. A world leading expert on photosensitive epilepsy. His research is the basis of guidelines
used by British TV broadcasters when dealing with "flashing imagery"
and an automated test designed to detect such
incidents in visual media is named after him. TV Tokyo flew him in to do a
lecture tour and appeared on the channel in this special one-hour report that aired just before the show returned on screen in April 1998.
This special (beginning with an apology from the president of TV Tokyo)
explained how it happened, how the offending effect was made, and ended with
the announcement of an "anime checker," a device deigned to analyse
video flicker to spot possible offending effects. That last bit hammered into
the public's mind that broadcasters of anime will make sure that incidents like
what happened in December (and March) never happen again. The show
returned days later with the heart-warming episode 'Pikachu's
Goodbye' (with huge fanfare (TV Tokyo
received a lot of response from fans during the show's absence)) and
plans to release the first Pokémon movie during
the summer continued as planned, premiering on 18th July 1998.
But Nintendo made one PR decision after what
happened.... The offending episode was pulled from circulation and was never
aired again.... in Japan. ... and anywhere else....
(They are rumours that 4Kids Entertainment (the
people who dubbed the series in its early years) did make a of dub this episode
and edited out the offending special effect to make it safe. But Nintendo said
"no way." This rumour gained water when Maddie Blaustein (the voice of Meowth) said
this on this forum in 2006.
I
don't think they will ever show it ---but we did dub it. And it didn't give any
of US seizures
However, Veronica Taylor (the original English voice
of Ash) has said this on the subject in this interview....
"We
did not dub it - we will never dub it."
This all sounds too conspiracyly so I think the most likely thing that
happened is that they never did the dub. Nintendo would never let them have the
tape in the first place. They are very protective of the property, so it won't
be a surprise that this is actually what happened.)
Since then they have been no major incident involving flashing lights on
TV like what happened in 1997 - except one in 2007 where 18
people reported to have "ill effects" when they saw an animation
introducing the logo for the 2012 Olympics. The noticeable major
changes the show had since that episode (apart from less flashy visual effects)
was the move from Tuesday to Thursday night in the schedule (still at 7pm) and
that (for years afterwards) Pokémon (and all other TV shows in
Japan) had a disclaimer broadcast at its start cautioning viewers not to sit
too close to the TV screen and to watch only in a brightly-lit room. Another
noted effect was that Porygon (and its evolved forms) were never seen on
screen again... almost. They have made brief "blink and you miss it" appearances in
the movies, so keep an eye out (unless you got epilepsy).
But there is one thing that has to be said here. That offending 4-second
effect, it was the result of Pikachu's thunder bolt attack blowing up four
missiles in cyberspace. Yes, Pikachu was the cause of the
seizures! Not Porygon. Porygon was innocent the whole time, but
because Pikachu was the star, so Porygon became the fall guy of this sad
incident. It can be argued that Porygon was the real victim of
this "shock."
CORRECTION - I have just found out from this source that Pikachu's role in the incident has been over-exaggerated. The missiles in question mostly exploded on their own. Pikachu's contribution to the explosions was actually small. Think a pea shooter in a rank of machine guns.
Meanwhile, (hoping that this storm will past)
Nintendo made a momentous decision - "I wonder what the Americans
would make of all these 150 creatures?"
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