Bittersweet Infamy - #2 - Electric Soldier Porygon

Episode Date: November 17, 2020

Taylor tells Josie about the Pokémon episode that caused mass seizures and hospitalizations.

Hello, and welcome to Bittersweet Infamy. The podcast about infamous people, places, and things. I'm Josie Mitchell. I'm Taylor Bassa. And each week, one of us will tell a story to the other. The listener doesn't know what the story is going to be. The only rule is the story has to be infamous. Done, done, done.

Yeah, so Taylor, how you been? I've been OK, so I don't know if you know. But in BC, we're back in lockdown. Hey, I did not know that. Yeah, no. Just this Saturday, Bonnie Henry, who's our chief medical officer or what have you, who gives us all of our COVID updates.

We were doing really well at first. Our case numbers have been back on the rise. So we're basically doing lockdown for two weeks and see if it works kind of thing. Oh, wow. So yeah, we had previously been like, you can have your safe six was the phrase that they were using to effectively one to six people

who you regularly interact with, who you can reasonably assume are COVID free or have tested negative or whatever. And that was kind of working. But lately, the case is particularly in Surrey, which is where I'm from originally and whatever, that kind of area. The cases have just been booming. So we're back in timeout.

Yeah, that's what it does feel like timeout, right? We're back and we weren't doing what we were supposed to be doing. Have you gotten a COVID test? No, I have not, actually. And there's free ones from the county now, and I need to just go and do it. Are they the kind of rapid, spitty ones,

or are they the ones? Because I got the one where they dig for brain with a Q-tip. Yeah, this one's a different. It's a mouth swab. That's better. Yeah. I try to be a brave, because I used to be a real coward about medical stuff

when I would go to the doctor. Yeah, I was scared of needles. Still am, which kind of you wouldn't guess, because I've got piercings in my face and tattoos and whatever. But I am still quite scared of needles, but I'll do it for the aesthetic. But when I try to go into doctors' things,

I try to have my brave little engine face, a brave little toaster face on. Sidebar, really fucked up in dark movie if you go back and rewatch that. Well, dude, that's intense. It's fine. I had a Zoom baby shower, which was, I guess, when the baby's already born.

It's a sip and see or whatever. I watch a lot of Real Housewives, and they're always having sips and sees. OK, I was like, is this a Canadian thing? A sip and see? No, I think it's like a southern, southern, have a menjoo look and look at the baby, you know? Let me hold the baby a little higher for you to see.

Exactly, exactly. Cool, cool, cool. So yeah, very weird, very like, not weird. Not what a baby shower would usually be because usually you can break up into little. You're in a room with 10 people, but you're having whatever conversation with someone you know. And obviously, when you're doing a Zoom call like this,

you're not about to start a fucking breakout room at the baby shower. So it's a lot of trying to manage. Like, there's 12 of you there, and I wondered if the host, Monica, who's my buddy's wife, I wonder if she kind of felt compelled to fill the silence. Because like, yep, you've seen the baby, now what do I do? Yeah, yeah.

The baby cries, the baby poops. The baby did poop. That's fantastic. Yeah, it was apparently a gnarly one. I don't want to talk about this. Let's move on. Let's move on to infamous stuff. I want to hear your story.

Let me in. Let me into that brain of yours. You're just going to hear everything rattling around. So the reason that I chose this story, in addition to kind of my own interest in it, is so we've been friends for quite a long time. I think 13 years, maybe a little more or less. Ooh, really?

Yeah, no. We were 18. I was 18 when we met. You were 19. And now we're 31, 32, right? I'm still third. How old am I? I'm 31.

Me too, for the next few weeks. No, that's bullshit, because were you born in 88 or 87? I'm 88. I'm a dragon, baby. Never mind. I'm a snake. Sorry, I really should get into this story. Tell people I'm not old at all, that old I am.

Is that the story? No, but my point is, in the many years that we've known each other, I cannot recall us ever having a single discussion of any kind on this subject. And so I feel like I'm potentially going to get some fresh Josie takes, some fresh Josie info, or worst case scenario, it's something

that you're totally disinterested in. And in that case, I politely ask that you fake it for the sake of the podcast. Yes, of course. Of course I will. The question is this. Josie, what is your relationship with Pokemon? Oh.

What do you know? Gun to your head, how many Pokemon do you think you could name? Oh, god, three. Name them. Pokemon. No, god, no. This is terrible.

