IL038: Cyber Soldier Porygon



"Dennō Senshi Porygon" (でんのうせんしポリゴン ,Dennō Senshi Porigon?, literally "Computer Soldier Porygon", although most commonly translated as "Electric Soldier Porygon") is the thirty-eighth episode of the Pokémon anime's first season. It was first broadcast in Japan on December 16, 1997, and has since not aired anywhere else. In the episode, Ash and his friends find at the local Pokémon Center that there is something wrong with the Poké Ball transmitting device. To find out what's wrong, they must go inside the machine.

The episode is infamous for using visual effects that caused seizures in a number of Japanese viewers, an incident referred to as the "Pokémon Shock" (ポケモンショック ,Pokémon Shokku?) by the Japanese press. Six hundred eighty-five viewers were taken to hospitals, but only two people remained hospitalized for more than two weeks. Due to this, the episode has been banned worldwide.

After the shock, the Pokémon anime went into a four month hiatus, and it returned on TV Tokyo in April 1998. Since then, the episode has been parodied and referenced in cultural media, including an episode of The Simpsons where the Simpsons go on vacation to Japan and watch a cartoon called Battling Seizure Robots, resulting in the entire family going into convulsions. In a South Park episode, Kenny McCormick suffers from a seizure after playing a videogame called "Chinpokomon". Because of this Porygon2 and Porygon-Z have never appeared in the anime by a bad flash. This is in the Guiness World Records in the ''Most seizures caused by a TV program. This is a big history to Pokemon anime.''