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Something I found about the seizure debacle

M

Miki-Fan

Pokemon Master in College
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From Wikipedia
About 20 minutes into the episode, there was a scene in which Pikachu stops some vaccine missiles with its Thunderbolt attack, resulting in a huge explosion that flashed red and blue lights. Although there were similar parts in the episode with red and blue flashes, an anime technique called "paka paka" made this scene extremely intense, for these flashes were extremely bright strobe lights, with blinks at a rate of about 12 Hz for approximately 4 seconds in almost fullscreen, and then for 2 seconds outright fullscreen. At this point, viewers started to complain of blurred vision, headaches, dizziness and nausea. A few people even had seizures, blindness, convulsions and lost consciousness. Japan's Fire Defense Agency reported that a total of 685 viewers (310 boys, 375 girls) were taken to hospitals by ambulances. Although many victims recovered during the ambulance trip, more than 150 of them were admitted to hospitals. Two people remained hospitalized for over 3 weeks. Some other people had seizures when parts of the scene were rebroadcast during news reports on the seizures.[4] Most of them were not diagnosed with photosensitive epilepsy.[5] Later studies showed that 5-10.4% of Pokémon viewers had mild symptoms that did not need hospital treatment.[6] 120,000 children reported mild symptoms of illness, however their symptoms more closely resembled mass hysteria than a grand mal seizure.[7] A study following 103 patients over three years after the event found that most of them had no further seizures.[8]
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Another link: http://www.csicop.org/si/2001-05/pokemon.html
 
...Okay, so what new info is there? It was all stuff I've all ready heard and read :S
 
I had actually never known anything about the "mass hysteria" thing until now. All I ever knew was the whole seizure thing
 
Well one would think that mass hysteria would follow when a kids show gives that many children a seizure.

The good soldier that Porygon is, he takes the blame and Pikachu goes off scot free. :(
 
There was also that it had a lot of false claims because they said "anyone who had a seizure doesn't have to go to school tomorrow".

Oh yeah, like *that* potential for abuse couldn't be seen a mile away.
 
People don't realize that panicking is just going to make things worse.
Especially girls, which is why it is hard for me to make friends.
 
It hard for me to make friends because most girls are very different from me (meaning a lot of them like panicking) making it hard to make friends.
 
Seriously guys, if you don't veer back to something resembling the topic or that would be logicially derived from the topic, I *will* start handing out infractions. We have blogs and the Outside the Box forum for relationship issues.
 
I don't see why Porygon has to be the anime equivilant of a banned Pokémon. As stated before, Pikachu caused the light show. Is there a future of the Porygon line at all???

(I tried.)
 
Hey, don't bring our favourite light bulb into this seizure stuff.

Although it's true DEMchu caused many fits, and PoryScape got all the blame, there is still a future for the cyberduck in his new evo. I will not rest until the awesome bird is released to the public, preferably without the strobe lighting.

On the other hand, Rhydon saved us from another incident with his Lightningrod.
 
The reason Pikachu didn't get the blame (according to PokeBeach) was because it had been in every episode. People most likely don't remember the seizure episode when they see it.

Porygon's debut was the same episode as the seizure episode. They see Porygon, they might go, "Oh, no! Not HIM/HER again!" See, to them, Porygon is a troubled problem maker, and many view Porygon as, "a bad Pokemon". People see Porygon for more than a split second, they might stop watching the show. The show loses viewers, it becomes less popular- you get the picture.

I think, however, that when it comes to the video games (and perhaps TCG), it is one of the more rare Pokemon, and some people view it as one of the best Pokemon to have/use.

I have a question: how come 4kids during it's Pokemon dubbing days could edit riceballs out of the dub, and replace it with cheap food look-alikes, but can't reduce/ remove the seizure clip? Poor Porygon... and its evolutions...

Which draws me to another question: why make the evolutions for Porygon, if they never appeared/ never will appear in the anime?

It is like making the boy and girl characters, but only using the girl characters as the main characters in the anime to be used as "eye candy", while the boy characters make only cameos. Better stop before I get off topic.
 
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Because it wasn't up to 4Kids. Japan banned the episode from being aired *anywhere*, including in Japan itself. From what Maddie Blaustein said, 4Kids *did* dub the episode, but wasn't allowed to air it.
 
Please note: The thread is from 17 years ago.
Please take the age of this thread into consideration in writing your reply. Depending on what exactly you wanted to say, you may want to consider if it would be better to post a new thread instead.
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