This is going to be an uphill slog this episode. Yeah, because the second name that came to my mind was Hufflepuff. Hufflepuff. Have I told you? OK, so have I told you my Hufflepuff thing? No. Everyone on dating apps wants to tell you

they're a Hufflepuff. It's fucking surreal. It's because, yeah, they're saying that they're like, humble and stable. Yeah, but I'm not on a dating app because I'm looking for humble and stable. You're the snake, baby. You're looking for anything.

I'm looking for some ground to slither on with my belly. So OK, so basically, and now I'm actually really grateful that I did this, I've written out a little overview of Pokemon because I was on the off chance that she doesn't really know anything about this. I can read this out. I know, gotta catch them all.

There you go. OK, so that's not nothing. We can work with that. OK, and Ash? Ash, yep. And his cool trucker hat? Yeah, and what is that yellow thing that hangs out with him?

What's that called? Pikachu. There you go. Got it, I got it. I did watch the movie. OK. I went to the, I saw it in theaters. See, this is what I was digging for, OK.

OK, I saw it in theaters. Yeah. Was it, like, how was that experience not really being into Pokemon? Because you're not, like, because obviously Pokemon starts as a series of video games. You're not particularly a video game person, are you? I've never been a big video game.

See, I am. I am. I play games all the time. I know. So I've played a handful of the Pokemon games beyond the original ones. I don't, some of the most recent ones kind of haven't been to my taste,

so I've skipped them or whatever. But I'm like, I would say that I know more about Pokemon than the average cat. But I'm certainly not, like, I play through each game one time, and I never battle anybody else. And you know what I mean. Yeah, OK. So my introduction to Pokemon was

I was in the fourth grade, which is not 97. It's, I guess I would have been 98. Very different year. Very different year. Actually, it might have been late 97, early 98. Fuck. So I was like a lonely kid, wasn't I? And some kids came up to me, and they

wanted to be friends with me. And so they invited me to play Animorphs with them in the back 40, which was just you'd go and play pretend and act out Animorphs and whatever. But I had never read any of the Animorphs books, and I didn't really have any interest in doing so. So for like three weeks, I had to fake it super hard. And then Pokemon came in, and they wanted to play Pokemon.

And it kind of saved my ass. Because I think we're starting to be able to tell that I didn't really know what the characters were in Animorph. But three weeks. I mean, it was applaud you. That's great. It was a trial by fire.

It was a trial by fire. So obviously, I learned all about Pokemon, and now I hope to impart some of that wisdom onto you. OK, I'm ready. The Pokemon franchise was created by a dude named Satoshi Tajiri in 1995 based on his love of collecting insects as a child. Obviously, in Pokemon, rather than collecting insects,

you're trying to catch every pocket monster, hence Pokemon. Pokemon is pocket monster. Oh. And that's why they say, that was a great noise. And that's why they say, got to catch them all, because you're trying to catch all of these different Pokemon. OK.

And you can battle. It's like kind of a cock fighting situation, right? You battle them against each other, right? Well, yeah, a video game battles, you know. Yeah. The first installment of the franchise came in the form of a pair of Game Boy games called Pokemon Red and Green, which were released in Japan

in 1996. And then in 1998, they came to North America under the names Pokemon Red and Blue. It's not clear to me why they changed Green to Blue. Maybe because American color, the flag, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. This one times the American audience.

So from those beginnings, Pokemon became the highest-grossing media franchise ever, with over $90 billion in revenue. It's the second best-selling video game franchise of all time behind Mario. OK, yeah. It's the world's top-selling toy brand. It's the world's top-selling card game.

There's books. There's manga. There's a theme park. There's been a whole whack of movies, one of which you saw in theaters. And there's an anime with over 20 seasons and 1,000 episodes. Have you ever watched an episode of the Pokemon anime? Snippets of it.

Because, like, you know Ash, you know Pikachu. Yeah, yeah. Where's the theme park? I would have to be Japan. I didn't look this up, but I would be shocked if it wasn't Japan. Yeah, OK. Because I went to Japan.

They have Pokemon centers there, which are basically, which was a little bit of a letdown because in the show, the Pokemon center is like the big hospital. And there's Nurse Joy is always there. She has little pink hair, and all the Nurse Joy's look identical. And so I was kind of hoping it would be like that.

It was a large Pokemon store. Like it was once. But yeah. I need to add, I also know about the newer version of Pokemon, the little street shubies. What's that called again? Street shubies? I believe that's what it's called.

Yes, yes, exactly. Genius marketing. Oh, Pokemon Go. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Pokemon Go was quite big. That was really, really big. There was that one summer where you would go out and everyone would be playing Pokemon Go everyone.

Hillary Clinton was Pokemon Go. Pokemon, she asked people to Pokemon Go to the polls. Yeah, and that really worked out. And now we're hopefully on the other end of that. Yes, yes. Question mark. Yeah, that's a good way to put that, yeah. So the anime, like I said, it's got over 20 seasons.

It's got over 1,000 episodes. And for me, at least as a kid growing up in that time, the anime almost as much as the games was the vehicle for making Pokemon popular in the West. But it also gave the franchise its first major speed bump, one that could have killed the fledgling IP in the cradle. Did you know there's an episode of the Pokemon anime that was only ever televised once in Japan

because it caused mass seizures and hospitalizations among school-aged children? I have no idea. But I think this has been in a Simpsons episode. I have a bit about the Simpsons episode in here. Yes, it has. OK, OK. So, Josie.

Into it. This is the story of electric soldier Porygon, the infamous banned Pokemon episode. Poor baby. OK, tell me everything you know. So here are my sources. Wikipedia, obviously. It has a very good Wikipedia page this episode, actually.

An article called, did Pokemon actually give kids seizures in the 90s by Kaylee Rogers on Motherboard on Vice? An article by Katie Reif in the AV Club called Pokemon Shock, how a single episode almost derailed the franchise. And an article that I'm not going to give you the full title of because it would spoil a pretty solid reveal. And it's called the Pokemon Plot by Spencer Ackerman on Wired.

OK, Katie, Katie and Spencer. And all you wiki contributors, thank you. Thank you, thank you, for your $5 donations. $3, how much did they, they're all, anyway. December 16th, 1997. Let me remember when I was there, while I was doing Christmas break was probably just around the corner.

Your birthday just happened. My birthday just happened two weeks ago. I'm older. I'm wiser. Yeah. I'm probably wearing a safety pin necklace. Sweet. Yep, that all tracks.

Yeah. So while you're doing that, while you're threading your safety pins together, Pokemon is on the come up in Japan. It's not yet a present state side. Because like I said, the first Pokemon games were translated and localized in 98. Yeah, yeah.

Electric Soldier Porygon, the 38th episode of season one of the Pokemon anime, was viewed on 37 stations by 4.6 million Japanese households. Households, OK. Yeah, so obviously more than one, two households. So Electric Soldier Porygon as a piece of art. I would read the synopsis on Wikipedia or on whatever online website.

And I would get to the end of a paragraph, and my brain would be like, nope, not doing that. Does not compute. Literally does not compute. So I was just really, I couldn't grasp it. So I figured there was only one way to internalize the contents of the episode and to discuss what transpires without being a huge poser.

Did you watch it? Josie, for 21 minutes and 21 seconds, I put my life on the line for this podcast. Oh my god. I watched Electric Soldier Porygon. Oh, my. OK. Yeah, there's already a body count, bitch.

Let's go. Jesus. So Shotes to a website called Pokeflix for hosting the episode. Yeah, where'd it go? I would feel cautious about shouting out what is clearly their illegal operation. But like, Pokeflix is for sure on Nintendo's radar.

And if they're not, this ain't going to be the thing to put it there. But maybe they're just short videos about poke bowls. So big industry don't go crazy, let them do their thing. It's just about fishing a ball. I'm trying to give them a little cover, OK? No, I like it. I like it.

I like you talking some sense into the situation. In fact, I seem to remember seeing lots of images of poke bowls while I was there. Right? OK. So to start off with, watching this episode, I was so scared. Were you sober?

What time of day was it? It was nighttime. Did you have a person who watched you? Like, when you take, like, Safia, you need a watcher? No, I didn't have a trip sitter. OK, oh god. Did you tell your mom? Did you like?

I told, I texted. I didn't tell my mom, because she would. My mom cares too much. Yeah. She loves Christmas. It'd be rough. She does love Christmas. No, I didn't tell my mom.

I did text two or three people just saying, like, hey, I'm watching the episode of Pokemon that gave Japanese kids seizures. Yeah, and I said, no, I said, if I don't text you in 20 minutes, like, check in on me. But I felt bad, because, like, obviously, we're in the middle of the pandemic, and our health care system is so taxed,

and our medical professionals are working so hard that I didn't want to be this asshole who came in and was like, yeah, I am having seizures, because I watched an episode that I knew would give me seizures for the sake of a podcast that doesn't exist yet. Yeah, but you had to. I had to, and so here's my book report. I was pissing my ganch the whole way through.

And the other thing that's funny, sorry, the other thing that's funny, and this is maybe a bit of a disclaimer, the offending clip, like, the main offending clip. There's things happening all throughout this episode that could potentially trigger some sort. Like, if you're, I mean, I'll tell you all about it, but the main clip is everywhere.

Like, it's on the Wikipedia page. It's linked out in every article on this subject, has this clip that gave the kids seizures. So it's very easy to find this one particular clip if you are so inclined. So yes, I literally have written the phrase, the offending clip. Yeah.

So maybe a disclaimer, don't go and watch this if you feel uneasy about it just because two cool people in a podcast are talking about it. Right, just listen to one of the cool people describe it to you and then tell. Exactly, exactly. So here's my attempt to explain this episode and my experience is watching it.

So here's the story. Appropriately enough, this episode starts out with a bunch of children. During a pandemic. No, appropriately enough, this episode starts out with a bunch of children going to the hospital. Oh, well, yeah, close enough. OK.

Same thing. OK. Pikachu's all tuckered out. He's been sending off too many lightning bolts. So our hero, Ash, and his friends take him to a Pokemon Center, which, as I explained earlier, is basically Nintendo's answer to universal health care. Beautiful.

I'm going to snip a lot of the story because it's actually quite boring and complicated. I have a note written here from when I was watching explaining this is going to be a nightmare. They obviously had the bee riders working on it. It's total filler. Nothing's coming back again. And I say this as someone who will happily watch

an episode of Pokemon in the background, little nostalgia hit. This story just ain't it. The short version is there is a machine inside of the Pokemon Center that's malfunctioning because Team Rocket, who are the bad guys, have shrunken themselves down, and they've gone inside the computer as part of a ploy to steal Pokemon.

Nurse Joy, who I, funnily enough, described earlier, wants to release an antivirus program into the system, but it will result in Team Rocket getting blown into pieces, which is a little gory for a good show. So Ash and Pikachu and the gang get sent into the machine alongside the cyber Pokemon, Porygon, to retrieve the bad guys and hopefully get everyone out in one piece.

OK, yeah. Write the wrongs of the bad guys while saving themselves. And the bad guys. Yeah. Oh, I am watching this in Japanese, by the way. This was never translated. Oh, OK. Yeah, this episode, literally, it

is in a vault somewhere under a 10,000-pound slab of conch, not literally, to be clear. But if it might have. Maybe. But who knows? Right. In for me. Ooh.

So in the story, shit gets spicy. Joy puts in the antivirus program due to poor communication, which dooms all relationships. Totally. So now our heroes in Team Rocket are trapped inside with the antivirus program, which basically takes the form of these like, so they're in, when I say they're inside the computer,

it's basically Tron, right? Like, think of every depiction of inside of a computer from the 90s or 80s or whatever that you've ever seen. And it's that. Yeah, OK. So it's these drones that fly around and they fire syringe-shaped missiles at you. Ooh, no.

If you don't like needles, that's not a good thing. No, it's quite scary. It goes on for, and it goes on like. Too long. Too long. And it's quite, like I said, I don't like needles. So it's quite an intimidating thing. Yeah.

It's also where, because we're in a computer and all this shit's going nuts, it's also where the bulk of the really disorienting special effects start, including the segment that most commonly induced symptoms in viewers, quote, 20 minutes into the episode, Pikachu stops vaccine missiles with his Thunderbolt attack, resulting in an explosion that flashes red and blue lights.

Although there were similar parts in the episode with red and blue flashes, two enemy techniques called paka paka and flash made the scene particularly intense. These flashes were bright strobe lights with blinks at a rate of about 12 hertz for approximately six seconds. So do you know how you can tell when lights are flashing

at 12 hertz? No fucking idea. What's a hertz? It hurts. Times 12. Boom. Oh, I felt good about that joke when I was reading it. You dabbed too.

And I dabbed with all my heart. So I don't, and I don't know, I'm under the impression paka paka and flash, the two kind of offending techniques. I think that it basically has to, one has to do, probably flash has to do with the brightness of the light. And paka paka, which I imagine is probably an animatopeia, like paka paka paka paka, like it

has to do with the flash, like how often things are flashing. OK, yeah, that makes sense, yeah. So having watched this episode and not having suffered any ill effects, thank god I did make it out safe. Good, that was, yeah, probably should have been my first question. You were wondering why I was hooked up to this IV bag the whole time. It's very impressive when you dabbed with the IV bag.

That was amazing. I can see how it would have given kids seizures. It's super aggressive, it's really disorienting, it's really frequent. How long does it go on? Or does it happen in like little bursts? It happens in little bursts. Like the one big, the offending clip, let's call it,

capital O, capital C, DOC. So the OC is like a brief, is the longest of them. But this like, red and blue, red and blue, red and blue, that happens more than half a dozen times. And it's in little one or two second increments. So by the time your brain has kind of started to process what's happening, something else is happening, you know? Right, yeah, so your defenses are kind of worn down.

And then they give in the OC and you're just like, you're no match. Yeah, no match for the OC. But I don't know, like I don't know if I would feel so off put by it if I wasn't like kind of already primed to feel off put by it. Like how in 2020 when every time you get sick you're like, fuck, I've got COVID

and you kind of like manifest the symptoms. Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah. So long story short, I don't even, they get out of the machine, I don't know how. Porygon carried them out through a void. Anyways, all the characters live happily ever after in the long run. Not so lucky were the 685 viewers

who were taken to hospitals. 685? 685 at least, well there's more, but like at least 685 who were taken to hospitals suffering symptoms like blurred vision, headaches, dizziness, nausea, seizures, blindness, convulsions, vomiting blood and loss of consciousness. Whoa dog, that escalated.

Yeah, so in my head, in my head when they say vomiting blood to me is the clear winner there as far as like, whoa, loss of consciousness is quite hardcore as well, but. Yeah, but it's also like pretty static, you know, like you're out, you know. You're out, you're out. But the vomiting blood is a very like act.

Well I'm sure what it is is if the thing induced nausea then perhaps, obviously it would have made people vomit and perhaps there was blood in the vomit, but when they say vomiting blood, I think of like that movie Housu, the Japanese movie where it's just streams of like bright red blood erupting like hose, fire hose style from a mouth.

You know what's gonna happen if it isn't already in the works or if it hasn't all happened already? If someone is going to do a TV show like, you know, from the multiple series or whatever, this will be one of the episodes or a film itself about this, they'll listen to your podcast, they'll listen to your story. And when people are puking blood,

they're gonna puke like blue and red blood. It's gonna be like this really artistic thing. You know what I mean? Because of Pokemon blue and red. Yeah, exactly. Perfect. Yeah. And the Americans will stand and salute.

As we do, whenever we see blue and red, it's just like, yeah, sure. Yeah, this is, okay, wait, wait, wait, okay. So I have a few questions. Yes, hit me. 685, the majority are children, do you know? They're predominantly children. Okay, yeah, okay, that makes sense.

Jesus Christ, that's insane. And so, did they find that these children had a predilection for, like a, for, I guess, seizures or this reaction? Let me just keep going, cause that's coming up. Like that's- Okay, okay, okay.

Yeah, I wanna know, tell me. So most of these symptoms have cleared by the time patients reach the hospital and of the approximately 150 viewers who are hospitalized. So 685 in the ambulance is 150 admitted to hospital. Okay, yeah. Only two were in care for longer than two weeks. Although to me, two is still not ideal.

Zero seems like a good number to shoot for. For the children's TV show? Yes, okay. So said one child, I was watching TV but I couldn't remember anything at all when it was all over. I felt so sick. Another said, as I was watching blue and red lights

flashing on the screen, I felt my body becoming tense. I do not remember what happened afterward. Oh my God. Japanese media came to name the syndrome Pokemon Shock. The kids who were taken to hospital weren't the only ones to fall ill. However, as many as 12,000 children reported feeling at least mild symptoms.

So according, this is the answer to your question from before, according to the article from Vice, about one in 100 people have epilepsy and only 3% of those individuals of those one in 100 have photosensitive epilepsy. The rate is slightly higher in children but these reports suggested that as many as 10 times as many people have photosensitive epilepsy

as would be expected. Whoa. So, how did the researchers account for this disparity? Do you have any questions? Cause I realized like I cut you off to give you a lot of information. No, no, no, yeah, I don't. Okay, so there's kids who are like,

mom, my head hurts. And mom's like, don't look at the TV. Get away from the TV, you're too close. And then there's kids who are like, mom, I'm vomiting blood. And mom's like, we're going to the hospital. And so the, you're saying that the majority of the hospital kids had undetected visual seizure stuff or?

Well, one researcher, Benjamin Bradford out of Amherst, New York, said the phenomenon. Good old Benji R. He said that the phenomenon more closely resembled an episode of mass hysteria, in which people manifest physical symptoms out of fear in a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. Just like I was saying, I felt kind of

like I was doing what I watched. He said, quote, there were about 600 kids who genuinely did have headaches and convulsions and breathing problems. And it wasn't until two days later when everyone's hearing about it, everyone in the schoolyard is talking about it. That was the key because that provided the opportunity

for the contagion. It's not that they're faking it. It's not that they're imagining it. The symptoms are real. It's just being caused by being exposed to other people exhibiting those symptoms. Psychosomatic, almost. Yeah, basically, and like I say,

it's every time I have a cough now, I'm like, fuck, I've got COVID. And then I'm wandering around like, fuck, I've got to start right in the will. This is definitely it. And they go and jam a Q-tip behind my eyeball and tell me I'm fine. Yeah, yeah.

Whoa. So kids are hearing about it and they're like, I got to check that shit out. And then they go home and watch it. And then they're like, vomit blood. The other fucked up thing is, and again, it kind of speaks to what I was saying to you earlier about how every source I looked at had the clip available.

The OC is there to be consumed. So when, and this is one of those things where it's easy to armchair quarterback it in retrospect. But when they covered this whole thing on the news, they would play the cliff again on the news. And more people would fall sick and have symptoms and have seizures. Oh my gosh.

But then at the same time, it's like, you had to go watch it. You know what I mean? Like, there's this pull. There's a pull. It's forbidden fruit. Yeah. It's that part of you that walks across the bridge and looks over the side and thinks, oh, what

if I just jumped right now? I'm not going to, but what if I did? You know what I mean? That possibility is there. That call, this is going to make me sound like such a wank. But the French have a name for this. It's called, I think it's called, and my pronunciation is probably going to be garbage, so I apologize.

I think it's called Lapelle de Ville, which is the call of the void. Yeah, the French, the fancy, hey? Yeah, that's nice. So what was the follow? Yeah. Obviously, TV Tokyo, which originated the broadcast, apologized to the public and pulled Pokemon from the airwaves

for a four-month hiatus. The whole show, not just that one episode, but the whole show. Oh, the whole show, we're not putting on Pokemon until we get to the bottom of what happened here. Right. Episodes of Pokemon got yanked from the shelves of video rental stores, remember those? The producers and animators of the show

were interviewed by police. Oh. Nintendo's shares fell by 5% on the Tokyo stock exchange the next morning. OK. This prompted Nintendo to issue the following response, which I love so much. Quoting from Wikipedia, then-president of Nintendo,

Hiroshi Yamaguchi said at a press conference the day after the episode had aired that the video game company was not responsible since the original Pokemon game for its Game Boy product was presented in black and white. So that was their cop. They're like, it wasn't us. The Game Boy's in black and white. Talk to the people who make the show.

Oh, damn. Passing the buck. But, I mean, fair enough. Yeah, yeah, no, you're right. Because there is, like you had to describe at the beginning, like there's many different facets to Pokemon. Like it's not just the game or it's not just the trading cards, it's not just the anime, it's not just the show.

And all of this is at this point, all of this is just because the games came out in 96. This is December 97. So all of what you're saying, yes, some of it is in play. But if it's in play, it's quite new. And they've got this cash cow that is Pokemon, right? And imagine having to check that out because inadvertently, the producers of the anime

use techniques that gave people seizures. Yeah. So they have to kind of be like, nope, all other Pokemon merch is safe. Right, yeah. So what, do you know what the animators said? Like what was, what was their comments? I don't.

So we've got, there's a part later on, they kind of give a public facing statement of sorts that I'll kind of describe to you in more detail. But I didn't, I don't think individual animators would have come out and said anything until, until they had figured out what had happened. Because like. They're under investigation.

They're under investigation. I think if there was any sort of, like I don't think there was any criminal case attached to it. I think the police went to question them because of course they did. But I don't think like charges were ever pressed by anyone. Or like. I didn't interestingly enough.

And maybe it's because Japan is not as so happy a culture as America, although I'm like talking out of my ass. I don't know anything about Japan's legal system. But I didn't see anything about lawsuits being brought up. Yeah, yeah. Huh. Yeah, because that would be kind of foremost over here

if that were to be the case. Yeah. One thing that did happen is the incident was included in the 2004 edition and the 2008 gamers edition of the Guinness World Book of Records, holding the record for most photosensitive epileptic seizures caused by a television show. Way to go.

Imagine you're an animator and you like, you have that little plaque. So while all of this is going on, news trickles out to North America that an anime has given Japanese children seizures and it becomes something of a meme before memes were memes, you know? Right, yeah, the proto-mean.

Yeah, so that means there were jokes on Letterman, there were jokes on South Park. There's the episode of The Simpsons where they go to Japan and the TV gives them seizures. Yeah. It's everywhere and it's interesting because Pokemon isn't really a thing in America yet at this point.

So there are lots of people who even still have this joke slash urban legend slash whatever about anime giving people seizures with flashing lights but they never draw the connection between it and Pokemon because they didn't know what Pokemon was at the time. Okay, okay. Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah.

You know what I mean? Like how you knew that there was The Simpsons episode and something about Japan and anime and seizures and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but the Pokemon brand is not super well attached to it. One, cause I think they did a, they did some good PR on it, but two, it wasn't a global brand yet.

Right, okay, yeah. Speaking of America. Oh, talk about my homeland. The US Army in 1998 made investigations as to whether a similar principle to the one at play in electric soldier polygon could be used to create a kind of weapon to induce epileptic seizures in enemy combatants

by subjecting them to electromagnetic pulses. Wow. Yeah. I'm proud to be an American cause at least. At least we have a seizure gun. Yeah, at least we think that's a great idea. Wow.

This application was explicitly inspired by the Pokemon episode according to declassified military documents. Whoa. The photoconduced seizure phenomenon was born out demonstrably on December 16th, 1997 on Japanese television when hundreds of viewers of a popular cartoon

were treated inadvertently to photic seizure induction. See, oh, God. Happily, this weaponry doesn't seem to have been put into practice, although if you access the wired article, the Pokemon plot, how one cartoon inspired the army to dream up a seizure gun by Spencer Ackerman,

you can learn about all the terrifying shit the American military spitballs when they're bored. Oh my God. That was my, I think that was the big new thing that I learned while doing this research. I hadn't ever heard that before. That's fucking wild. That's horrifying.

So four months later. Oh. This sort of ties into your question about like what did the producer say? Okay. Four months later, a new episode of Pokemon aired with a three minute long introduction

explaining the causes of Pokemon shock. Much like I sawed out and watched the episode, I sawed out and watched this little introduction. Oh, okay, yeah. Okay, good. That's actually that, yeah. And when I tell you, it is the most soft and reassuring,

like non-threatening video I've ever seen in my life. Is it animated? Or is it like a scientist in a lab coat being like? No, no, it's not a scientist in a lab coat because that could scare the kids. It's this like incredibly gentle and trustworthy woman in a like a Dusty Rose twin set. And she's got...

Dusty Rose, that just, yeah. The most soothing of colors. And she's got like a little shoulder length bob and a super soft voice. And there's like orchestral music playing in the background. There's fluffy white clouds. Is she in a field? What's happening?

No, she's in a studio surrounded by like dozens of Pokemon plush dolls. Oh, okay, okay. So she's in this weird like... Very soft. Very soft. Yeah. Like it might be the first thing you see

when you get to heaven. Like it's so soft. Right. Like I was watching, I was like, damn, this is soft. She explains what made the reactions take place and how they've changed their standards to prevent future incidents from occurring. Namely, they instituted regulations around how often

and fast images can flash. And then like what kind of patterns and colors can appear in those images. So like red, bad, swirling patterns, bad, you know, stuff like that. The segment ends and this is the best part with a shot of a huge bulletin board and it's covered in fan letters

that say, please don't cancel Pokemon. Oh, it's just like, we've heard you. We're listening. We see you. We hear you. It feels to me to like the point, like the real point of all this fluff is like, please don't cancel Pokemon.

Yeah. It's so, so soft. And of course they didn't cancel Pokemon. It made the leap to become a global juggernaut with the bajillions in revenues and accolades that I mentioned earlier. But spare a thought for poor Porygon. The episode that bears its name,

electric soldier Porygon, has never been rerun for obvious reasons. And it seems to be true that the cyber Pokemon and its evolutions, Porygon 2 and Porygon Z, have been unofficially banned from the Pokemon anime. And they've never appeared in another episode in the 23 years since the Pokemon shock incident occurred. Whoa, just totally ostracized.

They're a persona non grata. Yeah. It's unfair because in the episode itself, Porygon isn't the source of the distressing light effects, which could be attributed to both the antivirus program, as well as, more nefariously, Nintendo star Pikachu himself. Oh.

But this is the episode that features Porygon, right? Is that why they- Yes, it's his name's- It's his episode. His name's in the title. He's the one most associated with it. Yeah. He's virtual, he's cyber, whatever.

So, he's been blackballed, but- Poor little dude. Well, there are rumblings that Porygon's decades as a scapegoat are nearly at an end. On September 19th, 2020. 2020, that's now. The official English language Pokemon Twitter account tweeted simply, quote,

Porygon did nothing wrong. Oh. Do, do, do. That's the story. Jeffrey Epstein didn't kill himself and Pokedon Porygon did nothing wrong. So, at the end of the day, you still think they're all called Pokemon,

is what I'm hearing. I'm so sorry. This juggernaut, billion dollar industry. I'm like, Hufflepuff? What? Ha, ha, ha, ha. 90 billion. That's insane.

90 billion that could have gone down the drain if they didn't do some real good boots on the ground PR for their Porygon problem. Well, this is also making me think too. So, okay, so, make sure my boyfriend was telling me how, I think we had recently watched, oh, we've recently watched Poltergeist. Right.

Like family friendly horror flip, whatever, where the ghosts come out of the TV and apparently Poltergeist is really, really popular in Japan. And then from Poltergeist spun out, and there's probably a lot of other Japanese influences, but then to also have this outside influence maybe like spurred things on, but there's this really strong Japanese horror

infactuation with TV, with like the, like they think of the ring, like the ring is originally Japanese, and it's all this stuff that's like coming out of the TV that's like. I wonder why that is, I wonder why. But this, I mean, imagine though, like you start barfing because you watch TV,

like TV is the root of all evil. Yeah, yeah. Wow, no, that's, that's wild. That's really, really wild. I think also really wild is that there were no lawsuits or like that that's not a big part of it. I don't know why, that's like really fascinating to me. And I don't mean to say 100% categorically

that there were no lawsuits, cause I can't attest to that, but it wasn't part of my notes when I was pulling together this thing, right? Yeah, that it's not like kind of foremost that that's the follow-up, is that? Yeah, yeah. Pokemon had to pay this off, whatever, blah, blah, blah.

That's so wild, wow. I'm just imagining too, like kids watching TV, like you get nice and close to the TV, you know? You get right up in there. They said the big takeaways, another one of the public safety, like advisories that they gave was watch TV. Maybe this is the moral of this week's story.

Watch TV in a brightly lit room at like a safe distance. Okay, okay. I mean brightly lit room, I'm not gonna do that, like that. No, no, nobody will. I can safe distance, I think. Yeah, treat the TV like someone who's not in your safe sex. Hmm, that's beautiful. Thank you, there's the moral.

Yeah, and then it'll be confused with wear a condom while you watch TV. But that's not a bad thing either. That's terrible. You should wear a condom whenever. We got a lot of morals to bat around here. Yeah, let's not let that one float to the top. Okay.

No, that's good. That's gnarly. I'm just like, I'm so flabbergasted you watched it. I'm proud of you. You really took one for the team. I took one for the team. No, I didn't tell you the circumstances under which I watched it were.

I was watching it. You were in a brightly lit room. I wasn't a brightly lit room and I was in a safe distance. I was, actually. Good, good, okay. I didn't do that on purpose necessarily, but I was that and I would look away the second it got like a bit intense.

I would furtively like just look to the side to like, I know, no, don't get me. I don't want that in my head. I don't want to see my blood out of my stomach. Dude, thank you for, for doing that. Thank you for listening. You want to wrap this puppy up? What's a rapper?

What's a rapper? So you want, you say it this time. Yeah. Thanks for being here. Taylor and everybody else who wants to be here. Stay sweet. My sources for this episode included Wikipedia, an article by Kaylee Rogers on Motherboard on VICE

called Did Pokemon Actually Get Kids Seizures in the 90s, an article by Katie Reif on the A.V. Club called Pokemon Shock, how a single episode almost derailed the franchise, and an article by Spencer Ackerman on Wired called The Pokemon Plot, how one cartoon inspired the army to dream of a seizure gun. I also watched the episode itself,

Electric Soldier Porygon on Pokeflex. The song you're listening to is called Tea Street by Brian Steele. Thanks for listening.